Best Sown Plans...

Not everything goes to plan with farming, as we all know, and our second sainfoin field is a case in point. We planted two fields with sainfoin in May last year and one was successfully harvested for hay several weeks ago. We decided to plant the sainfoin with a companion crop of grass to suppress weeds and it established well.

The plan was to harvest seed from the second field this summer, but we ran into problems. Firstly, the sainfoin plants and seed heads were maturing at different rates making it hard to judge the best time to take a cut. The crop also proved to be very bulky and green due to the grass content so would have clogged up the combine. In the end we decided to simply cut and mulch it for soil improvement. It should regrow and re-flower again this year if the weather is fair and it is possible that we might take a late seed crop, and we’ll try again to take some seeds from it next year.