Low Cost Pasture Improvement/Poor Man's Pasture
Our soil here in NW Lower Michigan is very sandy so
does not hold moisture or nutrients. The common advice we were given was
to add many amendments with the first one being lime. Grass doesn't
grow well in acid soil and since this once was a pine plantation, we
took that advice to heart. We had 7 tons of lime delivered and spread
most of it...by hand. We ignored the rest of the amendment advice
because it would be very expensive and the soil is so light that there
isn't the structure to hold the expensive nutrients in place. What our
soil is very successful at growing is weeds...spotted knapweed, St
John's wort, hoary alyssum, horsemint...but very little grass.
We allowed our goats and later our sheep to overgraze the weeds and that weakened the weed's ability to thrive and out-compete the grass.
We noticed that the places we fed hay to the dairy goats grew grass in the spring from the wasted hay. The seed fell through to the ground below and sprouted in the spring. The hay offered protection from damaging sun, drought and built the soil up as it decomposed thus improving the structure. In the early spring and fall when there wasn't much to graze we pulled hay out to a different spot each day and fed on clean ground. Goats don't go far from the barn in winter so they're fed in the same place and not much got improved during winter time feeding. When we switched over to sheep, everything changed. Our sheep rarely go in the barn and I can drag them a tarp full of hay onto clean snow daily. Now we can work on an area from fall through early spring and see a faster improvement. In spring, we keep them off the recently "improved" area so the grass can grow.
Annie pens the sheep before I pull the hay out or there would be chaos and hungry sheep would knock me down. I cannot drag the tarp very far with sheep standing on it either.
The pictures below illustrate the improvement. The first picture on the left shows the type of vegetation our poor soil supports. How the hay is distributed is shown on the left.
We allowed our goats and later our sheep to overgraze the weeds and that weakened the weed's ability to thrive and out-compete the grass.
We noticed that the places we fed hay to the dairy goats grew grass in the spring from the wasted hay. The seed fell through to the ground below and sprouted in the spring. The hay offered protection from damaging sun, drought and built the soil up as it decomposed thus improving the structure. In the early spring and fall when there wasn't much to graze we pulled hay out to a different spot each day and fed on clean ground. Goats don't go far from the barn in winter so they're fed in the same place and not much got improved during winter time feeding. When we switched over to sheep, everything changed. Our sheep rarely go in the barn and I can drag them a tarp full of hay onto clean snow daily. Now we can work on an area from fall through early spring and see a faster improvement. In spring, we keep them off the recently "improved" area so the grass can grow.
Annie pens the sheep before I pull the hay out or there would be chaos and hungry sheep would knock me down. I cannot drag the tarp very far with sheep standing on it either.
The pictures below illustrate the improvement. The first picture on the left shows the type of vegetation our poor soil supports. How the hay is distributed is shown on the left.
SUCCESS
After several years of winter feeding, we have GRASS!
