undersowing spring barley

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
Could anyone recommend a crop that i could undersow into spring barley that will give good competitive ground cover once the barley is cleared and fatten lambs in the autumn and winter ideally the seed would be put in with the barley ?
 

Great In Grass

Member
Location
Cornwall.
How about a mixture containing Italian ryegrass, Forage Rape & White Turnip or a mix less the turnip. @exmoor dave grew the last mix end of last year, in between munching jaffa cakes he may tell us how he got on with it.

I have had a lot of growers undersow with a med/long term leys but never planting a cereal in year two. :scratchhead:
 
problem is you could be combining grass in a wet year with a lot of these new varieties of grass.

How about considering growing the barley tidily and then spraying off a little earlier than normal to ripen it, getting in early with harvest and no tilling grass behind straight away? That said my preference would be to put a forage crop in after and treat your grass as grass and your annual crops as annual crops so go 2-3 years grass and then spring barley/turnips/spring barley back to grass or a variation on that. Its better value for your grass seed and you should grow better barley crops.

I was digging about in a field that was no till spring wheat last year and was turnips the year before. After the turnips the surface was rock solid for an inch - drilled the corn in no bother and it did well. The soil is amazing now, very friable, loads of worms etc. It reiterated to me the value of stock on the land once in a while in the arable rotation.

@neilo may be doing somethin along these lines?
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
How about a mixture containing Italian ryegrass, Forage Rape & White Turnip or a mix less the turnip. @exmoor dave grew the last mix end of last year, in between munching jaffa cakes he may tell us how he got on with it.

I have had a lot of growers undersow with a med/long term leys but never planting a cereal in year two. :scratchhead:

hahaha! i have been eating jaffa cakes this morning.....from my lambing rations! honest! :hungry:

yep put IRG/rape in last autumn in to old PP as a overseed with the grass harrows, ripped the hell out of the PP (but didn't spray off), seemed to work well enough, but i did put it in very late, a month earlier and i think it would have been excellent!

rape came up very well even with competetion from the remaining PP, it was also easy to see the IRG plants amongst the PP.
 

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
I like the idea of these medic or a prostrate clovers, autumn sown they wouldn't give me enough grazing and i'm not sure in an undersow they will fatten many lambs, we are farming just above sea level close to the devon coast so good dry combining days are rare ,therefor planting a grass alongside the barley would almost inevitably lead to wholecropping which is not my aim .
Maybe I should plant a prostrate clover with the barley ,and if the autumn allows slot in a more vigorous
catch crop ,I do have the ideal drill for the job .
 

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
I suspect red clover would give the highest yields and put the most oomph back into the soil ,maybe i should get the barley growing away and then tickle it in ,I've only been successful broadcasting clover once, when everything came right ,so drilling would seem essential ,but i would not wish to compromise the barley yield with too aggressive drilling tackle , some people use grass harrows ,which i have access
to but they aren't capable of putting the clover seed in, would my simtech pull up too much barley ?
 

Tim May

Member
Location
Basingstoke
I'm planning on putting it on with our opico grass box mounted on the back of the drill. Then roll the field straight behind. worked fine last year with the herbal leys. I found a great Canadian video about it I'll post when I find it again.
 

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
If I use a grass box bolted onto the drill and therefor plant both crops on the same day , am I asking for trouble with the clover taking over ?
Which of these grass or small seed distributors are the most reliable ?
 

Tim May

Member
Location
Basingstoke
When I've talked about it the answer was it depends...
If the soil it wet then drill seperatly but if its dry then together. There was a suggestion of dropping the seed rate but I'm going to play with that because I want a barley crop first with the bounus of some clover. The opico looks an accurate bit of kit to me.
 

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
I've taken the sheep off these fields 2 weeks ago , I'm going to spray off what's there spread the required amount of fert , slot in the seeds and if all goes to plan not go back in until spraying a one hit fungicide my agronomist will be seething but I've already paid his mortgage off and don't intend to repeat that journey
 

pikey

Member
Location
south devon
T
I've taken the sheep off these fields 2 weeks ago , I'm going to spray off what's there spread the required amount of fert , slot in the seeds and if all goes to plan not go back in until spraying a one hit fungicide my agronomist will be seething but I've already paid his mortgage off and don't intend to repeat that journey
 

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