Natural Sequence Farming

Hi hoping someone can advise me. I have about 100 acres near Tarana, NSW . The property has been occassionally stocked over the past five years but mainly left alone. The ground is covered with mainly summer grasses. I really don't know what to plant or do to the soil to improve it. It is grainite country and fairly flat. Should I be sowing something this spring?

What are your plans for the block? Animals? What type

I haven't yet decided I really just want to get the paddocks in some order before I do anything interms of grazinf or cropping.

Just a quick post.

Ok, first thing you do is figure out a bit more about what grasses you actually have, the area you're in has what are known as "summer dominated pastures" which means you get far more growth in summer than winter (which is fairly typical across most of Australia).

Go to : http://www.pasturesfromspace.csiro.au/m ... ation=East, press "chart shire pgr for 2010", select your LGA and it'll give you an idea of what your growth rates are, for the Bathurst LGA the average growth rate in summer is around 30kg/ha/day, winter about 10

From there check out the MLA site which gives a grazing calculator: http://www.mla.com.au/Publications-tool ... calculator

This will give you a rough guide on what your carrying capacity is, in summer your capacity is higher, in winter lower so you have to decide if you want to feed your stock over winter or sell off excess. You could plant winter grasses but while their quality is generally better they produce much less bulk. What you really need to aim for is a mix of both, summer (or tropicals) produce heaps of growth in summer, very little in winter and vice versa with the winter grasses so diversity is what you want.

NSW DPI website (finally) has some good info on native pastures, this link should point you in the right direction.

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/f ... e-pastures