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In the world of farming, inclement weather tends to go hand in hand with disrupted plans, delayed field operations and poorly established crops.
Therefore, it is with no small amount of self-satisfaction that despite spells of near-torrential rain, I can report an ideal result from a recent reseeding exercise. It isn’t often that I manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (it’s usually the other way around), but on this occasion I seem to have made a series of correct decisions.
A 4ac field of grass that was sown out to a hybrid ryegrass/red clover mix had lasted four years, exactly as the label said. I decided to leave it for another year anyway, just to see what would happen, but its capacity to graze or cut dropped.
Typically, I would put 40 ewes with young lambs into it, and after three or four days they needed to be shifted again. This was not satisfactory, but reseeding wasn’t simple and clear-cut either.
Prior to 2013, it had been in continuous wild bird cover as part of a Countryside Management Scheme agreement, and this had resulted in one of the heaviest infestations of weeds that I have ever encountered.
Apart from the obvious culprits, such as dock, nettle and thistle, other weeds had proliferated over a six-year spell and even corn spurrey (not normally too bothersome) threw up some of the densest carpets imaginable.
It was difficult to see how to establish a clover-rich sward of new grass with this seed bank waiting patiently for the plough.
Brainwave
A mini brainwave saw me making a few enquiries locally to see if anyone had a machine that would direct-drill the grass and clover. I thought if the existing sward was burnt off using glyphosate, and then seeds drilled into narrow slots, it might stop most of the weed seeds from germinating.
There is a wide choice of equipment to establish seeds into grass fields, but I was worried that a dry August would result in a delayed germination and re-greening of the old sward before the young plants had time to properly establish.
Therefore, it seemed imperative to place the seed into the soil, where a degree of protection from drying out would be guaranteed. Those concerns seem slightly misplaced now after 100m of rain fell during the month.
I found a local contractor with a piece of kit that seemed perfect for the job. He uses an Erth drill, and it places the seeds into the soil in slots, opened up by heavily pressurised, angled discs. The field was sown on 3 August (10 days after being sprayed with 3l/ha of glyphosate).
Given the subsequent weather conditions, I could probably have thrown the grass and clover seed over the field using anything at all, since the soil was pretty much saturated for three weeks.
Slug pellets were added as an insurance policy, since they are far more likely to be a problem in a min-till situation than a conventional reseed.
Germination began after six days. One downside to this method of reseeding is the shielding of the newly emerged plants by the old sward of dead grass. This is unimportant, but it stops you noticing that lovely green sheen that a ploughed and rolled field can offer as you look across it.
By far the biggest advantage has been the decision not to plough, since parts of this steep field would be washed into Strangford Lough if I had worked it to a fine tilth.
Preferred
My preferred method of reseeding is still the conventional one, using the plough and power harrow.
There’s something inexplicably satisfying about burying an old sward and watching new life emerging from the tilled earth.
However, the method used this time around was done on a ‘needs-must’ basis, and at this stage appears to have been successful.
It is cheaper than the more traditional plough and harrow, although on a long-term basis that extra cost is diluted down to nearly nothing. That said, I will use this technique again without hesitation.
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