We farm 280 hectares of organic arable land in North Northumberland. We grow wheat, barley, oats, beans & clover.
As a seed merchant, Smales Organic Seeds, we process a lot of our crops to sell as seed. We rent out the clover leys to a local sheep farmer.
We have grown spring beans for a long time. Beans are an important part of our rotation but this year is the first year that we have grown winter beans.
One field is currently cropped with Vespa winter beans which will be compared to a neighbouring field which is cropped with Spring Oats and will be come into the same crop as the bean field next year. The field is principally untreated, with two treated tramlines which have been treated with a biostimulant called Biocat+.
It will be interesting to see if the biostimulant has an impact of bean yield and also try and quantify what level of nitrogen the beans fix.
Pulses are leguminous crops harvested for dry protein-rich seed, with peas (pisum sativum) and beans (vicia faba) being the major crops in the UK.
Oats (Avena sativa) is a cereal grown for human and animal consumption. In the UK, both winter and spring varieties are available. In 2021, ~210,000 ha of oats were grown in GB.
Field beans (vicia faba) are a widely grown break crop across the UK on around 170,000 ha.
Farmers are taking part in and being paid for on-farm trials as part of the NCS project.
