New varieties of perennial grass can help restore pastures’ productivity within a season or two, says a soil
salinity researcher.
One-third of prairie land has high enough levels of salt to cause problems, said Agriculture Canada research scientist Harold Steppuhn.
“It’s not necessarily uppermost or the highest priority on producers’ minds, but it’s something they’re always trying to make better,” he said.
High saline fields typically do poorly and often show white patches.
Steppuhn said the best way to deal with the problem is to plant a crop, which pushes salt deposits deeper into the soil.
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“As something grows in that field, it ameliorates it but it (salinity) doesn’t go away,” he said.
The Saskatchewan Forage Council has produced a guide that provides a list of salt tolerant grasses that can help improve the condition of high- salt land and restore grass yield and quality.
They include green wheatgrass and AC Saltlander and newHy hybrid wheatgrass, created through a cross of quackgrass and bluebunch wheatgrass. Tall wheatgrass also emerges and survives at high salinity levels but is coarse and less palatable to cattle.
Steppuhn recommended a forage production guide for guidance on how to seed these grasses.
“Saline ground requires a generous amount of seed.”
With the right growing and weather conditions and in the absence of gopher problems experienced in Saskatche-wan’s southwest last year, the grass can establish in the first year and be productive in the second year.
Producers’ many calls regarding how to manage saline fields led to the development of the guide, said Janet Bruynooghe, executive director of the Saskatchewan Forage Council.
“Salinity and reclamation is an important management issue for producers,” she said.
The pamphlet provides an overview of saline soil and its effects on plant growth and presents the research conducted on new salt tolerant varieties.
The guide was created with support from the council, Agriculture Canada and Saskatchewan Agriculture.
Copies of The Revegetation of Saline Soils Using Salt Tolerant Grasses are available at www.saskforage.ca or by calling 966-2148.
