Grass is the most common type of vegetation grown in Viikki.
Grass is actually many small plants. These plants can live for many years. What we call grass is usually a mixture of different grass types, such as meadow fescue and timothy. Often grass includes clover as well.
Grass is usually sown under a nurse crop. This means that grass seeds are sown on the soil surface in the spring as soon as cereals have been sown. Grass begins to grow among the cereals.
The cereals grow faster than the grass. They prevent weeds from taking over the field. Weeds are other wild plants that have not been sown or planted.
When grains are threshed and harvested in the autumn, grass is left to grow in the field. Next year, the grass is cut, or the grass yield is harvested. Grass can be harvested two or three times each summer.
Grass grows well for four or five years. The field is then ploughed, which means the soil is turned over. The following year, the field is used to cultivate cereals or rapeseed.
Cows eat grass. After grass has been mown, or cut, it is left in the field to dry usually for one day. It is then collected and transported to a feed silo, which is a container holding food for animals. Grass can also be collected in a bale, a round bundle wrapped in white plastic. You may have seen such bales in fields.
Cereals, rapeseed and faba bean are planted in the spring, typically in early May.
First, the soil is harrowed. This means the soil is broken up and levelled for planting seeds. Sometimes seeds are planted without harrowing the soil. This is called direct seeding. Fields used to be ploughed in the autumn and harrowed each spring. Now they are not always ploughed in the autumn.
In the autumn, cereal grains, rapeseed and faba beans are harvested and threshed using a combine harvester. The crop is dried in a grain dryer.
On this farm, most of the grains are used to feed the cows in Viikki, but some are sold as well.
Barley and oats are sold for human and animal consumption. The seeds of the rapeseed plant are sent to an oil press. There, the vegetable oil in the seeds is turned into cooking oil. What remains is rapeseed meal, an important protein-rich feed for domestic animals.