Fertilizing and Irrigating Native Grass

[gwf]

I am interested in hearing from anyone that has had any experience with irrigating and fertilizing native short grass pasture in Southern Alberta.

[gopher]

I would suggest that irrigating native short grass may not give you the results one would expect. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish such as improved pasture or creating hay land. I have irrigated native grass in the past and found with lots of irrigation and ample fertilizer it still only produced a small hay crop. It will improve the capacity of the pasture in terms of AUM but native grass usually matures early giving you a short grazing season. I felt that with the cost of irrigation and fertilizer the land could produce more so I took out the native grass and seeded a blend of grasses that were more suitable to irrigation and provided a much longer grazing season. If your new to irrigation it may be worth your while checking with Alberta Ag - Irrigation Div. regarding your soil type and the amount of water you need to apply.

[cowman]

I am not in southern Alberta but I do own a quarter of "buffalo grass" or "prairie wool". Now I won't go into a long tirade about this pasture but only comment on my experience. One year, having some fertilizer left over, we spread it on our native grass. The results were very good! Probably paid us more than the cost!... which is pretty good considering a lot of tmes I wonder if we would be better to take our money out and burnt it in regards to fertilizer!!!!!!Especially on forages!!!

[smcgrath76]

Just a quick thought on this...
Generally research has shown that it is not cost effective to fertilize native grass, and that it generally is cost effective (depending on rainfall) to fertilize tame pastures. I am not aware however of any studies that have looked at fertilization in conjunction with irrigation.
As a though, it is also important to consider what effect fertilization may have on species composition of your pasture. That is what grasses grow there now, and what grasses may invade, or be removed from the stand due to rapidly changing soil fertility.
There was some neat work done at the U of S several years ago by R.T. Coupland that looked at the productivity of native vs. non-native stands. He found conclusively that if left alone to reach equilibrium (planted and not reseeded, etc.) that native stands outperformed tame grasses. The reason we as farm managers see tame grasses outperform native grasses is that by breaking the ground to seed, we release stored nitrogen, which gives the crop a boost so to speak.