Low-Input Overseeding: Page 4 of 8

by R.L. Dalrymple

Low-Input Planting Techniques and Equipment
Two ways of planting seeds in grass residues include broadcasting and low-input drilling.

Any broadcasting tool from a hand-carried or powered seeder-fertilizer spreader to an airplane works. The result is much the same. Most operators use a common fertilizer spreader, and any good one performs satisfactorily. Drill-box, spinner, and airflow spreaders all work well, but drill-box and airflow spreaders provide the most uniform stands. Fertilizer may be blended with the seed to provide better flow characteristics, some plant nutrition, and low-level starter (pop-up) fertilizer. Blending something with the seed is essential to successfully distribute some bulky seeds. The width of the swath must be controlled so the seed patterns join and fertilizer patterns are as uniform as possible. Power may be a draft animal, ATV (all terrain vehicle), pickup truck, tractor, or self-powered fertilizer spreader (figure 3).

Figure 3. Broadcasting seed and fertilizer with an ATV that can plant 12 to 15 acres an hour with travel, loading, and other management time included. Similar spreaders that cover twice the application width are available and can double the coverage and planting rate. (click photo to enlarge)

Low-input economical drilling is more involved. The drilling must be inexpensive for the equipment and the power to pull it, and used equipment such as no-till drills, stubble mulch drills, and fluted-feed common grain drills is ideal. Older-model no-till drills occasionally are sold for less than $1,000 but usually start around $5,000. You can pay from $1,000 to over $10,000 for a used tractor to pull the drill, depending on your power requirement. Stubble mulch drills can be purchased in the southern wheat belt for less than $1,000. They do an excellent job of overseeding short residue that has not lodged or areas without rocks, stumps, or other large physical obstacles. Fluted-feed common grain drills (wheat drills) can be purchased for $500 or less. They are the real bargain. A pickup or a twenty-horsepower tractor can pull them over most field/pasture terrain, especially if you use a low-power tractor or a pickup truck with mud chains on the drive tires (figures 4 and 5). These drills are best used where there are no large rocks, stumps, or other physical obstacles.

Figure 4. No-till overseeding with relatively inexpensive equipment. This twenty-horsepower, sixty-eight-year-old "fun" tractor and $300 forty-year-old drill were used to plant a rye and fertilizer mixture from the grain box into crabgrass stubble. (click photo to enlarge)

Figure 5. Rye hay production at about 4,500 pounds per acre in the same crabgrass stubble shown in figure 4. (click photo to enlarge)

Figure 6. Single-trip tractor, disk, railroad iron drag, and drill in tandem with a broadcast planter on the back. Excellent stands can be achieved by using this method in bermudagrass residue. (click photo to enlarge)

Figure 7. Tractor, disk, iron drag, and drill tandem technique to produce rye pasture in warm-season annual grass residue, which is crabgrass in this case. (click photo to enlarge)

Figure 8. Rye stands in bermudagrass sod, achieved with a common grain drill. The taller, thicker strips received the essential banded nitrogen-phosphorus fertilizer with seed, while the thin, short rye received none. (click photo to enlarge)

In the early days of low-input overseedings, we did much of it in bermudagrass residue with a disk, homemade iron drag, and old grain drill in a tandem operation (figure 6). Results were very good. The disk scuffed the litter or lightly tilled the soil surface and suppressed the bermudagrass slightly, the drag smoothed the pasture surface somewhat, and the drill placed the seed and fertilizer in a band on and slightly beneath the soil surface. In bermudagrass, bahiagrass, and fescue, this method works well for low-input overseeding with low-cost used equipment.

The disking technique is especially applicable to the perennial bermudagrass, bahiagrass, and fescue sod stands because they can tolerate and recover from it, unlike bunchgrass pastures such as Old World bluestems, weeping lovegrass, kleingrass, and native range grasses.

Disking is also ideal in warm-season annual forage stubble residue of crabgrass (figure 7), cupgrass, broadleaf signalgrass, forage sorghum (sudangrass), millets, warm-season legumes, old field native grass, other annual forages, and carryover winter crop residue such as wheat stubble. This pasture produced 626 pounds of beef per acre from cereal rye planted by disking, rolling, and drilling in tandem, following and preceding a 'Red River' crabgrass pasture double crop. Low-input equipment techniques were used for all forage production.

When a properly managed low-input drilling technique, including banded starter fertilizer, can be used, it sometimes produces earlier, more uniform stands than broadcast planting. However, proper broadcast planting can also provide excellent results, as we have shown, and has many cost and time advantages, especially on areas where surface soil fertility is medium to high.

Fertilizer is important: not just any fertilizer, but the proper one that is banded with the seed to produce a good economical starter-fertilizer response, which is very important on low-phosphorus and acidic soils. We use an 18-46-0 or other primarily nitrogen-phosphorus or complete nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium blend.

When you use a fluted feed drill, it is not imperative to have a special fertilizer box. Simply mix the seed and fertilizer and drill it from the grain box, or put in a layer of seed, a layer of fertilizer, and so on, and they will mix automatically as they flow out of the drill. Empty, clean, wash, and oil the seed box and spouts thoroughly after drilling. More detailed information on using common drills for this planting technique is available (Dalrymple, R. L. and C. Coffey, 1999).

Overseeded winter grasses in southern Oklahoma also need about 100 pounds or more of actual nitrogen as a topdressing to produce well and perform more efficiently.

We have also done much overseeding into bermudagrass and other grass stubble by using only a common grain drill (figure 8). These stands produced 75 percent to over 90 percent that of stands from a high-tech no-till drill if the drilling was properly done.