Tried & Tested Professional Nutrient Management

Resource explained

Effective nutrient management allows you to match your inputs of nutrients to your crop demand, helping you to optimise yields, minimise nutrient use (potentially saving costs) and farm in a more environmentally friendly way. This webpage of Tried & Tested (an initiative supported by Catchment Sensitive Farming), is a toolkit of practical nutrient, manure and feed planning guidance designed to help you improve your nutrient management. From here you can access: The ‘Think Manures’ illustrated guide on manure management; a step-by-step guide to getting started in nutrient management planning (‘New to Nutrient Management Revised 2014’); a season-by-season, step-by-step guide to creating annual field and farm nutrient plans (‘Nutrient Management Plan Revised 2014’); Farm and Field Record Sheets (that can be downloaded in different forms for you to use); information about a free Tried & Tested USB memory stick.; and a publication on feed planning for cattle and sheep.

Findings & recommendations

•  Tried & Tested is an initiative established to help farmers in the UK improve nutrient management planning and recording and meet regulatory requirements.
•  ‘Think Manures’ provides guidance on when, how and where to spread manures, making the best use of your stores, and likely investment returns for soil and manure on-farm testing. It also contains useful further help and advice (including reference to the PLANET and MANNER-NPK computer software that you can use to generate nutrient management recommendations).
• The new to nutrient management guide includes information on nutrient management principles, how to create a plan, basic questions to be considered, what you can gain from using organic manure, and how to calculate fertiliser required. It also briefly introduces Defra Fertiliser Manual RB209.
• ‘Nutrient Management Plan Revised 2014’ includes farm and field planning forms, recording forms for applying fertilisers on fields to help you compare planned applications with actual fertiliser application, and planning and recording sheets for organic manure application. The records can be useful for nutrient vulnerable zones cross compliance purposes.
• The feed planning for cattle and sheep publication will help you integrate your use of manure, fertilisers and feeds into a complete whole-farm nutrient plan.

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