Whether your pasture is half an acre or a dozen acres, you know as a farmsteader is does much more than just grow grass for your animals to browse upon.
In short, a pasture provides pollinator habitat, a safe space for native species to flourish, area for soil to heal and generate (thanks in part to some special “deposits” from livestock) and, if used following the practices of silvopasture, it can even sequester carbon. Which is all pretty cool.
But good pastures don’t just happen. Livestock like to graze some species more than others; wildlife can also get in there and take what they want. The key to pastures growing what you need is to give them what they need – in the way of seeds.
First, know that rotating pastures is the best way to keep them healthy. If you’re seeing bare spots and nothing but weeds, your animals have likely overgrazed that pasture and it will take longer for it to come back into healthy production.
Late winter is a perfect time to think about how to seed a pasture. According to Penn State Extension, “a general guideline is to completely reestablish your pasture (kill all vegetation and start over) if it contains less than 50% desirable plants, and to overseed (add seed to existing forage) if it contains 50% – 70% desirable plants.” That means observation is critical.
To determine the number of desirable plants, you can utilize a “Pasture Evaluation Disc.” Draw an arrow on the edge of a Frisbee and toss it randomly around the pasture. Every time it lands, take note of what is under the arrow. Add up the observations after 20 or more tosses. (There is a fact sheet for more details and a chart to print and use for this method.)
When you believe you’re ready to seed – and you’re not starting your pasture over from scratch – about a week before seeding you’ll want to overgraze or mow the pasture very short. Any existing vegetation will shade out new seedlings, so minimizing that competition results in the best chance of success.
The spring window to seed is early spring (mid-April to mid-May in cooler regions and mid-March to mid-April in warmer regions), says Penn State Extension – before summer heat sets in. Seedlings need to germinate and establish before it gets too hot and growth slows. The drawbacks of early spring seedings are increased weed pressure and soils potentially being too wet and cold to plant.
A successful seeding has lots of seed-to-soil contact. Seed should be buried no deeper than 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch to allow even moisture all around the seed. That’s why using a planter or a drill is better than broadcasting, but do what you can for seed success.
Once your grass seeds are in the ground, you need to let that pasture rest so the plants can establish themselves. If your animals graze too early, they can rip the plants out by the roots or remove too much leaf area for young plants to recover.
This article focuses specifically on pasture management for equine owners, but it has good advice on how to manage the green stuff for all livestock.
