Friday February 7, 2014

Day 48..

Plant Science
New teacher new lesson! And it was full on and action packed! We started off with the structure of plants, drawing and labelling the different parts, before looking at the plant cell in more detail. There are a lot of long words to learn when labelling these two sections! We then looked at the structures and functions of cells, quite hard to take it all in in a first go (and seeing as I haven't recently studied this at school). Specialist cells include the Stolen, Rhizomes and Storage Organs and in groups we investigated these further.

Agricultural Crop Production
Same new teacher as above and new lesson! Again, quite an action packed presentation! Zadocks cereal growth stages is the most common used growth stage key for cereals (Feekes being an alternative scale) and determines from a range between 0 and 99 the growing stages from germination to ripening. We also discussed pesticides and in groups were given a specific type of spray that needed researching. In my group we looked at fungicides and from the Syngenta website (a chemical company specialising in agriculture) determined that Amistar was a popular product to protect against yellow rust, brown rust and ear disorders in wheat!

Grassland Management
Today Jill delivered a lecture investigating the conservation of grass and in particular grass silage. We started the lesson with a scenario based task where at an open day on our farm we would talk city dwellers through the conservation processes, why and how it takes place where in simple terms silage is pickled grass! You should be aiming for 2 to 3 grass silage cuts with the first cut in early May - making the most of the fresh, young, lush, nutrient rich, surplus grass. The lactic acid fermentation occurs under anaerobic conditions (no air) to reduce the pH level of the grass. There are four stages:
1. Aerobic Stage - air is present for a few days
2. Fermentation stage - no air (anaerobic)
3. Stable stage - can be reached in 2-3 days with additives
4. Storage stage - when acidic conditions limit microbial activity
Stored grass silage is most common in a clamp, wrapped in big bales or in AgBags, ready to be fed to dairy cows, beef cattle and sheep during the winter months.