Our planting season started on April 13th, considerably earlier than usual due to the ideal weather conditions that we encountered. The first week saw nearly 30% of planned crop of 80 ha planted. The immediate prospects for planting look good but will be tempered by the knowledge that we need rainfall at some point to get the crop growing. As a result of our track road as a competent operator we have been able to secure further areas of land which have not grown potatoes which enables us to grow seed with the very highest seed standard requirements. We are growing 3 new varieties this year, Mozart, Orchestra and Lanorma. The first is a red and the other 2 are whites and all with a good PCN resistance rating. We have also been fortunate enough to secure the Farm as an AHDB Aphid Monitoring Site. This should enable us to exercise much better judgement as to whether the aphids that we catch represent a high or low risk as virus carriers.
Away from the potato drilling exercise we have been focusing very closely on our fertiliser and taking account of the excellent indices that we have established over a period. Each field has been assessed and P K and S applied at the appropriate level of need. This action alone has gone a considerable way to making up for the 20% loss of subsidy payment that we are faced with this year.
With the need to keep a sharp eye on the rapidly changing environment that we operate in, particularly in relation to sustainability, we are beginning to work out our own Farm Carbon Footprint in the certain knowledge that it will be a key part of marketing our product in the future as required by our customers.