As a family business with generations ahead of us, investing in the health of our soil and environment is all-important. We are continually innovating and trialling new methods to ensure a strong holistic approach to the way we grow and produce our potatoes, onions and carrots.
Integrated Pest Management
No more crop dusters!
Natural pest management begins at our crop borders, which are lined with plants that host and enhance natural predators. In short, we encourage good bugs like bees and hover flies to take out the nymphal stages of potato pests such as aphids.
Not only does this help our crops, but our threatened bee population gets a helpful boost as well.
Simon Wilcox (Wilcox Operation Manager) inspects one of the crop boarders
Heavy composting of our onion crops not only builds up healthy productive soils, but it promotes predator mites that attack onion thrips.
Crop rotation is also an important factor in reducing the need for extra disease control. Cereal crops of barley, wheat and oats add organic matter back into the soils, retaining the micro fauna for good bugs and maintaining healthy soil balance.
Our leading edge pest management approach means very minimal use of insecticides. When insecticides are used, they are soft chemicals and used in a targeted way. Our scouts regularly scan the fields, isolating any problem areas at an early stage and dealing with them in a very low impact and targeted way. Therefore we don’t need a calendar programme of pest control. You wont see any crop dusters over our fields!
Protecting the land and the air
By reducing traffic impact on the land through minimal tillage and using existing wheel tracks, we maintain a better soil structure with minimum water drain off and have reduced air pollution through fuel consumption by 50-80%.
Controlling erosion
Controlling soil erosion is vital for sustainable farming. On a 35 acre vegetable field it is possible for 90 square metres of top soil to be washed away in one heavy downpour. We use a combination of soil conservation techniques to retain soil and help prevent erosion throughout our farms.