A sunny day in the beginning of September, exhibitors came together to demonstrate techniques in the field at the Potato and horticultural field day in Borgeby, Sweden.
Reflection regarding extreme weather
During the day, Mr Jonas Jönsson, HIR Skåne, talked about results from a project in which the horticultural community in Sweden are preparing for climate change scenarios. With more extreme weather situations studies includes on the use of mulches in different horticultural crops.
Trials in field
-In the trial with white cabbage, we tested to grow green rye as a pre-crop to utilise the time during the winter and spring.
The rye was sown in September and in the beginning of May, it was cut, chopped and laid out as mulch. White cabbage was planted in the end of May, and it has been found that it has done well without chemical weed control.
-In this way we get a range of benefits such as erosion control, carbon sequestration and soil fertility build-up in a stressed crop rotation that often occurs in open field cultivation. All of these long-term measures are needed together to reduce the risks posed to the crop by extreme weather. Other benefits with the use of mulches and reduced tillage are that weeds become less problematic, which we clearly show in the trial where we deliberately left uncultivated areas for comparison, said Jonas.
The straw from the rye sown in red beet fields was harvested for feed or biogas. The red beets were sown directly into the stubble after a tillage operation in the seed row only.
Challenges
– The challenge in the different cropping systems what we see, is above all the soil moisture that is consumed by the pre-crop in May. This needs to be compensated for with the help of irrigation, concludes Jonas.
Oper8 represented during the fair
-“Besides visiting many interesting field demos, many visitors also found their way to our both,” says Thomas Börjesson, project leader for Oper8.
Here we informed about Oper8 and how to reduce or replace the need for chemical pesticides and experiences from other countries in Europe. Of particular interest among farmers visiting us was the use of cover crops in vineyards, methods for mechanical weeding and also laser technology.
