We were keen to experiment with dry seeding this year so decided to go early. Late March we seeded (using a disc drill) 10ha of the farm with a multispecies mix of mostly annual soil builders – Oats, Peas, Vetch, Serradella, Tillage Radish,
Linseed, clover plus some warm season starters Sunflowers & Buckwheat, and a small amount of perennial chicory & plantain.

We have also destocked so that we can pretty much lock up those 10ha and let them go to seed next spring. This will mean we get the benefits from allowing the plant to grow fully and also get a good seed bank for the following year. Depending on how well the soil responds we may sow a greater volume and variety of perennials into the 10ha next autumn or may do some additional soil building with the annuals.

As we did not add any soil amendments prior to seeding we added them to the seeds to go down the furrow. The volume was small just to tickle things along: soft rock phosphate, guano, Magnesium Sulphate, prilled gypsum, magnesium/calcium borate, and a plant available form of silicon made from recycled glass.

As we did not have a liquid inject on the seeder we coated the seeds and the amendments with a biological coating (dried off so it would stay dormant until rain).

Seed Coating: Johnson Su Compost extract, seaweed powder, milk, molasses, micronised rock phosphate.. Approx 700kg of seed was mixed in an old grain mixer with the coating (with thanks to Lawson Armstrong from Margaret River Organic Farmer for letting us use his machine).

Fert Coating: 2 parts fulvic trace elements liquid, 1 part fish hydrolysate, 1 part molasses until coated but not wet using a concrete mixer. (Thanks also to Mark Tupman for his assistance!)

It will be interesting to see how the germination goes when we finally get rain – will we have been too early given it now looks like the break won’t happen till May maybe even June.

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