pasture ground prep for seed drill

michaelr

Member
long standing pasture, unsure say 20+years
as fescue. wanting to plant some alfa alfa
into it. dont have a no till drill, and not
sure that even i were to borrow one, that
simple pass with a notill would even work.
asking what strategy you have success with
for getting oasture ground seedbed ready
for a seed drill. bremer silt loam.
 
I drilled some alfalfa it some old hay ground earlier this winter I?ve never frost seeded alfalfa but I have done a lot with grass seed . I used a hoe drill and it was able to cut through the frozen ground so between that and the freeze thaw cycles through the winter hopefully the seed will make contact with the soil and grow .
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snow seeding. hmm, i do have a jd van brundt LL, press wheel drill. thanks for the reply, watched your youtube video. pretty cool.
 
Like I say we plant a lot of grass and pasture mix in the snow from thanksgiving until the snow gets to deep to pull it . I Redid another old pasture but I ran the power harrow over it to loosen it up and level it some
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Last fall I disked a 12 year old hay field and ran my IH 510 drill on it to put Timothy and Orchard grass down. I pull a cultipacker behind the drill. Works well. When I disk, I cover the next pass 1/2 on 1/2 off the previous pass, so it doubles the disking. Next fall I plan to try this but put alfalfa grass mix down. Normally I plow but want to try the disc only method and see what happens.
 
Your best bet to prepare the seed bed is to plow and disk...You are going to want nice clean soil to seed alfalfa into.....if you are using a grain drill to seed the alfalfa...you may want to seed a little oats with it for a cover crop and then after planting lightly drag the field and then use a culti packer and pack the entire field ......Do you still want to use this as a pasture?
 
Then just do as I said .....You may also want to spray it with roundup before plowing it down to kill all the perennial grasses there.....other wise they will show back up over time in the alfalfa....
 
I?ve done a lot of fields like you describe plowing works but sometimes that old sod turns over rough then you need a big heavy disk or a power harrow to smooth out the fields I plow to deep and that some of the reason for the field being rough but I want the soil loose and deep so it will hold moisture I also have the equipment to work the ground down . Another thing you can do is plow in the Fall and let it sit over the winter and that will help break the ground down without a lot of heavy tools. Another thing you could try is roundup the old grass and then disk and plant the alfalfa
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