This pasture mix of white clover, rye grass and chickory is encouraging, in that it's not a monoculture, nor a biculture, but a rudimentary polyculture - there are three species in there!
Hebal ley can have far more species than this one I found at West Plains - the first I read of had a mix of 28 different grasses and broadleafed plants such as the chickory shown here, plantain, sheep's sorrel, yarrow and so on.
I'm on the lookout now for a better example than this but quite frankly, I'm not very optimistic about finding one. The trend is toward a single grass species. Why that doesn't ring alarm bells amongst the dairy fraternity, I struggle to understand.
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We have sown some plantain. i haven't quite mastered the art of managing the grazing so that it survives. Sheep will eat it out on a winter rotation. Seems to do best when rotationally grazed with cattle. Even then you have to be careful in winter. On the other hand I have seen it germinate and grow in areas where I have been feeding hay with plantain seed heads in it.
Yeah it's the grazing that presents the difficulty FBB. It's so much easier managing these 'guilds' when there's nothing eating them out (like the understorey in my orchard)!
Chickory is another that's hard to keep rolling on as it's so tasty. I've seen where strips of pasture are electric-fenced off so that the plants can mature and seed but those seeds still need to be sown back into the main field. Sabatical fallow presents an opportunity to get the deep rooted perenials established where constant grazing will kill them off at the end of the first year.
I've collected several types of 'wild'plantain and have them growing everywhere I can - they love gravel paths and can get big and lush if they are in a place they like. There are some really nice edible 'plantains' that we are cultivating and some great 'docks' as well which makes me think that I've not seen any of those being used in a ley...
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