Vineyard inter-row planting

Inter-row planting with native grasses in horticulture

Inter-row management for many horticultural crops represents a significant cost item, both through obvious costs such as mowing, and through less obvious costs such as competition with the growing crop for water and nutrients. For this reason many growers have opted to either sow short-term crops in the inter-row or alternatively to leave it bare. These treatments have management problems with the cost of sowing the short-term crop on the one hand and the erosion and heat-related losses on the other.

Sowing a native grass inter-row could solve a number of these issues at one time. If correctly chosen for the location it is possible to find a perennial grass cover that is:

• Non-competitive with the vine or tree crop at the time when it is using water;
• Not so tall as to require constant mowing;
• Highly persistent despite the shading and competition from the crop; and
• Tolerant of moderate traffic during the harvest period.

The drought tolerance attribute of most native grasses can provide a persistent ground cover when the vines or other crops are being irrigated using drip irrigation. If correctly chosen they will be able to withstand the summer drought and heat and will resume growth when water becomes available through natural rainfall.

Some of the grasses are highly shade tolerant and capable of growing under heavy shade or patchy light. In this case grasses such as Griffin weeping grass are able to establish when the trees or vines have lost their leaves over winter and will have a reasonable cover by the time the trees resume foliage in spring. In other cases where a summer growing cover is preferred then a grass such as redgrass can be quite persistent under heavy shade and will provide a relatively low growing grass cover (especially after its first year of more vigorous growth)

These grasses are capable of tolerating traffic after they have established and while they are not able to tolerate heavy sports usage they are more than able to tolerate the occasional farm vehicle.

Sometimes horticultural managers want to remove excess water from a regularly-saturated profile. In these cases it is possible to use a larger native grass that will be more competitive with the crops for the available water supply and will aid in lowering the water table. In effect it is possible, by clever selection of species, to achieve a lot of positive results with the use of native grasses in the inter-row between crops of trees or vines.

Some examples:

• In Sunbury, Victoria the Goona Warra Vineyard has several rows of Weeping grass (Microlaena stipoides) as its inter-row. This is a naturally occurring stand of weepinggrass and provides an ideal surface for low maintenance between the rows. These rows require about 1/3 of the mowing of the adjacent rows which are dominated by introduced grasses. They are fine and smooth with very few weeds.


• An agroforest in Buxton, Victoria also has an excellent cover of Weeping grass between its rows. These are grazed each year by sheep with no damage to the trees providing a reliable pasture which benefits the sheep, the trees and the management.


• In Virginia, South Australia, wallaby grass has been used to lower the water table in a vineyard. The intention here was to remove the salt from the soil by lowering the water table through the use of deep-rooted, larger growing wallaby grass types.