The Irish Grassland Association reseeding demonstration got off to a blistering start, with the sun beating down on host farmer Donald Bateman as he welcomed the large crowd to his farm in Ballylooby, Co Tipperary.

Stan Lalor from GrasslandAgro and James Mullane from Teagasc spoke at the first board about the benefits of reseeding.

Lalor said that a new reseed has to work twice as hard as existing grass, as it needs to grow leaves and roots, so soil fertility is extra important.

He said that soils at index three should get 30kg/ha of phosphorus and 50kg/ha of potassium at sowing along with 30 kg/ha of nitrogen and a further 30kg/ha of nitrogen after emergence. He says the forgotten nutrient when reseeding is sulphur – 5kg/ha should be spread in the first six weeks after sowing.

Costs and productivity

On the costs involved, James Mullane said total costs come to about €302/acre for reseeding. He says the advantages are higher overall farm productivity, increased grass growth and better response to fertiliser.

Halfway through Nicky Byrne’s presentation at the next stand the heavens opened and it poured rain for 30 minutes. While Donald and Lucy Bateman were happy to see the rain, everyone else ran for the ditch.

Nicky is a researcher on the on-farm grass evaluation study being run by Teagsc Moorepark. He says there is big variation between grass varietal performance on farms and that farmers should choose varieties that score highly on the Pasture Profit Index.

Donald Bateman is part of the study and he said Abergain is his favourite and best performing variety.

Machinery

The crowd were well and truly soaked by the time it came to looking at the machinery and grass seeds.

Three different sowing methods were used. These were the one-pass or power harrow and seed drill combination, the Einboch tine harrow and air seeder and the Moore Unidrill.

All methods were used on the one day on 18 April. The weather since has been exceptionally dry so all three reseeds are behind on where you would expect them to be.

At this stage, the seedling from the one-pass and Moore Unidrill (below right) seem to be at a more advanced stage of growth compared with the Einboch (below left). You have to look very hard to see any seedlings emerge in the Einboch plot but they are there.

The Einboch was used once without any seed and then went over again with seed while the other two methods were just used once.