Moss Side Farm

154 hectares of ex arable and horticultural turf production. Purchased during 2022 the site is being restored to a matrix of wetland habitats and the development of a hub at the farm base for engagement and science. The site is just south of part of Manchester Mosses SAC.

Lowland peat of Chat Moss. The land in the area was restored to farmland during the 1800s through enrichment and draining. Some local areas have had peat removed and these sites are now in various stages of restoration. Moss Side Farm was mainly arable crops but then some fields leased to horticultural turf production. The site comprises of 11 fields up to approx. 20ha in size. Some of land is contiguous and some separated by other farms/land ownership. The land is drained via gravity.

Fen, wet grassland, drier grassland, wet woodland, bog. Mainly creating wetland with a matrix of habitats, mainly fen and some specific bog creation to enable stepping stones to connect existing nature reserves nearby.

Several areas of bog creation within hydrological units inside the fields created by deep trench bunding through the field drains. The external drains must be maintained and so most fields have a wide drained buffer zone to protect adjacent infrastructure. The bog creation is a potentially new techniques involving inverting the soil profile to bury the enriched layer exposing better quality peat. The bare peat created is being quickly planted with bog plants to try and limit emissions. Some gas exchange monitoring is taking place. One field remains in arable use partly for lapwings and partly to enable some longer term baselines to be taken. Here we have a 30% L shaped unmanaged buffer and will be looking at spring crops until this is also probably restored to wetland. Another field is part of the EU Horizon Project Palus Demos demonstrating paludiculture (wetland crops) which is a 4 year project. We are just putting in the water level controls but are seeking to demonstrate food crops and the HLS scheme for arable on a high water table.