In front of you, you’ll see a plot of 2 year old Green Manure. This part of the rotation is all about fertility building with 5 years of intensive vegetable cropping ahead. You’ll see the 1st year green manures further along on your tour.

This is the 2nd year of our herbal ley. Different conditions favour different species, so you may notice a difference between this and the 1st year green manures. To this part of the rotation, we add around 50 cubic metres of Ramial Chipped Wood (RCW) usually in the early spring. The RCW comes from our willow coppice every year. It provides fungi and carbon to our soils.

We notice that this part of the rotation has the highest earthworm population: 1,400 per square meter in the top 20cm of soil! That’s 14 million per hectare! Or approximately 10 tonnes.

Earthworms are soil architects; they process organic matter and distribute it through the soil levels. At the end of the season, when we plough the plant matter back into the soil, the earthworms, fungi and other decomposers break it all down, releasing nutrients and allowing the soil to reproduce its own fertility. We do not rely on ghost acres (imported fertility from land elsewhere on the planet) to support our food production

This means we aren’t reliant on synthetic fertilisers or importing manure from elsewhere to maintain the fertility of our soils here, and that we don’t contribute to the hidden pollution or carbon cost associated with doing so. So when we plant Potatoes and Sweetcorn here next year, the soil is primed to feed them all they need to give a great crop, and sustain the next 5 years of vegetable production.