Van Burnt Drill

A Brillion seeder with the cultipackers front and rear works good. There are drills made for switch grass. Check with your county conservation board, they often have them available for rent for such conservation seedings.

I have a 12' wide Van Brunt and it won't plant switchgrass, its good for alfalfa and oats though. It won't plant brome either.

Switchgrass, in my experience, is a whole lot harder to get to grow than the extension bulletins say. First off, its a hard seed that needs to be stratified before it will sprout. The standard published technique is to leave it in the ground a couple years. The better technique is to soak the seed in water for a couple days, then freeze it for some time. I don't know how long that takes, but I did a germination sample with my seed. I put maybe 100 seed or so between wet paper towels in a zip lock bag. At room temperature in a couple weeks 3 or 4 sprouted. I tossed it into the freezer for a couple months and when I warmed it up nearly all sprouted. And what I put into the field without that freezing process sprouted about the same percentage. The trouble with that stratification by soaking and freezing is that the seed is then too tender to run through a drill or seeder but just about has to be planted by hand. On well worked soil, it should be good to run a cultipacker, spread the seed, then run the cultipacker again to cover the seed just barely and to pack the soil. This should be done probably in March or April, May and June is too late. Fall planting may work. I'm not sure I'm going to try it again.

Gerald J.

June is way too late to plant. Might as well plant it now and hope it stratifies in the frost in the ground over winter. After my experience, I think most of the extension bulletins are wrong about how to grow it. They often say its making roots when it doesn't come up for a couple years. BS. Its not making roots its sitting there waiting to be soaked and frozen to crack the seed coat so it can sprout.

My drill won't get it shallow enough and won't feed it good. And after its stratified its going to be too soft, the drill will smash most of the seed. After it thaws from being frozen in the freezer it can probably only be tossed out by hand because it will be SOFT and easily smashed.

Cave in Rock is a standard variety considered good. I can tell that I have some but I have a more solid stand of golden rod than switchgrass. Last last spring it got the patch burned for the first time but it was too green and didn't do much good. I do wonder if an early burndown with glyphosate might be better than fire.

As I recall, the extension bulletin from Virginia that I found on line was the one that suggested stratification in the freezer was the way to grow switchgrass. I KNOW my germination test agreed with that. Too bad, I didn't try that first.

Albert Lea Seed House (has a web page) is a reasonably priced place to get seed for a number of prairie grasses including switchgrass. They do ship.

The Brillion seeder costs way to much to own unless you are going to do a few hundred acres, but since its really good for grass seed it can sometimes be rented reasonably. It has relatively flat cultipacker wheels in front and rear and drops the seed inbetween. So a pass with a plain old cultipacker, then hand spreading, and another pass with that cultipacker is about the same effect. And 12 feet of cultipacker could probably be pulled with a garden tractor. I have pulled a cultipacker behind my Van Brunt FBB drill while planting oats and alfalfa, and that rig wasn't a load for my MF-135 tractor.

Gerald J.