Restoring Pastures

[cswilson]

The best animal to clear up thistle with is horses-they love it. The oldtimers uised to cut heads off during a rain storm to control it. All i know is if you hobble a horse out in a meadow with thistles he'll hop over there and start grazing them. We cleared one bad patch also by just totally resting a pasture. It was droughty and we had no water there so were unable to graze it that year-this is a peatmoss pasture no less so guess how wet it usually is. I think alot of thistle troubles on our native pastures up north is grazing too early in spring we hardly ever go into them much before end of June-grass sometimes gets a bit rank but dry potatoes are better than no potatoes.

[cowman]

Rsmith: Foxtail usually indicates akali. I have found a very effective means of changing that around is bed your cows there! It is not a quick fix but it is fairly permanent! In other words get some real organic matter on it and your problem will be eventually solved!
Now I hope people don't jump all over me if I suggest a chemical solution...especially concerning Canada thistle?
Graze-On! Good stuff!
It isn't cheap! $21/acre, but it gives you three years of control and it kills the babies as well as the adults! Also excellent control of pasture sage and absinthe.new appreciation for "living better
If you ever try it, you'll get a whole chemically"! This is a very effective product.
Also Rsmith: MCPA is a very effective killer of tall buttercup...before it blooms. Afterwards it is sort of a waste...still will hurt it but won't go for the knock-out punch! Graze-On will smoke it, during flower, and then kill any seedlings the next couple of years, and there goes your buttercup problem!

[cowman]

Sorry cowman I'll have to jump all over you with those nasty words about chemical. Short term fix. What about our kids. Some better solutions suggested on this thread. I know we are in hard times but profit from short term chemical solutions don't cut it on our farm.

[nerves]

that is interesting cowman but I have also heard that it wipes out clover. Clover is one plant that grows and reseeds itself in our area extremly well. If grazed, to help with the plants growth I have seen it in old pastures without fertilizer as tall as 2 feet and rank. Clover also puts nitrogen back into the soil. So it is the backbone of our pastures fertility. We have also through rotational grazing got clover growing in swamp land were there was only sedge grass growing before. Most of our weeds are in areas were the bush meets the fields and in some spots have drifted it the trees. Cowman is there anything out there that will not kill clover or trees just thistle and buttercup? cswilson I like the horse idea we have about 12 running around here and they do eat thistles at certain stages. But we would need about 40 more to do the job I don"t think I have the patience for 50 the little herd of 12 tests me enough.

[cswilson]

nerves-a little bit of tape fencing and your 12 horses could do some good in a rainstorm.As for the chemicals haven't used any for 15 years-don't miss it. We never spray for hoppers amnd i bet we got 10,000 gulls on our pasture but I guess somebody's got to keep Dow Elanco going.

[cowman]

Well I will agree to a certain extent that we need to limit chemicals, but they can be an effective way of cleaning up a problem. And that is very true about killing the clover and the trees. No spray yet that will kill the thistles and buttercup and not get the clover.
However I have seen some really impressive results with a wick sprayer and roundup on thistles. Very cheap control, I believe about $4.50/acre. Didn't hurt the clover! I doubt it would work well with buttercup, but maybe.
I'm not advocating chemicals but they can remedy a problem and get a person in a position to do a better job of managing their grass. In the end it's all about dollars and cents. If you don't make the money you won't be around to manage the thing anyway.
I don't know how it works in Saskatchewan but in Alberta both tall buttercup and Canada thistle are noxious weeds and must be "controlled" under the Weed Control Act. A persistant problem will probably result in the weed inspector telling you what you need to do? And that very well might be chemicals? On oil leases the companies are often told they must spray(no other option) and often a specific chemical is named that they must use.

[cowman]

Oh, and incidently, in west central Alberta, tall buttercup is almost out of control! There is a major push coming to try to control it. The weed inspectors are starting to treat this weed as a very serious problem, and so they should.

[pandiana]

I am interested in the discussion on foxtail as well. We had very little of this 10 years ago but it is increasing steadily. We find in mostly in poorly grassed areas such as a low area in a bull pen and along road margins although I now see it encroaching on pastures. As I too am very reluctant to use chemicals I am looking for another means of control.

[pandiana]

The only really effective way of removing unwanted species in my experience is with chamomile. When we took possession of our home quarter, there were areas that were almost solid chamomile and it could be found in almost every area where the surface was broken indicating an unlimited supply of seed ready to sprout.
For ten years the entire family picked chamomile. We picked 20 large orange garbage bags from a 40 acre barley field and countless bags around the buildings and paddocks. Over the years we still find the odd plant but heaven help anyone that doesn't stop to pull it up. On the other hand, silaging crops has been a fairly effective way of reducing chamomile in many areas, provided of course it is done before it seeds.

[nerves]

cowman the buttercup is out of control in alot of places out west in the Rockie mountains were I take my paid holiday, there is a wardens cabin that they still use. All around it and all the horse trails leaving it there is lots of buttercup. They brought in a helocopter last year and were trying to spray it but there is alot of area they missed. When weeds get established in these areas it is a battle that you cannot win. It probably came in with hay that was flown in to feed the wardens horses. But the wardens will blame the areas horse users. But the weed is thickest around the wardens cabin.

[cakadu]

We drove out west today and I was amazed at how much buttercup that there is, not to mention a few other weeds species that seem to be getting very out of control.

Foxtail isn't too bad around our farm, but we have a couple of patches of it that we continually try to pull. We are reluctant to go the chemical route just as others have mentioned.

What makes me scratch my head is the difference between urban and rural use of herbicides. Producers should have a pesticide/herbicide applicators course unless custom spraying is done, yet in the cities, people can purchase and apply these same chemicals with no knowledge of them whatsoever. "If a little bit works, then a whole lot will be great" and many of these chemicals end up getting washed into the gutter and into the sewers and then into the water. Same goes for applying fertilizers.

Using chemicals in overrun pastures is great, so I'm told, if you are prepared to change the practices that you have been using, otherwise it is just a costly short-term fix. Pulling invasive species before they become a problem is certainly one way to keep things under control.

We're just hoping that the grass recovers enough and the hoppers stay away so that we have some good cover going into the fall. It's not easy to reverse the overgrazing cycle when the elements aren't working with you.

Thanks for the pointers and discussion.

[nerves]

what we did and this may not work for everybody. We had foxtail in some of the low land, it had great organic matter in it but not much of anything else.(did a soil test) So we got a valmar and seeded clover and then fertilized it with potash phospherous sulfur and copper. Once the clover got a year on it we would graze those pastures early to eliminate competition from the narrow leafed plants and the clover thrived and took over. We still fertilize when ever we can afford it but it really seems to pay on this land that holds the moisture especialy when we are in this drought cycle.

[rsmith]

Thanks Nerves,That sounds like something that might work for us.
As I said , these are low areas, gumbo type with alkali showing when dry. There is good clover growth on some similar areas.
Last year we had some similar areas in a hay field that were 100% fox tail, but this year with proper moisture it is back to 95% hay including some alfalfa!
5" of rain here east of Edmonton in the last 10 days !!!!!!!