George Sly — Sly Agri, Lincolnshire

Farmer, shareholder in Sly Agri equipment manufacturer, and strip-till pioneer. 280ha clay/silt at Gedney Hill near Spalding. Pushes boundaries of strip-till for maize, sugar beet, and row crops. Manufactures Sly Boss drill and Stripcat.

📰 Read articles by George Sly — Sly Agri, Lincolnshire on Direct Driller → View author archive

See Direct Drills — Types, Manufacturers and Comparisons for Sly Boss drill specifications.

System

  • All cereals scratch-till or no-till with Sly Boss 6m
  • All row crops (maize, sugar beet, OSR) strip-till with precision planter or no-till
  • No ploughing or full-surface deep cultivation
  • Strip-till + precision planting for maize: Stripcat 2 with offset coulters for inter-row cover/companion
  • Tasmania customer: 800ha broccoli/cabbage 100% Stripcat — 70% tillage reduction

[Sources: dd-issue-03, dd-issue-06, dd-issue-10, dd-issue-13, dd-issue-16]

Issue 13 — “I’m Finally an Agroforester” (April 2021)

Five years of planning came together as George and his family planted their first 16-hectare agroforestry field on heavy Fen land, doing nearly all the work themselves — “my father (78), my son (2) and me (34)” digging and planting 300 trees.

Specs

  • Layout: 24m arable alleys, 4m tree strips, north/south orientation to minimise shading
  • Trees offset 1.5m from the east edge and 2.5m from the west edge to allow harvest traffic on the drier western side

Row Type 1: Hazelnut

  • Varieties new to the UK (a Brexit headache to import), of the type grown for Ferrero (who take 1 in every 3 hazelnuts worldwide)
  • Selected for disease resistance, climate suitability in 10–15 years, and blanchability index

Row Type 2: Walnut with Nurse Trees

  • Cash crop: named fruiting walnut varieties
  • Nurse mix: Italian Alder (N-fixing, soil regenerator, planted in field lows), Silver Birch (hosts over 300 insect species), Wild Cherry (flowers for bees, fruit for birds)
  • 2 nurse trees per walnut at 2m spacing; nurses eventually felled and replanted, timber used
  • Walnut varieties selected with lower juglone content to limit allelopathy to crops

Economics and Rationale

  • 13 fields now exist where a single 16ha square once did
  • Water pipe trenched into each tree alley for livestock
  • Expects tree-row gross margin to equal or surpass the arable crops; carbon payments from the trees to add further income
  • Nuts to be cracked and roasted on-farm; shells, prunings and coppice returned to the land; plans to dry nuts via pyrolysis using the previous year’s shells

“My gut tells me that purely cropping annuals is not the right choice for my farm for the long term future. I maybe wrong and it’s not for everyone.”

[Source: dd-issue-13, 2026-04-13]

Issue 16 — Year One of the Annual Alleys, and the 24m Grain Trial (January 2022)

A short, cheerful Farmer Focus titled “And Breathe… a much better year” — yields OK to good, prices good, autumn establishment cracking. The piece is dominated by a year-one update on his agroforestry field.

First annual harvest in the alleys

  • Drilled Explorer spring barley on 24 m alleys between hazels and walnuts in the 16 ha agroforestry field
  • Pleasing yield, made malting spec
  • Found himself “experimenting more” — naturally testing different things in different alleys; ran 3 trials in the first year

Tree survival numbers — year one

  • Lost 4 walnut trees from 240 (hares/deer)
  • Lost just under 25 hazelnuts from 600
  • Given the March planting date and zero pesticide on the tree rows, “happy with that and we have learnt a lot”
  • AB8 strips established well

Time accounting in the agroforestry field

George is unusual in tracking labour transparently:

  • Tree rows walked twice in 11 months
  • AB8 mowed twice
  • Total: 27 man-hours for 16 ha
  • The walking is for guard checks, logging dead/struggling trees on tablet, and hand-weeding the AB8 strips
  • Establishment soil amendment: muck/mulch + Leonardite as a soil conditioner

Plans for winter 2021/22 and beyond

  • A further 16 ha of trees to plant December 2021 / January 2022
  • Plus 40 ha in winter 2022/23 — taking him close to 2,500 trees
  • Will start planting timber trees alongside nut trees from 2023 as long-term projections look very attractive

The philosophy

“I do LOVE having the mix of perennial and annual plants in the same field, everything is yet to be proven, but somehow it just feels right for the future.”

[Source: dd-issue-16, 2026-04-13]

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