As I said in my last article, “the rain will come soon enough” - and so it has. It has come with a vengeance over the past week.

The much-needed moisture has obviously made grass jump, which is great, but I am now finding myself grazing covers that are slightly stronger than I would like and some of them bordering on too strong.

Some of this ground is just not ideal for cutting, as it is a little rough in places, which means I’m tightening batches of cattle up on to small areas and strip-grazing them, giving stock a fresh piece of grass daily or even twice daily.

Not the ideal thing to be at in wet weather, but I’m getting away with it so far.

Grass growth

I have some ground earmarked to be taken out for bales, but, as I write this, there doesn’t appear to be much dry weather coming for the next week, so I’m wondering should I apply 20 units of nitrogen and let it grow a little longer, just to bulk it up a bit.

That, of course, may slow my regrowth, which is not ideal either.

Just for the record, I’d much prefer that to constant rain and muck

In general, it has been quite a decent spring weather-wise, with minimal enough rainfall. However, as we are always trying to find something to complain about, I’m going to say there wasn’t a huge amount of growth at times.

We went from having dry days and very cold nights to ground being too dry. Grass was stressed and under pressure until the rain did eventually come.

Now, just for the record, I’d much prefer that to constant rain and muck.

Reseeding

I’m hoping to get at least a couple of fields reseeded this year.

The first field of red clover I sowed is in its fourth season and although there is still quite a bit of clover in it yet, it is well reduced.

There is also quite a high dock population in the field as well. So, I shortly need to make the decision, is there enough clover left to be functional?

Do I continue treating it as a red clover sward and spray with a clover-safe spray? Or do I decide to spray with a stronger herbicide and just revert the field back to a grass sward?

Either way, I intend to sow another field of red clover this year so that I have a fresh field coming in.

Multi-species sward

I also have too many fields with too much annual meadow grass in them and need freshening up.

One of these has been earmarked for a multi-species sward, but I haven’t yet fully decided whether to go multi-species or just go with a rye grass and clover sward.

I was reluctant to go and burn off a field at the start of the grazing season, as I was somewhat unsure as to what my exact grass demand was going to be.

In hindsight, that was probably a mistake, but he who never made a mistake never did anything. So, after the next grazing I’ll try to make a start.

I’m not sure whether to ignore the wet spot at the side of the field and hope that the plough will sort it or to get the Hitachi in and start digging.