Sowing of this winters crop began mid April, with the no-till seeder. That activity spread out over quite a few weeks, and I wrote about it a little in this blog post (that post contains a list of species planted).

Last weekend I took a series of photos, showing growth over the 2 – 3.5 months since it was sown. Overall, it has not gone as well as I would like. Growth has been best in the Eastern Area, with some thick lush growth in a few areas, and good steady growth in most:

The western ledge has had mixed performance. It was the first area sown and done so at a very low seeding rate making it difficult to even notice the crop in these photos – have to look close up to see how it is going.

It has generally grown OK up on the main plateau, some areas better than others. I found the below very interesting – this is the one spot (one small location on the plateau) where the field peas seem to be doing really well! Many other locations the field peas have struggled compared to the cereal species.

To my surprise some areas of the Western Slope have done very well – I had thought that would be the worst location. Similarly down low on the Northern Slope (towards the property entrance).

The most disappointing area has been the Western Plateau. The plants are yellow, short and stunted in growth. I was wondering if it was very shallow soil with bed-rock close by, so took the shovel up and dug a hole. The first 5cm is nice good soil aggregates, but then it turns to pretty well pure clay. Dug down to around 40-50cm, and no rock, but thick sticky brown clay that was hard to dig. Could roll it into a long thin cylinder between my fingers. Was wet/moist the whole way down which is good, otherwise might have been like digging through rock I suspect. I’m going to have to research how best to handle this – what plants will handle it and put organic matter and structure into it.

The whole process has been a good learning experience. Next time I would plant the seed a little shallower. Most of it was sown quite deep – in the order of 25-50mm. I did more online research and trials at home in seedling trays, and found it grew fine even on the surface in practise, but next time I’d aim for around 15 – 20mm deep unless there is no surface moisture. My take-aways from the literature is that the more moisture there is, the shallower it can be planted. The depth is just to ensure it doesn’t dry out, but being deep saps energy from the seed/plant just getting to sunlight. This winter has been a relatively moist one.

I think the annual rye grass was a waste of money the way it was sown. It is a very thin lightweight seed with little energy reserves within it – needs to be on or very close to the surface to make it to the sunlight. I don’t think any survived being sown deep with the rest of the seeds. Some took near the shed where I’d spilt it onto the ground…. Means no point mixing it with the other seed during sowing (though it comes pre-mixed in commercial mixes….!) – need to broadcast it separately.

I’m not yet sure how to distinguish between the grain plants growing in the field. I think it is Barley doing the best, but will have to get confirmation. Don’t think much Vetch has come through. Sowing was probably a little deep for the forage brassica and the turnips, but at least some came up – the flatter areas primarily for some reason.

This crop still has some time to go – there are only just a few grain plants showing seed heads now and many of the peas are flowering. However, with winter almost over, weather should be starting to warm up. Won’t be long till its time to be sowing the long term summer C4 perennial grasses. That is especially needed in the Eastern Area and the Western Ledge which were ploughed not long before purchase – weed and annual groundcovers are a large proportion of what is growing.

Collected some Angleton Bluegrass seed from the very front of the valley a couple of weekends ago, but it is a very slow labour intensive process. Considering labour time it makes for some extremely expensive seed compared to what can be purchased (machine harvested)! Just today I was in contact with Andrew from Illing Seeds, who has been my supplier. Can plant the C4 grasses once the soil temp reaches 14C and is rising apparently. I have some research and decisions to make on what to sow, where, when and how!