Chemical Fertilizer alternatives

Soil test and target what you have / can get where its needed. Sort ph now and use slurry for the the first round.

Use LESS to make better use of slurry

If possible instead of using the same ground for silage rotate around with grazing ground

Some lads here were saying run of chain Harrow releases nitrogen or am I raving...

Macerated nettles or comfrey in water?

Has anyone tried?

Is there much difference in price?

Green manures with light slurry performed well for me on the wholecrop oats I have been growing recently. Noticed a significant increase in worm activity too

Would the slurry bug products be any good to help?

I assume different ones do different things , but I doubt it'll make much more of any nutrient in the slurry - might make it more available or less volitile - getting it slurry out with a dribble bar will probably makee more impact

I was using slurry bugs and reckon they do work, easier to agitate and nitrogen availability, but hard to measure. Have stopped using them. I have to collect a lot of yard rain water into tanks and having watery slurry applied with a trailing shoe makes a bigger difference to N recovery and agitation

But will maize need a fair bit of nitrogen fert in itself ? Or use all your slurry ,? Plus the right site and the right year sometimes .. or if it's silage from an outfarm could red clover work - a lot more cutting , but that could suit with zero-grazing .. ( mind you that could probably work just as well with a white clover let - and a bit more flexible with grazing and oversowing )

You'll escape with less bag N on a crop of maize than say any sort of 3 or 4 cut system, the Maize will hopefully yeild you 20tDM/ha the 4 cut system 16t across the growing year, but the PGR grass system will need near double the N. I got 11ac outblock that I cant graze or plant maize in, almost defo going to go red clover in that. Having said that I already cheaped out last yr and only spread about 100units N and 80 units K across the whole yr (took 3cuts, but 2nd and 3rd cuts were poor), I probably still got 12t out of it, absolutely nothing back on it since last cut in mid Sept, ground is definitely hungry now ha.

If you can get it ... Is there much paperwork attached to that , ?

It will be hard got next year. And it won’t be free like it used to be.

I doubt you'll have to pay for it. I was getting mushroom compost delivered for free last week and that is a lot more valuable than pig slurry.