[DandG]

Hi all,
We have just viewed the small holding we intend to buy. It's 3 acres but they have not been looked after and loads of reeds have grown, the grass coming through looks fine, so it seems a bit over the top to plough and re seed it, but I know very little, so my question is, what would be the best way to get rid of these reeds and bring the land up to scratch?

[robert waddell]

pics would help before saying one thing or another

[Fleecewife]

Are they reeds or rushes?  Rushes usually mean wet, acid conditions and in my mind are associated with sheep ticks  the bane of many a camping holiday    Reeds are more of a water edge plant. Rushes can be harvested like hay and used as bedding.  It might be that to get rid of rushes you would have to address the acidity and poor drainage first, but as Lillian says - pics please so we know excatly what we are talking about

[DandG]

I only took a small vidio with my digital camera, so if anyone knows how I can crop a pic out of the vid I will then post it
Cheers
Geoff

[doganjo]

Put your video on photobucket then post a link in a normal message on here.

[DandG]

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion dogandjo, here is the link
http://s1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee495/geoffroberts13/

Hope it works ok and I suspect it is Rush not reeds

[Fleecewife]

Yes thats rush - and what a lot you have    Someone better at dealing with it than me will come along.  It looks as if it needs mowing, raking to get out the thatch of dead vegetation and possibly liming.  What does everyone else think? Drainage? - moledrain?

[SallyintNorth]

'Reshes' we call them up here, and very valuable they are as shelter for lambs, and to hold wet ground together so that stock, we and machinery can travel.

But when they get too thick we top them (don't have to harvest the stems here, the wind deals with that for us!)  Sometimes we need to weed-wipe.  The RSPB know a lot about managing resh - see http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/farming/advice/details.aspx?id=204408

[DandG]

Thanks for the advice Fleecewife, and that think was very interesting Sallintnorth, so thanks again. Our dream is to run a good small holding with animal treatment the best we can give, so if we are lucky enough to sell our place in Wales and buy it, we would try topping it in August as suggested in the link.
Thanks again
Geoff and Dee

[robert waddell]

we call them threshes but all the same  cut them right down to the ground either strimmer with blade or tractor and mower the ones you have could be used for bedding or thatching (they used them like this in the old days) when dried the new growth can be grazed if you have plenty of stock (cows sheep) once the dead material has been removed you can spray them to eliminate cant remember what the chemical is called
as others have said drainage could be done to eliminate also and not forgetting ploughing and reseeding BUT THE WILL COME BACK if the field is wet poorly drained overstocked when wet and left alone HTH

[tazbabe]

2yrs ago ours looked like that. we've had them topped twice, and have grazed with a variety of beasts. horses, sheep and calfs.

we now have native ponies on the field, and they eat them, problem solved!

[DandG]

Thanks for the advice Lillian, one of the Paddocks we will strim them right down and put pigs on it, been told the pigs will get down and eat the root?, just posting on one of the Irish forums heard one of the locals got his land ploughed and re-seeded for 140 euro an acre, this sounds like great value to me and with us being blow ins as the Irish would call us, be a good time to make handy local new friends

[shep53]

In ARGYLL rushes and sedges are as big a problem as bracken, do not believe that they only grow in wet conditions each plant can produce a million seeds and will settle any where i have them on knolls that burn in a dry summer.   Ploughing will only give the seeds new ground to germinate, you need to kill the plants for 2 to 3yrs before ploughing . Cutting a couple of times ayear has stunted them but they still remain ( i have some in my lawn cut fortnightly still there. Spraying by tractor and quad with MCPA OR 2-4D stunted but stiill there.    For me i would take a small spade and some plastic bags, dig small test holes in  5 or 6 places to see the soil stucture and how wet ,take soil from each hole into a plastic bag mixing together and keeping about 2 kg send off to a lab for analysis, the ph is probably  very low. I would cut and remove all vegitation , graze the grass to keep it low and wait for the rushes to regrow then use a weed wiper (contractor ) with glyphosate, this is the method i now use with great success, young plants will appear next year so repeat . Correct ph with lime and drain any wet areas. Pigs can do the job  but you need to lift and burn the root balls

[DandG]

Thanks for a great reply Shep, I will have to get stuck in, looks like a lot of hard work ahead but it will be worth it in the end.
Cheers
Geoff

[cooper956]

it depends what you want to do the only way to get rid compleatly is to drain the frild well and top heavely but that wount kill them in a ideal world i would drain it top its spray it off plough and reseed it with some lime too  i have some feild with half the amount of rush in them and although topping as thined them out the come back very quickly.