Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Farm & Home News

Many producers throughout the county plant cool season annuals each fall in hopes of a good stand to enable them to cut back on hay feeding and extend their stock's grazing season. In an effort to help answer the common question "What variety of ryegrass is the best?"

The data from our winter annuals demonstration plot here in Nevada County provided the following findings: four varieties of ryegrass, one wheat and two varieties of oats were planted on October 13, 2000 on Kevin Sanford's farm. Most ryegrass emerged in 10 days. The seeds were drilled at the following rates: ryegrass - 25 pounds per acre; wheat - 120 pounds per acre; and oats - 120 pounds per acre. The ground was hard, as is typical during that time of the year and some of the oats and wheat did not get into the ground very good due to the size of the seed and difficulty of cutting the ground.

Each variety was planted side by side and each was fertilized according to soil test. The yields were collected on April 3 and then again on May 4.

When we look at the yield in this demonstration it is important to remember that this was not a research plot and information collected is not research based. However, the basic information does reflect and support what research tells us. For example, wheat yielded over twice what ryegrass did in early production (from the April 3rd cutting). All of the ryegrass staying somewhat comparable with each other. (Gulf and Marshall varieties came out on top with this cutting, followed by Passerel and Ribeye.)

The May 4th cutting resulting with just the opposite findings. The rye grasses were the high yielding annuals with the wheat not cut, because it was no longer the dominant species in the plot. From the May 4th cutting all of the rye grasses were very close to one another in yield.

Due to early production of wheat we might consider this as a cool season annual to plant over bermuda in order to allow for earlier release of the bermudagrass in the spring. If we are not as concerned with our early spring bermudagrass production, then ryegrass should work great, but will still need to be grazed short or mowed in order to allow other species to begin growing in the spring.