Herbs in high producing organic grasslands – effect of management

Summary

In many organic grasslands herbs are established due to their expected beneficial properties for nutritive value and biodiversity. However, knowledge about grassland herbs is limited. Three mixtures were therefore established at different grazing/cutting and fertilization managements to examine the growth potential and feeding value. The competitiveness of the different species varied greatly. Chicory, plantain and caraway were competitive in mixtures with traditional grassland species. Lotus and salad burnet were weak competitors and chervil and sainfoin were very weak. The feeding value was also highly variable. Caraway had high digestibility of organic matter, also compared with the traditional grassland species, whereas plantain and salad burnet had lowest digestibility. The management, grazing, cutting, slurry and sward age, affected the proportion of the herb species. The proportion of caraway increased at cutting, slurry application and sward age. The proportion of plantain also increased at cutting but decreased at slurry application and sward age. The proportion of chicory increased with slurry application and decreased with sward age independently of cutting/grazing. The experiment showed that inclusion of herbs in the sward increased the biodiversity, made the herbage mass more diverse without affecting the dry matter yield.