HOW TO PLANT BRACHIARIA GRASS

A number of my Facebook friends have collected Brachiaria seeds from me. I promised that I will make a post on how to plant it. Here it is.

TIME:

The best time to plant the seeds is when the rains are established. Now is the right time for most places. If you are irrigating, you can decide to plant anytime.

LAND

Make sure you choose a dry, loose and humus-rich soil for planting. Do not plant the grass in waterlogged soil; if you do, the growth will be very poor and a waste of time.

MANURE

In most cases, you need to spread some manure (cow or chicken) on the soil before or after ploughing but definitely before harrowing. Later, immediately after the first weeding, you will need to apply NPK fertilizer, then UREA when it is about a ½ meter high. In any case, yellowing of grass tells you that the soil is poor in nitrogen and, in that case, you need to quickly replenish it with N in form of UREA or, better still, chicken manure. Cow dung manure should be avoided at this level because it will introduce fresh weeds into what will be now a clean, lush pasture.

LAND PREPARATION

1. Use herbicide to rid the land of all weeds. To achieve this, you need a very high concentration. Last year I used 5 litres of “Force Up” glyphosate per hectare. And it rid the soil immediately even of the most notorious weeds.
2. After 5 days of herbicide application, the weeds will become dead brown and it will be time to plough it thoroughly.
3. Harrow the ploughed land very well, twice or thrice, until when all clogs have disappeared. Now you are ready to start planting.

PLANTING

When you are ready to plant, follow the following steps:

1. The seeds you have collected may need to be mixed with sand or any soil to ensure easy application. So mix them at 1:2 seed-to-sand ratio.
2. Use sticks to draw parallel rows, as done for vegetable seeds, which are 12 inch apart throughout the plot. Better do this in portions and repeating it as the planting progresses until the whole farm is covered.
3. When a fair number of the rows are drawn, some of the labourers can start planting while others continue to draw the shallow rows. Hold a handful of the seed-soil mixture and drop it continuously in the rows as you walk their length. Thereafter, draw your feet lightly over the rows to give a light cover over the planted seeds.
4. Planting in rows is necessary because it allows you to weed fast with small hoes. However, you can broadcast the seeds as done for rice but it means you will only pick the weeds. Though faster at planting, picking the weeds will be more expensive than hoeing them.

GERMINATION

After five days the seeds will start to germinate. After a week, you will recognize the grass by the rows that will become visible.

WEEDING AND FERTILIZER APPLICATION

Use small hoes to weed the plot after a month of planting or whenever it is necessary. This depends on how well you prepared your soil. I doubt if a selective herbicide (2,4 Di-Chlorophenoxy-acetic acid) would be used effectively instead. It may burn the pasture and retard its growth and leave grass weeds unscathed, though it may be many times cheaper and faster.

GROWTH

Brachiaria grows very fast. In 60 days, it can reach 1 meter high and if it is in an open field exposed to wind or torrential rains it will lodge severely. At this level you cannot help but visit the farm every evening and enjoy the compact, lush, green pasture.

HARVESTING SEEDS

Towards the end of the raining season, about four months after planting, the seeds will be ready for harvesting. You will notice that they will become full and start to drop on their own. Harvest them using a sickle into bags and dry them for use when you plant another plot next year.

You do not need to plant the same plot next year for possibly 50 years or more once you continue to weed it and replenish the N using chicken droppings and inorganic fertilizers. Every year the grass will grow afresh, on its own. Just weed, fertilize and harvest it annually. The grass in the picture is a regrowth from the previous year.

HARVESTING HAY

Two or three weeks after the last rain, harvest the grass using a tractor mower which will cut it into bits palatable to the cattle. If you use a sickle, it means you have to cut it again into small bits and pieces. Cattle do not eat long dry grasses easily.

Allow the mowed grass to dry for two days in sunny weather before packing it and baling it into the sizes of your wish.

Do not allow heavy grazing of the field during the rainy or dry season.

STORAGE

Store the green hay under shade or in a store where it will not be exposed to direct sunlight that will deplete it of N and turn it brown.

DISTRIBUTE THE SEEDS TO OTHER NIGERIANS PLEASE

As you will realize, the seeds you have harvested will be too much for your use next year. Please distribute it among other Nigerians, for free if possible, such that the gospel will spread. If we continue the practice, very soon the grass will be all over the country and it will go a long way in solving the scarcity of animal roughage during the dry season as well as provide many paddocks for cattle to feed on during the raining season. It will take us a step closer to migration-free animal husbandry and more peace shall come to Nigeria.

Thank you.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Present regrowth of the Brachiaria grass I planted last year.