I will use the same varieties and I do try to replace the nutrients removed,as you say potash being the main one.
Reseeding grass proven a waste of time?
- Thread starter Macsky
- Start date
multi power
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
Higher yeilds mean same output from less acres, hardly complicated is it ?
Bossfarmer
Member
- Location
- between Perth and Inverness
how long will white clover last in a sward before it needs reseeded? ive heard red clover only lasts a few years
multi power
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
White clover will last forever, if management suits it
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Almost indefinitely (or rather, will self seed), if your management is right to encourage it. Artificial N fertiliser and heavy mowing crops will mean it gets killed by shading out.
It thrives well under that rotational grazing that you like so much, less so under mowing and set stocking.
multi power
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
Cut everything once a year is my thinking
Bossfarmer
Member
- Location
- between Perth and Inverness
i dont put much fert on, my youngstock fields with the clover get 0 fert
Up here one cut of silage is a luxury, that can take 3 months+ to produce a crop after the last grazing, the good yields come off fields that haven’t been grazed at all since new year, the best come from fields that don’t carry livestock at all, just one cut, maybe get two in a very favourable year.
When relying on the fields for a fair bit of grazing I reckon no more than one cut every two years would help, 3 years would be better tho.
- Location
- Near Colchester
I try and cut every other year on each field.
Earlier cutting seems to shift the ryegrass out of the mixture especially if cut before it seeds.
Later cutting after the ryegrass has set seed tends to up the volume of ryegrass in the sward.
Some of my best yielders this year have been timothy/cocksfoot mixes with no ryegrass and, if the cows are to be believed, this is quite palatable.
My biggest trouble is Wall Barley, topping it just lets it seed lower down, sheep cart it everywhere. I have 2 fields in wheat as a break crop to try and get rid of it.
Earlier cutting seems to shift the ryegrass out of the mixture especially if cut before it seeds.
Later cutting after the ryegrass has set seed tends to up the volume of ryegrass in the sward.
Some of my best yielders this year have been timothy/cocksfoot mixes with no ryegrass and, if the cows are to be believed, this is quite palatable.
My biggest trouble is Wall Barley, topping it just lets it seed lower down, sheep cart it everywhere. I have 2 fields in wheat as a break crop to try and get rid of it.
My silage fields are used for dual grazing/silage,but find the mowing of the fields for silage,cleans up the field no end. Don’t know if coincidence, but I’ve way less thistles and nettles in those fields, compared to the ones that are grazed only.
- Location
- Ceredigion
i feel like farming is going back 100 years
SHHHH don’t tell him
- Location
- Devon
no I never said it was
you would hope that after throwing a lot of input cost at it you would get a higher yield of crop wouldn't you ? the question is even if you get more crop does this lead to a higher yield of profit given the extra COP
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
5 years is reasonable, if you are able to afford it. Then you can graze it normally for a year, deferred for a year, and normally for 2 more before the next harvest.
By deferring it at the right time of year you get a degree control of which species you allow succession - generally you'll keep it vegetative early, to prevent the bents and meadowgrasses taking over, but allow the later ryegrasses and timothy etc to seed out.
Not everyone can afford to do it, as they already spent the money and need to make it back
I don't know it didn't look to bad from the pic you put up
Is that good or bad?
Its hard to put it in when you ain’t being rewarded at the other side. Don’t know about 100 years, but the meat and grain processors want us to have prices from the eighties.
banjo
Member
- Location
- Back of beyond
Quite an interesting thread to read, being a farm if smaller size and in the early 1990s not much money around it was hard to even afford fert even for a few fields and some years I had to not buy any at all because of no dosh basically !
I learnt a lot from my mistakes and from my old mans knowledge of the farm.
“ he had a saying that if you don’t put back into the ground what you take out it’s a hopeless job “ he was correct and you can see it on many conservation farms now who won’t use fert.
Dry years like last year brought huge amounts of weed because they smothered the grass, this year the grass fought back and won the battle “ with the help of 20/10/10 to get it above the weeds, it’s not rocket science.
I used slit seeding into a low production fields quite a lot and grazed it hard, planted with a cheap old slit seeder, two weeks the grass in the slits 6 inches high and put the sheep back in for a few days then left for a week again and used as normal afterwards, 4 acre field cost £200 to do like that.
Lasts around 3 years then it drops off again.
Sprayed fields for thistles with thistlex and noticed it killed a lot of weed grasses also ( they went yellow ) and that really helped the grass by giving it more room to grow and use the nutrients in the ground, also this lasts a few years and it slowly drops back to as before.
Personally I find if I give the ground a small dressing of 20/10/10 if I can afford it lets the grass crowd out the weeds and makes a huge difference for a long time during the year but that’s just what I learned on my own farm.
I’ve done the mass expense on lime and personally I recon that the ground cannot take in more than a certain amount of it a year so be careful who tells you how much to use Because it’s a money pit that usually costs a fortune
I learnt a lot from my mistakes and from my old mans knowledge of the farm.
“ he had a saying that if you don’t put back into the ground what you take out it’s a hopeless job “ he was correct and you can see it on many conservation farms now who won’t use fert.
Dry years like last year brought huge amounts of weed because they smothered the grass, this year the grass fought back and won the battle “ with the help of 20/10/10 to get it above the weeds, it’s not rocket science.
I used slit seeding into a low production fields quite a lot and grazed it hard, planted with a cheap old slit seeder, two weeks the grass in the slits 6 inches high and put the sheep back in for a few days then left for a week again and used as normal afterwards, 4 acre field cost £200 to do like that.
Lasts around 3 years then it drops off again.
Sprayed fields for thistles with thistlex and noticed it killed a lot of weed grasses also ( they went yellow ) and that really helped the grass by giving it more room to grow and use the nutrients in the ground, also this lasts a few years and it slowly drops back to as before.
Personally I find if I give the ground a small dressing of 20/10/10 if I can afford it lets the grass crowd out the weeds and makes a huge difference for a long time during the year but that’s just what I learned on my own farm.
I’ve done the mass expense on lime and personally I recon that the ground cannot take in more than a certain amount of it a year so be careful who tells you how much to use Because it’s a money pit that usually costs a fortune