Despite how incredibly mild it is at the moment, the icy spell that covered the ground for 10 days before Christmas did an excellent job of killing off our cover crops.

Covers had grown pleasingly, following a parched August drilling gamble.

The destruction results look similar to that of rolling on the frost, without the hassle of having to get up uncomfortably early in the cold to catch an early frost.

See also: How to achieve the most effective cover crop destruction

About the author

Andrew Barr

Arable Farmer Focus writer

Andy Barr farms 700ha in a family partnership in Kent. Combinable crops amount to about 400ha and include milling wheat and malting barley in an increasingly varied rotation. He also grazes 800 Romney ewes and 40 Sussex cattle and the farm uses conservation agriculture methods.

Read more articles by Andrew Barr

If the cold spell hadn’t killed off the cover crops, they would have made good sheep grazing, just like in many of the frost-free winters we have experienced.

Spring barley will follow and I am continuing to tinker with different establishment approaches.

I now have four years’ worth of conservation agriculture trials data that we have produced here alongside Syngenta, with the added help of Niab and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust.

While the data show my cover crop and direct-drilling approach has increased profits, the weakness in the system has to be spring cropping.

Winter wheat and oilseed rape consistently yield the same – or even slightly higher – with direct drilling, but the spring barley has been more variable.

The Countryside Stewardship payment for the cover crops, which aids the spring barley margin, is now roughly equivalent to 0.5t/ha of malting barley, when it used to be nearly 1t/ha.

And that is taking into account the recent increases.

After 22 years of not ploughing, the farm’s soils and trial data are showing a positive financial and structural effect.

I don’t want to go back on this, but I am planning to try a very shallow cover crop incorporation with fluted discs, because this is how I have achieved my best spring barley yields in the past.

It’s not what some no-till purists might want to hear, but a couple of high-profile regenerative agricultural speakers I have listened to over the years have advocated this approach to make best use of the nutrients and carbon in the covers. So let’s give it a try.