I’m Ed Scott, and I work on the Riverford Organic’s founding farm in Devon. The plan is that I’ll be writing a regular farm blog, showing you what we’re growing and how we’re growing it.
It’s now the beginning of February, and we are busy picking leeks and the last of our curly kale from the fields. We have also just laid the last of our winter salad pack in the polytunnels. The majority of our salads are block-planted through a plastic mulch, and treated as ‘cut-and-come-again’ crops; these can be picked between three and five times, dependant on type and variety.
As well as the blocks, a proportion of our salad leaf plants come in seed matting; a large spool of seeds sandwiched between plastic and a blotting-paper like material. Much like cress grown on loo roll at home, upon germination the roots reach through the paper into the soil below, while the leaf pushes up through tiny slits pre-cut in the plastic. This system has the advantage of lower plant and planting costs whilst ensuring the crop is not swamped with weeds; and although we have mixed feelings about the volume of plastic used, it’s actually no more than that used in our traditional block planted system.
T
he disadvantage of this system is that the seed matting doesn’t work with all plants and can only be cropped once; our first planting went in during October and was harvested in the run-up to Christmas. The rolls laid this week should be ready for harvesting in late March. Keep an eye out for further pictures showing progress through the growing stages.
Ed Scott
Assistant Harvest Manager
Can or is the plastic recycled in any way ?
What do you do with it after use.
I’m afraid the short answer is no, we don’t recycle at the moment. The seed matting (called terraseed commercially) can’t be recycled as the plastic portion is too mixed up with the paper and plant material to be useable; and the black plastic we lay as a regular mulch is too muddy for most recycling companies to take.
We are constantly looking for ways to improve on this and the farm has a chap in charge of recycling who is doing wonders on reducing our waste farmwide. He has recently found a company that may be able to take our excess fleece, for example, which could help move whatever we don’t shift through the send a cow scheme out of landfill and into something more useful and sustainable.
We have also experimented with biodegradeable plastic but this introduces problems of its own. The plastic is much weaker, tending to rip when being lain – and doesn’t last well through the season. The main problem, however, is its structure. Bioplastic is largely starch-based but the starch element is used to bind with plastic. When it breaks down the plastic elements remain as microscopic particles – just the right size to cause problems for the microorganisms in the soil.
I appreciate this is probably not the answer you were hoping to hear but rest assured, we aren’t resting on our laurels and will continue to try and improve our practices.
I hope this informs even if it doesn’t enlighten!
Yours
Ed Scott.
Good to have a blog. Plenty of photos please, for the ‘visual’ people.