Hi Wen,

I just read your post and would suggest that in terms of effectiveness, allowing weeds to germinate first then lightly tilling or spraying will likely be more effective than dry seeding. Dry seeding is easy and cheap and can be used when you already have a stand of good existing species, i.e perennials, in the field or if weeds…

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Hi Max,

Thank you very much for your detailed response and all the great advice. I hope my queries/comments below keep the conversation general enough that it’s still useful for others in a similar situation.

– How quickly would the weeds respond to the adjustment in soil PH? I assume planting cover crops or pasture into any weed ridden…

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I would start by checking soil pH and add lime if needed. I’d suggest, based on your weeds, it will be. A simple soil test kit is available from your garden centre or hardware store. Get the pH right and most of your weeds will fade away. When Weeds Talk is a great book to help figure lots of this out. Ask your local library to get it…

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I have been listening with great interest to all of the podcasts about establishing multispecies pastures and cover crops, succession planting and soil/soil microbe health. The basis however for most of these discussions is with an assumption of having some established pasture to build on. I’d love to hear some thoughts and advice for those who…

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Thanks for posting Brett, great to see what you are doing and it is very inspiring.

Hi Brett,

Thanks for sharing.

It’s all in the timing.

Last year, the comeback of multi species plots at Nevs’ was worse in strips that were grazed a bit later, maybe because the plants had started going to seed and exhausted reserves?

On the flip side, species like chicory, plantain etc… need enough time to get established before grazing.

This…

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Yes be interesting to see what’s happening below – might be good to bring a sample to the LCDC to take a look down the microscope 😀

Hey Kate

agree we should be looking to fence down some of the alley ways and we have recently got some kiwitech mobile electric fencing. So on the list to try out.

I was going through there today and I think there is enough in one of the paddocks for another month at least. I’ve got 7 paddocks though.

plus it’s growing more each day.

all we…

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Fantastic Brett! How long are you planning on leaving them in there? Are you considering mob grazing and back fencing to stop them returning to where they have grazed – just thinking you might end up with some selective grazing and risk taking out your new young perennials??

So we shut down the south side of the farm this year and planted a Multispecies mix with the plans to let it go to seed.

After a visit to Nevs place with the LBLCDC we decided to send some ewes in to see what happens to the fields based on with a late graze and without.

the graze is allowing the chicory, plantain, clovers and grass to grow (and…

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very encouraging Brett, thanks for sharing

On Sunday we hosted a RegenWA Cover Crop Field Walk that demonstrated innovative and best practices to establish diverse vineyard midrow, undervine and cover crops and a native seed production area. Good turn up with

I collected the following soil health indicators in Spring 2024;

-Soil penetration resistance

-Legume nodulation

-Soil pH

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Thanks Brett, great 👍

Hey Kate,

Here is this years mix plus some Barley in there too which I had left over from last year.

Awesome Brett, what was in your mix, any perennials as well?

Have a very similar experience with our wet & in between areas.

Thought I would share some progress photos of our multispecies mix that was seeded at the start of May after being sprayed out.

This year we have decided to not graze the 35ha area (half the farm) so we can grow some deep roots and then let it go to seed to start a new seed bank in the soil.

We had to dig a 1m test pit today for a different…

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Not one size fits all with this question. The aim in my opinion is to maximise diversity of our pasture and in my case i like to use perennials as much as I can. The challenge is mostly with establishment, where many factors influence success, namely soil type, soil function and nutrition and background pasture species.

To maximise diversity…

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Whilst discussing the recovery times of different pasture species at our peer group Grazing on the Ground session yesterday, we touched on the idea that when it comes to designing multi-species mixes, it’s best to avoid of grouping pasture species that have very different management requirements in the same paddocks and going for combinations of…

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Thanks Eric, good to hear some positive feedback about Phalaris, our sheep are eating it and in digging underneath one of the plants the roots have gone down at least 3 times deeper than the annuals which is the point isn’t it. Now need to get some perennial herbs and legumes going in there as well!

I’ve heard this comment before, and that Phalaris is toxic to livestock. While both comments aren’t entirely wrong, they may be based on a past experience that goes back decades…

the current varieties are much better palatability than the original ones that were tried in WA. Toxicity can be an issue when grazing stressed plants after a big…

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Here was us feeling very pleased with ourselves that we’d managed to get some great stands of Phalaris established into one our paddocks (in amongst the usual ryegrass & clover) .. chatting yesterday with another local farmer who said he considers it a weed in our area, the livestock don’t find it as palatable as the annuals and it just gets…

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Is the key then to get the other grass/legume species to be the most dominant & to out compete the Guilford grass?

