Persistency of plantain and chicory in intensively mowed grasslands

Interest in the addition of herbs to grass-clover mixtures is growing in Belgian agriculture. We compared a grass+clover+plantain+chicory mixture to a grass monoculture and grass+clover under intensive cutting grassland management at several N fertilization levels in two consecutive production years with a wet and a dry summer, respectively. In both years, adding the herbs had no significant effect on dry matter crop yield (DMY) compared to grass+clover. A moderate N fertilization application (75 kg N ha^-1) resulted in the highest share of herbs compared to lower and higher N fertilization. In spring of the third production year, however, the amount of chicory and plantain plants was too low to continue the experiment. Maintaining the herbs in an intensive cutting management is difficult and shows no production advantage compared to grass+clover.