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Grassland including mycorrhizal

Hi.
I have been interested in the benefits of mycorrhizal fungi to grassland and am looking to incorperate it into a small amount of this years reseeds as a trial with a view to extending it's use. My worry is that I won't be able to control anything I turn up in terms of weed seeds. Although, nobody I have spoken to yet has been able to absolutely confirm that weed control will damage the mycorrhizal (perhaps because they were trying to sell me the stuff) it seems to me that this is what will happen.
My current plan is to undersow spring barley with fungi treated grass seed but I am having second thoughts. My question is this; should I go ahead with this or follow a different plan i.e. a) conventional barley with weed control, and DD grass into the stubble. b) conventional barley and grass without mychorrizhal and overseeding treated seed in year 1 or 2. Especially since if we have a summer like last year there won't be any grass to worry about anyway. c) Something else?

Any conversation about this stuff is appreciated

Cheers
 

Great In Grass

Member
Location
Cornwall.
We sell grass seeds treated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria to my knowledge chemical sprays has no detrimental effect on either.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I'd lean towards option B, as above fungicides generally are designed to kill fungii
Are you reasonably sure your soils are completely devoid of mycorrhizal fungii?
Generally it takes a lot of abuse for them not to be present to some extent, has it received lots of chem/slurry/bagged N in the past?

Personally I'd look at undersowing and establishing some legumes under your SB, which will then begin to slowly provide a drip feed of N into the soil, and most are fairly resistant to glyphosate dessication of your cereal crop - then add your grass seed later when this groundcover is reasonably slow-growing or dormant.

You need to realise that many common methods cause the soil to be dominated by bacteria - which is fine while they're being "fed", but when they run out of nitrogen to consume then they eat the fungii, the more labile soil carbon etc before they starve out - pretty much a mirror of the fate of our own decadent species.

So it depends largely on your system and history as to what benefit you'll see, it could likely be a completely futile mission until the factors that favour a good balance of fungii:bacteria have been addressed.
 

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Webinar: Expanded Sustainable Farming Incentive offer 2024 -26th Sept

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On Thursday 26th September, we’re holding a webinar for farmers to go through the guidance, actions and detail for the expanded Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) offer. This was planned for end of May, but had to be delayed due to the general election. We apologise about that.

Farming and Countryside Programme Director, Janet Hughes will be joined by policy leads working on SFI, and colleagues from the Rural Payment Agency and Catchment Sensitive Farming.

This webinar will be...
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