In collaboration with our sister company, Habitat Regeneration, FGS Agri is able to offer cut and collect services to our clients. By using this service, farmers and landowners can transform less productive areas of their land and re-establish wildflower meadows.
Wildflower meadows are a particularly rare habitat within the modern landscape, as pressure on farmers to maximise yield and productivity, saw the introduction of herbicides and fertilisers, which resulted in wildflower meadows being lost.
Why re-establish wildflower meadows?
Wildflower meadows, as well as being a beautiful addition to your land, can offer income diversification opportunities. Environmental schemes, or private funding (BNG, corporate funding to meet ESG requirements) can provide an additional income stream, monetising areas that are often less productive for conventional agriculture.
How does cut & collect help?
An important part of re-establishing wildflowers involves a Cut and Collect regime. Cut and collect works are generally completed in early spring or late summer/autumn, once the current wildflowers, herbs and grasses have set and shed their seeds.
The vegetation is then cut and removed to take away nutrients and organic matter. This helps to promote traditional wildflowers, grasses, and herbs, which cannot compete with more virile, nutrient hungry grasses.
When working on land that has been in arable rotation for a long period of time, we will introduce annual ryegrass mixes as an initial means to draw nutrients out the ground quickly before we introduce wildflowers. These are a very input heavy crop and will draw the excess nutrients out of the ground, we then look to cut and clear the grass 5-6 times in one growing season, never allowing it to seed. Once this has been completed, we can then soil sample, using our sister company FGS Organics, ensuring that conditions are better suited for introducing wildflower mixes.
What can FGS Agri do?
FGS Agri and Habitat Regeneration has invested heavily in quality equipment to assist with cut and collect projects of all scales. Our modern range of machinery includes:
- Flails
- Mowers
- Cut & collect mowers
- Tractor mounted cut & collect machines
- 20T forage wagon
- Range of baling equipment
- 3m Moore direct drill
This broad range of equipment provides compact and large-scale options, depending on access, ecological constraints, and ground conditions.
Once cut and collect works have been completed and soil conditions are suitable, we can then look to direct drill into grass leys with wildflower mixes, utilising our new 3m Moore Drill, which ensures precision application.