I am familiar with your trial site Justin. We are running 8 identical trials in other catchments…

Last year H2O was the most limiting factor . The N plots also had all other nutrients applied so it will be interesting to see if the Guildford bulb remains a dominant species in the composition!

your site also has a pH over 5 so that should help…

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Hi Eric, i have a test site on my place at the moment, we currently have an interesting result, there were three strips that had nitrogen applied last year, along with PK etc based on soil tests, theses strips had most FOO last year, however these 3 strips are now showing the most gilford grass in early growth, very easy to see.

The test site is…

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Thanks Kate – that’s helpful

Thanks Eric – I’ll look into it

Ok – will put some on today 🙂 thanks

Unless the soil is in a healthy and fertile enough state to support the plants adequately 😏

Hi Will,

have you done a soil test of the affected area? My experience has been that Guildford bulb will favour three things. Low pH soils, low Phosphorous levels and to some degree soil compaction.

i have had really good success by lifting pH to over 5 in CaCl and addressing P levels according to soil test recommendations.

cheers

Eric

Everything should dissolve with the exception of the JS mix. So it can go out through the the boom spray but you see a lot of people put it through a 100 micron filter from a dissolving tank.

part of the reason I bought the T&F as it uses a trash pump, that helps mix and dissolve with no filters and a 3mm spray orifice. Removes the majority…

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I have thick mats of it on some paddocks & it’s clearly choking out/retarding the growth of what has been sown in. How to deal with it without herbicide?

in one paddock in year one – we put free range pigs across it and that cleared some patches.

year 2 I tilled the whole paddock with an offset disc & sowed into that.

year 3 it’s back again -…

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Hi Mark,

thanks for the reply and input. After emergence last year I sprayed on your suggested mix – does it need to be put on every year? I didn’t put it on yet this year.

Last year :-/

This is a site where we had a severe infestation of RLEM last year.

This year I have given it all the nutritional and biological help I can, no pesticide, and it’s hardly been touched by the RLEM (see photo) so must be doing something right.

I’ll post an up close tomorrow.

Hi Will,

Yes, the RLEM is definitely making its presence felt around the place atm.

There is definitely something about healthy plants or plants growing in healthy soil that seems to impart red legged resistance as we commonly see healthy plants untouched while others in not such a good paddock are getting hammered.

The exact reason for this is…

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Looks like getting those foliars out earlier gave the plants a good head start & stave off RELM, I got some out on a couple of paddocks at the same time as you and no sign of them whereas the other paddocks all have some to varying degrees, only got foliars on them last week – plants looking like they are going to grow through the damage though…

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Brett will you foliar go out through a normal boom spray doing 100l/ha? I’m thinking maybe not the lime product but the rest?

Thanks Brett for the detailed info. Great to hear you’re having success against them with the limited foliars. Good news 👍

This is the Tow and Fert spraying out at Kate and Lloyds farm. Gets about a 8-10m width.

Hello All

Touch wood I’ve had no red legs (yet!!)

About 3-4 weeks after seeding (30 April) I put out the following mix

Per 500 litre tank load = covers 2-3ha with the Tow and Fert

Fish Hydrolysate 35 litres (brewed on farm)

JS mix 8kg (made on farm and ~8 months old)

Seaweed solid extract 850g (Soil Dynamics)

Fulvic Acid Powder 1.5kg…

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At a guess I would go say 5 litres/ ha of each

It was in a John Kempf book that I don’t have on me currently

I’ve also got a battle on my hands! I’m going to try and foliar spray one of Mark’s recipes hopefully next week and see if it slows the buggers down. Brett do you know the amounts used for molasses/milk spray?

Photo is of last years multi species(which was also attacked badly), I’m guessing there was a huge egg population laid last spring as I…

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Hi Will, We have had some red legs in some of the paddocks we seeded to multi species.. in particular they were hammering the legumes & brassicas. Mark Tupman @mark suggested spraying out Magnesium Suplhate at a rate of 5 to 7kg/ha along with some molasses… our soils are quite deficient in magnesium & I think if my understanding is correct,…

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I haven’t tried this but apparently a mix of milk and molasses diluted in water and sprayed out over the area might do the trick.