To late to spray weeds in pastures?

[twstanley]

I am kind of kicking myself for not spraying the pastures earlier this year, but am considering doing it now. Any opinions on how well this well work? It seems like as the summer has progressed, more weeds have been showing up. I sprayed last spring, maybe I killed off the cool season weeds but didn't get the hot season ones, does that make any sense? I have one of those atv sprayers and some 2-4-d ( broadleaf weed killer ) sitting in the garage, its just a matter of putting the sprayer on the gator, filling the tank and getting r done so to speak.

Any thoughts on if this will help? I know it matters what weeds they are but I really don't know the names of them, other than a lot of what I think of as queen annes lace.

[bczoom]

Can't speak for your pastures but I just did the same thing to my yard last Friday (using Ortho's Weed-B-Gone). It takes a few days but I can see most of the weeds are wilting.

Just walked out and checked the Queen Ann's Lace. The heads have drooped (upside down) but still have their color (no yellowing).

[Adron]

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Just walked out and checked the Queen Ann's Lace. The heads have drooped (upside down) but still have their color (no yellowing).

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Yeah, mine too but it is because of 100+ temperature and no rain. Course everything else is about the same.

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[Pat]

It would be better if you could catch the weeds during a period of decent growth such as a few days after a rain. That will give better results. You aren't too late if the seeds havent matured. The weeds will have already stolen your moisture, nutrients, and sunlight but there is a benefit to spraying themand that is to stop seed production for fewer weeds next year.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[twstanley]

We are expecting rain tonight and tomorrow, the temperatures are supposed to be down some over the next week as well.

Maybe I will play hookie from work on Wednesday and spray the pastures...I can move the stock up to the pastures close to the road so I can spray about 7 of our 10 acres ( 1 acre being the area around the house that we have for a lawn so it doesn't need spraying ).

- Tim

[icandoanything]

Well, if you've waited until there are seed heads or they have gone to seed, I would think your SOL, kinda. Pat has said it pretty good. You can bush hog the pastures and make them look pretty again and if any weeds grow again, wait until they are about 4" to 6" high and then spray. Don't know if that will help for next year, but your pastures will look good. Any time you can knock down the weeds at any time, it's been my experience, you give the grass a better chance of growing without the weeds taking any moisture from the grass, if that makes any sense.

Good Luck
Dick

P.S.- heres a few good links:

http://www.weedalert.com/weed_pages/wa_groundsel.htm

http://forages.tamu.edu/weeds.html

[twstanley]

We haven't let any of them get big enough to produce seed heads, we have been brush hogging it regularly.

I just want to see more grass and less weeds.

[Pat]

Tim, You need to do whatever treats weeds and grass differently, where you help the grass and harm the weeds. This can be chemical intervention (spraying) but can take other forms as well. Tall weeds will never make seed if they are mowed early enough. Unfortunately weed seeds can lie dormant in the soil for years before sprouting so there isn't any simple one time inexpensive cure.

You should get a soil analysis. Your extensiion agent can tell you how to take the samples and probably loan you the equipement as well. It isn't expensive and puts you in the position of operating with knowledge instead of just guessing or asking any collection of "good-ole-boys" here or elsewhere. Once you know your soils condition, you can adjust it by the economical addition of ammendments to maximize the plant health of whtever grass it is that you are trying to have compete with the weeds. You can't just try to attack weeds. You have to decide what you do want to grow, not just what you don't want and then support the good guys and attack the bad guys. If all you want is to stop weeds then you can make the whole area infertile and NOTHING will grow... VOILA NO WEEDS!

If you ballance and ammend your soil to maximize the growth of the desired ground cover (grass?) that will help it out compete the weeds. Nature will tend to fill any available biological nitch. If you kill out some species of weeds other species will take their place. You want your grass(es) to be the heir to the vacated nitches not other weeds.

Get your soil healthy for a long term satisfactory weed control program. This will allow the grass to make advances when you retard some of the weeds by whatever means, spraying, mowing, burning.

Ahh BURNING. By all means talk to your extension agent about controlled burns. You might want to burn this fall but more likely next spring. If you stop mowing NOW and let fuel accumulate you might get a decent burn next spring. If you have a really bad weed problen you might need to avoid all mowing of the effected area for the wholle year after a burn to grow enough fuel to support another decent burn. Most grasses survive a controlled burn just fine and come back really well, better than if you didn't burn.

Some weed seeds have tough husks that sprout better after a fire and it could take a few years to have all those germinate, even with a few fires. Between burning and pre-emergent sprays you should be able to severely reduce your weed populaltion
-------------------- IF ---------------
the soil is optimized to support the grass so it can fill the void vacated by the missing weeds. Just killing weeds as your only turf management strategy is like trying to dig a hole in water. No matter how fast you shovel, the water just fills the hole as soon as you stop.

I have problems with two exotic species that were both introduced by Government programs (we are from the Government and we are herre to help you) One is Ceresea Lespideza (sp?) and the other is Easter Red Cedar. Now we are spending big bucks and lots of efforts to get rid of the Ceresea (AKA poor man's alfalfa) It is hardy, has bullet proof seeds, and the cows don't like it after it gets very big as it tastes bad from the concentrating tannins. The cedars were introduced to be windbreaks, I believe. Anyway the Government now subsidizes their removal/destructioin as they are taking over lots of grass land.

We also are plagued by persimmon trees that spread quickly and are hard to kill. Brush hogging doesn't often kill them and frequently spraying doesn't either. Sprays cause their leaves to drop off, taking the spray with them and protecting the actual plant from the poison, then new leaves come out and they thrive. There are chemical controls that work but are more labor intensive and costly and require special application permits. At least the persimmons are a natural problem not introduced by a well intentioned but misinformed Government.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat (AKA the weed rancher) [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[twstanley]

Thanks for the response, Pat.

I mixed up some 2,4-D and sprayed the back 6 acres last Wednesday when it was nice and cool out. So far the weeds look like they have wilted a bit, but haven't turned yellow and fallen over as I remember them doing from last time.

I think I might have missed the right set of adjustments and ground speed this time, I thought I remembered it correctly but I am wondering if I put the weed killer on to thin. I was using one of the FIMCO boom atv sprayers with the 25 gallon tanks on the back of our Gator. I put 1/2 gallon of weed killer in 25 gallons of water, adjusted for 25 psi with the nozzles on and drove 5 mpg as shown by the handheld gps.

I will have to try and dig out the FIMCO leaflet that came with the sprayer and recheck my settings, I either didn't put enough weed killer in, didn't have the psi high enough, or I drove to fast.

So it has had some effect, but not as much as I had hoped. I do plan on doing some soil tests this fall and fertilizing/ph balancing as needed.

[Pat]

Tim, With luck you may yet get a good kill yet. I made a miscalculation with some weed killer last month (hand sprayer not my big pasture spray rig) Man oh man did the weeds wilt down and croak fast! Of course I was WAY overstrength on the mix which is an expensive error with larger volumes.

I read the specs on the water filter for the icemaker water dispenser on our new Sears Kenmore frige and 2-4-D was one of the things it removes.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]