01/02/11, 01:37 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: MN
Posts: 7,609
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Established alfalfa (a year old or more) plants put a toxin in the soil that kills off it's own seedlings. So it will be a waste of money to try to reseed alfalfa into a field that is growing any old alfalfa plants now. You'd need to kill it off plant something else before reseeding it to alfalfa.
Clover will grow fine, you could broadcast the seed and work it in with the harrow, results would not be perfect but you'd get something.
But lets start at the beginning.
How many acres we talking about?
When was the last time any effort was made to check the ph of the soil, and the nutrients available?
If your soil is typicallu acidic (below 6.5) your plants can't get to the nutrients in the soil, the acid binds them up so the roots don't get them.
Soil ph is most important.
Should you eliminate the alfalfa over time, and no clover, your grasses will be starving for nitrogen, so it is a good idea to keep some legumes as part of the mix. The alfalfa and clover takes N out of the air, and stores excess in the ground for the grasses to use.
Alfalfa especially, and grasses too, will use up a lot phosphorous, and a fair amount of potasium. If this ground has been hayed 'organically' for a long time and no fertilizer added, your crop will get smaller & smaller, and the weeds will get bigger and bigger....
There are products that are organic to fix any of these problems, but you should start out with a soil test to see where you are at. Manure halps a lot, tho it adds too much N to a legume crop; and it may lower the ph some if that is a problem. There are commerial fertilizers that are cheaper to correct any of these problems, but would not meet your organic situation.
To answer your exact question a little better:
Grasses are pretty easy to add with spot broadcast seeding. You can do a lot with a 5 gal bucket and tossing by hand or a hand seeder or a lawn seeder - if we are talking a few acres or less. The harrow will help work the seeds in - would harrow a couple times to rough up the ground, then harrow after the seed spreading to throw a tad of dirt on the seeds, and you'd want to hope for a reainy spell after you 'plant' it this way. Most grass seeds like to be very shallow, 1/2 inch deep or less. And they like to grow in cool damp conditions. Overseeding them into exsisting hayfield requires some simple luck - if the weeds or old grass grows rapidly or if it turns very dry the new seedlings can die off, but that is luck of the draw....
Many times existing grasses can really be spruced up with proper cutting, which your hay deal should be doing - so I supect you have a bad ph or fertility issue that needs to be fixed?
--->Paul
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