spring reseeding question

vanderbadger

lads was looking at a field i usually cut silage in there at the weekend, its in bad shape, its crop is back every year and its now gone v rushy, no point trying to get silage out of it this year by the looks of it. it was drained and reseeded over 30 years ago by auld fella, its fair to say the drains are feckered at this point, it was probably that old brown pipe, the rigid stuff thats long since collapsed and blocked. the field is just dead, even though it tests reasonably ok in terms of soil test it just doesnt seem to get a reaction from fertilizer, there is a big fall of ground off it though and drainage would be straight forward. was thinking of maybe trying to do a job on it this spring.
would it be enough to graze it tight and spray it off in april say weather permitting or would one be better to spray off as it is and maybe give it a run of mower before discing it? April might be ambitious where i am unless the weather starts to pick up soon, ground is fierce soft
I ve only ever done a bit of reseeding in autumn half of which worked well and half didnt so any advice appreciated

flatout11

vanderbadger wrote: »

lads was looking at a field i usually cut silage in there at the weekend, its in bad shape, its crop is back every year and its now gone v rushy, no point trying to get silage out of it this year by the looks of it. it was drained and reseeded over 30 years ago by auld fella, its fair to say the drains are feckered at this point, it was probably that old brown pipe, the rigid stuff thats long since collapsed and blocked. the field is just dead, even though it tests reasonably ok in terms of soil test it just doesnt seem to get a reaction from fertilizer, there is a big fall of ground off it though and drainage would be straight forward. was thinking of maybe trying to do a job on it this spring.
would it be enough to graze it tight and spray it off in april say weather permitting or would one be better to spray off as it is and maybe give it a run of mower before discing it? April might be ambitious where i am unless the weather starts to pick up soon, ground is fierce soft
I ve only ever done a bit of reseeding in autumn half of which worked well and half didnt so any advice appreciated

if it were mine id graze it off until early april graze it tight - u can afford to poach your going to plough it anyway, do any necessary drainge, i would do this before spraying tends to get a bit muckier afterward, i would spray for spring reseeding weeds can be bad enough otherwise
reseed mid/late april probably late unless we get a april like last year -graze 6 weeks later and dont use for silage for at least 1 year

49801

considered jetting the establised drains?
might help you isolate where things are gone wrong

vanderbadger

49801 wrote: »

considered jetting the establised drains?
might help you isolate where things are gone wrong

havent a clue where they are, bofore my time and unfortunately the auld fella is no longer around to help point them out, in thos days the drains must have only got lightly cover in stone and then the earth was filled back in so no sign of them on surface now and id say it would be a waste of time trying to get them going

sea12

Yep your wasting your time reseeding this ground unless you put in new drains. I had the very same situation last tear. Land was reclaimed 30 years ago and they have started to collapse and get blocked up. You must remember a field always tries to revert back to its original condition so you are always fighting a battle. If you reclaimed it again now it would probably do for your life time.

I just cleaned out the drain the main shore flows into last year and reseeded the field. Sorry now I didn't invest the extra money into it as the field is still very wet and I can see rushes coming back up.

Farmer Pudsey

In a conversation a while back somebody recommended useing washed crushed 3'' (i think) limestone by itself as a cheap way of drainage. His reasoning was that if you put the drainage pipe in with it the lime dust off the stone will block he little inlet hole in it he was for also covering the top of the stone with straw before putting back top soil. This was to a person who was going to use limestone rather than round land drainage stone.

vanderbadger

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

In a conversation a while back somebody recommended useing washed crushed 3'' (i think) limestone by itself as a cheap way of drainage. His reasoning was that if you put the drainage pipe in with it the lime dust off the stone will block he little inlet hole in it he was for also covering the top of the stone with straw before putting back top soil. This was to a person who was going to use limestone rather than round land drainage stone.

alot of people around here reckon pipe is a waste of time, soil would be douby here, i still think the pipe is a help though, maybe put pipe in main drains and just stone in the off shoot ones,stone isnt cheap though, think a load of 4" clean used to be about 240 ex vat i think