Harnessing No-Till Planting in Pasture-Based Systems By Russ Wilson

TIONESTA, Pennsylvania:

No-till is often associated with crop farming. There are many ways it can be adapt- ed to a pasture-based system. Many times pastures need to be revitalized, diversified, or completely redone.

There are many reasons you may want to use no-till planting in a pasture-based system.

1. Break cycles of undesirable plants like fescue, Johnsongrass, horse nettle, spotted knap weed, or some other weed. With my experience, over time, they have the tendency to come back.
2. Produce more forage for your livestock. Annual forages are a great way to add grazing days. Although it is an input, it usually costs less then stored feeds.
3. Less compaction from equipment.
4. Greater water infiltration.
5. More microbes due to less soil disturbance.
6. Help increase organic matter.
7. It takes less time and labor.

My first experience with no-till was unbelievable. As many of you know, I was a hard-core conventional farmer and slow to adapt new better practices. When I could not make any money conventionally, I had to try different things. No-till was one of these things.

In Russ Wilson fashion, I sold all my tillage equipment and bought a used no-till corn planter and a new no-till grass drill. We are a small to medium farm of 135 acres with the whole perimeter fenced. We planted about 15 acres of grain every year, corn being one of them. It only took me four hours to prep the soil and plant. That was a huge eye opener to me. When the corn was planted, it was going to be used as grain for the livestock. As my mind started processing the ease and success of no-till planting, I made another leap. We sold the harvesting equipment and started grazing everything. That no-till corn field yielded 614 grazing days to the acre and only cost $35.00 a ton. That monumental success started no-till usage for me on a full scale.

I will tell you up front that no-till without herbicide can be very difficult. If you are trying to establish plants that do not do well with competition like corn or sorghum Sudan-grass, the yields will be very low. However, the cost savings make up for the difficulty.

Where no-till really shines in pasture-based systems is with inter-seeding in existing pastures that are thinning or fixed areas that may have been damaged from the spring break up of mud. If I am trying to redo a pasture, I would normally use a burn down of herbicide and plant into that. After getting the planter calibrated, it is fairly quick and easy to plant. A total redo of annuals before planting back perennial pasture is a great way to break those cycles. If I am planting natives into pastures, I always used this method. You start with a clean slate, so to speak.

Native plantings can be very costly, so a redo is not something you want to do very often. We have a native grass field where the seed alone was over $400.00 an acre. On smaller farms, we need to be productive as soon as possible.

Waiting for a pasture to come into full production on its own can cost money in the long haul. You must do the calculations to see if it would be beneficial for your farm. For us,it was always worth the investment even though it was an input and sometimes a little more costly than we wanted it to be.

Another way we have used no-till is with interseeding to help make a new pasture or thinning pasture more productive. Sometimes it takes a couple years for a new pasture to come into full production. This is an opportunity to help with the production. If interseeding into new pastures, I would use warm-season annuals at half rate. You want enough to bring up production, but not too much to choke out the perennials. I have also used a few annuals and we have had good success inter- seeding into sorghum Sudan-grass, all the millets, and oil seed or gray striped sunflowers.

Existing pastures that are thin- ning is another way to use no-till. I have done a lot of different things with these fields. I have used any- thing from annuals to perennials. I am not a big advocate of frost-seed- ing. I prefer to broadcast those seeds in front of the livestock on the first graze of the year if the soil moisture is good. If I miss that window, no-till drilling is the next best option.

You must be careful with what you seed into the existing pasture. Some plants do not play nice with each other. For example, winter rye has the allopathic toxin that will pre- vent some seeds from germinating. I have also had some issues with orchardgrass as well. Never seen anything in writing, but have had a few failures trying to seed into those orchardgrasses. If you do not have the equipment to do no-till, check with your local conservation districts or equipment dealers. Sometimes, you can rent a drill. If that is not an option check with farmer neighbors. Oftentimes, you can hire them to do the planting or borrow or rent their planter.

Good luck with your no-till adventures and have a great grazing season! 

Russ Wilson owns and manages a 220-acre adaptive grazing system, where livestock are pastured over 300 days yearly. With over 40 years experience, he has learned how proper forage management and species diversity can pay dividends for livestock production and soil health, using a low-input and skillful management approach to make sure the farm delivers profitability. Visit Russ at www.russwilson.net, Facebook, YouTube.