Vineyard Cover Cropping - Our Guide

What are Vineyard Cover Crops?

Traditionally, vineyard owners have grown grass between the vines, but as concerns increase for soil health, beneficial insects, and sustainability, increasingly they are turning to cover crops as a solution.

This is understandable as compared to a monocrop grass ley, cover crops dramatically increase biodiversity on the vineyard as a whole, and within the soil.

By sowing a mixture of different plants with different lengths of root, soil structure is significantly improving enabling vines to access nutrients more effectively. Cover crops can also suppress weeds, and attract a greater number and variety of vital beneficial insects for biological pest control.

Other benefits include nitrogen fixing by legumes, a reduction in soil erosion, better water retention and infiltration, and a reduction in nutrient leaching.

Typical cover crop species used on vineyards include grasses, legumes, herbs, cereals and oilseeds. The best results will come from using a mixture of species as this produces the greatest number of benefits, but even a single-species cover crop will have advantages over a standard grass crop, so cover cropping is certainly worth considering.

Vigour Control

Ironically, another area in which cover crops can be extremely useful in vineyards is in controlling growth rates. Vine vigour is influenced by many factors, and soils that are already well managed and nutrient-rich can make controlling vine growth a challenge.

But one option is to sow a cover crop such as Creeping Red Fescue beneath young vines. The Fescue competes with the vines for nutrients, containing some of the vigour and controlling the early growth of the main crop.

The impact of this is reduced as the vines age, however.

SFI Scheme for Vineyard Cover Crops

As a vineyard owner or manager, there are many different actions available to you under the government’s SFI scheme.

Some of the most popular include:

• CSAM1 – Assess soil, test organic matter and produce a soil management plan
• IPM1 – Assess integrated pest management and produce a plan
• CNUM1 – Assess nutrient management and produce a review report
• CHRW1 – Assess and record hedgerow condition
• CHRW2 – Manage hedgerows

On top of these, there are many more covering as diverse actions as no till to growing winter bird food.

However, the only SFI action relating directly to cover crops is SOH3 which involves growing summer cover crops on permanent horticulture crops.

The action is worth £163 per hectare per year and is for a duration of three years.

The aim of the action is to ensure a multi-species cover crop is in the ground after harvesting the vines to improve soil health and structure, add organic matter and minimise erosion, leaching, and runoff.

To qualify for funding, the cover crop must be sown during the summer months and it must be a multi-species mix that contains at least four species, including two or more species from the brassicas, legumes, cereals, grasses and herbs plant families. Grasses can make up a maximum of 25% of the mix either.

Unusually, the SOH3 action bans some species including Japanese reed millet; maize; miscanthus or reed canary grass; sorghum (all varieties); artichokes; and sweet fennel.

Other Popular SFI Actions for Vineyards

CSAM1

CSAM1 is aimed at helping you understand the condition of your soil and to plan to improve its long term health.

As a result it is as relevant to vineyard owners as it is all other types of growers.

The action pays £6 per hectare per year and £97 per SFI agreement per year and it is static, meaning you can only carry it out in one place for the entire agreement.

To access the funding, you must assess the soil for all the land parcels entered into this action and produce a written soil management plan which covers that land. You must also have tested the soil organic matter (SOM) on all the land parcels entered into this action within the last five years.

IPM1

IPM1 is entitled ‘assess integrated pest management and produce a plan’ and does exactly what it says on the tin … it pays a one-off sum of £1,129 for you to assess the potential for IPM on your vineyard and to produce a plan on how to implement it.

The aim of this action is that you better understand the costs, impacts, and risks of your current approach to crop pest, weed and disease management, and that you can plan how to replace these with a range of IPM methods appropriate to your vineyard.

IPM1 is available to all agricultural land below the moorland line and is what is called an ‘agreement level’ SFI action. This means that you don’t enter specific areas of land into the action, it is across your entire land, and once included in your SFI agreement, you cannot apply for it again until the three-year agreement ends.

To qualify for the funding, your assessment must be carried out by a member of the BASIS Professional Register qualified with the relevant BASIS Certificate in Crop Protection.

NUM1/CNUM1

NUM1 or the enhanced version of the action for 2024, CNUM1, is the primary action under nutrient management and relates to assessing nutrient management and then producing a review report.

The action is a three-year agreement and you will be paid £652 each year. The goal of the action is to help growers manage nutrient use more effectively and to also optimise the use of organic nutrients for their crops.

It is an “agreement” level SFI action as it isn’t tied to a specific parcel of land but is linked to your wider SFI agreement.

The review and report needs to be completed with the support of someone who is qualified under the Fertiliser Advisers Certification and Training Scheme (FACTS). If you are FACTS qualified, you can complete it yourself.

To complete the action you will need to assess your current nutrient use and the needs of your vineyard, identify opportunities to increase nutrient usage efficiency and maximise the use of potential natural sources of crop nutrients, and then finally produce a nutrient management review report.

This process must be completed each year during the three-year agreement.

CHRW1

The aim of CHRW1 is to understand the condition of your hedgerows and effectively plan how they can be managed to improve their condition.

It pays £5 per 100m for one side of an eligible hedgerow per year.

To access the funding you must assess the condition of all the hedgerows entered into this action and produce a written condition assessment record for these hedgerows.

This is a static action.

CHRW2

If CHRW1 is all about assessing hedgerows, CHRW2 pays growers for managing them to provide habitat for wildlife, and pollen, nectar and berries for mammals, birds and insects.

This action pays £13 per 100m for one side of an eligible hedgerow per year.

Eligible hedgerows include a boundary line of shrubs, or both shrubs and trees, which is more than 20m long and less than 10m wide.

The hedgerow can also be newly planted, laid or coppiced, or woody growth on top of an earth or stone-faced bank, for example, Cornish or Devon hedges.

Once the hedgerow is fully established, you must use one of the following management approaches:

• Cut each hedgerow incrementally
• On a rotation, cut each hedgerow no more than once every 3 years, cutting no more than one third of hedges each year
• On a rotation, cut each hedgerow no more than once every 2 years, cutting no more than half the hedges each year
• Managing them in a coppicing or laying rotation, which may mean they’re left uncut for the duration of your 3-year SFI agreement.
  
  

Summary

The SFI scheme offers a significant number of opportunities for vineyard owners to make improvements to their soil and wider environment, while getting paid by the government.

These actions cover many areas from integrated pest management and improving nutrient management to managing hedgerows and cover cropping.

In this article, we have covered just a handful of SFI actions that are applicable to vineyard owners but others are available.

To find out more about the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, visit our SFI hub or contact your local Agrii advisor.