Direct Seeding into Pasture

[HTCattle]

We are looking into direct seeding barley into pasture land that has been sprayed out with Round-up. Has anyone had any experience with this, good or bad? If you have, what type of drill works the best, a disc opener or a hoe drill. Most people I talk to have tried seeding into alfalfa stubble but not a grass pasture. I would like to avoid breaking it up this spring in case we end up with another dry year. Any help would be appreciated.

[emiled]

It's possible...from our local experience, success depends somewhat on your expectations are...

The biggest challenge I've seen is creating a proper seedbed and having enough moisture to establish the crop... With a disc or narrow knife opener (or for that matter, most openers), we found we didn't always end up with seedbed we wanted as a lot of the soil was still bound up by the decaying sods...If soil conditions continued dry, we often found the seed stranded in an open trench...

The fact that you sprayed out the grass last fall will help...Be careful that you don't get re-growth on the grass..Glyphosate (Round-up) isn't especially effective on many fescue grasses among others... If dealing with quackgrass, expect some dormant buds to kick in some new growth this spring

[rodbradshaw]

We did some work on this 8-10 years ago for the same reasons you are looking at. You may want to wait and see if you get any regrowth in the spring. We actually seeded and then sprayed before emergence of the barley although this can be tricky in timing. The John Deere disc opener made for a smoother field as compared to the narrow shovel of the Haybuster.
Tom Jensen did a project through AARI, so there should be a report with some data availble.

We found that after the all the costs were totaled, it worked out equally with a more traditional cultivation system.

[rodbradshaw]

HT Cattle
Did you try direct seeding and how did it work if you did?