We make a lot of hay out of having a traditional hay meadow. Which means we get a modest stipend from Brussels to not cut / graze between 15 Apr and 01 Jul in any year. Which means we get very little hay because we are unmanaging our four largest fields to promote species other than Lolium perenne = perennial rye-grass. This un-grazing regime means that by the 1st of July the grass (and all the other trad meadow species) is too long for sheep to eat . . . but long enough to give a painful cut between the hoof-claws. Sooo we contract to have the grass cut and baled . . . and sold.
Several years ago we foolishly agreed to allow the contractor to store the wrapped bales in the top corner of the Home Field until they were needed during the winter. When these bales were, in due course, loaded onto a trailer and carted off site, the ground was winter-wet and the tractor skidded about leaving troughs and ruts deep enough to hide a sleeping dog. Contractor promised to make good but never did; so that corner was too buckety to mow the following year, and the next year, and the next. Succession happened: nettles and brambles got footing, a hazel bush up-sprouted and the ruts were covered over with thatch to create a trip, ankle-turn and fall hazard.
One of the several tasks which Séan carried out was "knocking the thatch" in the haggard, leaving large clots of cut grass-and-weeds to mulch in. In early July it was a bit early for grass-seed, but I found that dumping the drying clots into a wheelbarrow winnowed out a lot of grass-seed and eventually I had a bucket-full of bio-diverse grass-seed [as L] which I broadcast out to reseed the was-bucketty field corner. My seed weighed light because it was contaminated with stalks, husks, awns and other not-seed grass parts. But I finished up with 11 lt = 600g. Over the next several weeks I stripped off almost as much again from clumps of grass around the field edges. This was [probably, my grass chops are pretty weak nowadays] mostly Yorkshire fog Holcus lanatus which Hubbard damns with faint praise: regarded as a weed, but when young it has some value for grazing, especially on poor soils unsuitable for more desirable grasses.
It's nice that the area to treat was small ~600sq.m. which is 6% of a hectare or 15% of an acre. Teagasc advises that meadows should be re-seeded at 12.5kg / acre which must be one reason why that is the standard bag-size at the creamery. Calculation suggests that we need a bit under 2kg of seed for our modest corner. Also note that Teagasc advice also recommends that the field is "burned off" with round-up as part of the re-seeding process: damn the diversity full ryegrass ahead!!
In early August The Beloved and I were in a garden centre: a place I never go on my own. I thought it would do no harm if I bought a small sack of lawn-seed because, whatever about diversity, at least the stuff was guaranteed to sprout. It was also appealing that at 1.75kg, it weighed exactly what was required according to my calculations. I feel, it's a bit like me adding a bit fresh yeast to my sourdough: not exactly a cheat but not a purists solution either. That was lurried out on top of my mixed bucket-o-seed and 'raked in'. Raking in turns up stones and these have been picked out to fill the tuthree feed-sacks visible in the picture above.
Unsurprisingly, given that we missed out the RoundUp step, the rotavated lumps are now (a month later) sprouting up with fresh grass quite independent of my saved and bought seed. Although it is hard to swear that none of the seed has sprouted. A few nice showers in mid-August for sure helped bring things along. I hope and believe that the strewn seed will tilt the process towards productive grass without becoming a dreary mono-culture. The watch-word is 'good enough' - almost always a better outcome than 'perfect'.
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