07 October 2023
Consider joining ACRES 2 to get up to €7311 per year for 5 years
Catherine Keena, Teagasc Countryside Management Specialist tells us about the benefits of joining ACRES 2.
Tranche 2 of ACRES (Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme) is expected to open in mid October. If you wish to express your interest in applying for the Scheme, please contact your local Teagasc Office.
Examples of ACRES actions for intensively managed farms:
- Grass margins – grassland: 2 m wide @ €1 / m = €2,500 for 5 ha / year.
- Riparian zones – grassland (no grazing): up to 2 ha @ €1,530 / ha / year
- Planting hedges: up to 750 m @ €5.29 / m / year
- Planting trees: up to 300 trees @ €6.21 / tree / year
- Management of intensive grassland next to watercourses (No grazing 15 October to 15 March and no fertiliser): up to 5 ha @ €502 / ha / year
Hedge cutting – Leave a new thorn sapling
Our network of native hedges in the Irish countryside with an estimated 689,000 kms uses a very broad definition of hedge including tall treeline hedges, stockproof hedges, gappy hedges and earth banks with occasional shrubs. When asked what is the best hedge – the answer is the hedge already on your farm. These ae valuable, most likely to have remained undisturbed for 200 years, containing shrubs and associated lichen, mosses and fungi, ground flora and soil full of biodiversity and stores of carbon.
Avoid harmful hedge management practices:
- reducing the height of treeline hedges producing ‘upside down toilet brush hedges’
- over-flailing topped hedges reducing the amount of vegetation, particularly on top of banks
- Pushing over hedges with a digger as an improper method of hedgelaying
Hedges should only be topped where there is a mass of dense growth at the base growing actively in a triangular or A shaped profile with the peak allowed grow as tall as possible while still cutting the growing point to prevent escaping.
The biodiversity of treeline hedges is primarily in the canopy – full of flowers and fruit. Topped hedges with a dense base or laid hedges provide nest sites for birds with flowers and fruit on individual trees retained. A diversity of hedges including Treeline hedges and Topped hedges is desirable
When cutting your hedges this autumn, leave a new thorn sapling in every topped hedge. In practice this will be a small clump of thorns saplings. They need to be marked so that next year they can identified and retained. Within a few years they will provide flowers for bees and fruit for birds which are not found on the body of a topped hedge.
For farmers in Nitrates Derogation, this is one of the hedge management options, but many mistakenly think they do not have a thorn tree, but it is easy to retain a whitethorn or blackthorn sapling.
Contractors will do whatever you want – as long as they know. Have a conversation with your hedge cutting contractors. Contractors take pride in their work and want to do a professional job. The challenge is to change the perception of a ‘well-kept’ topped hedge from neat level short back and sides to a taller wider more dense hedge containing thorn trees which is better for biodiversity and for carbon. While bigger is better, diversity is desirable but only healthy hedges will deliver for biodiversity and carbon.
October is Signpost Sustainability Month 2023, find out what’s happening!
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