Pasture restoration

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A weed by definition is a plant that is unwanted in a specific location. I can, and have, flipped the idea of a plant being a weed or a solution completely on its head. For example, and this is a deep rooted weed to boot, I've made a recommendation of planting tamarisk (salt cedar) in the Southeast US before. Those of you who know what it is are now thinking I've lost my mind. I've made recommendations of planting it on top of slury ponds that are created in mining operations. By law, these ponds must be 'dried up' by the mine companies who install very expensive evaporators to do the job, and are a nightmare to maintain. However, a mature tamarisk tree can, and does, transpire hundreds of gallons of water a day, at no cost and no maintenance, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars if not into the millions over the time to dry down these slury ponds. Conversely, these 'weeds' dry up livestock ponds and creeks creating deserts everywhere they grow. So, is it a weed, or a Godsend?

Additional note, the slury ponds create an absolute environmental disaster if the circular dams that are built to retain them fail, creating many acres (hundreds?) of unproductive, contaminated rangeland.

A note on soil types. Soil can exhibit a huge range of characteristic variety within a very short distance, a couple hundred yards. Soil does vary by region of the country, but the variability at the local level makes recommendations without specifics of the specific soil impossible.
 
Hey y'all, greetings from Texas

I have 400 acres that I run cattle on, there is two old hay fields totaling about 30 acres I would like to improve, they are filled with short mesquite about two foot high, weeds and scattered prickly pear cactus. I sprayed all the mesquite this spring on foot with a backpack sprayer/remedy and left it standing, time consuming process waiting for it to wilt so I could see what was missed. The Thistle was also bad this year. I've started scooping up prickly pear here and there with the tractor and dumping it in a brush pile. What can I do to reduce the weeds and promote grass growth? More often than not the only green is the weeds/dove weed that took over this summer. I am located in around central/South TX. We have been in a drought the last few years but hoping that turns around soon. I do not have much for equipment, just a 4wd 40HP tractor and a large dozer.
40 years ago we ran sheep and goat year around and we had no coyotes. The coyotes came in and we couldn's run sheep and goats. We ran old crop lambs that we bought in September and they ganed 40 to 50 pounds on the weeds and hit the easter market with a bonus price. Also a bigger attack on our grasses was the jack rabbits which teh coyotes eliminated. I planted wilman love grass in a sandy field and began rotating my pastures. The wilman has spread into my pasture by the wind and cattle poop. My volume of grass hads skyrocked. I have videos on you tube, just look up wilman love grass. Some have been concerned that you
should plant a variety of grasses. I just videoed my December pasture showing that the other climax grasses are coming back. I have sold my wilman love grass round bales to folks with sheep. They came back for more because due to the white pulp in the stalks, they ate every piece of the hay and the owner bought more hay. Last spring I weaned my calves in a corral with a big feeder and a round bale of wilman and they ate all of it. I turned them out into a fresh pasture that had been rested for 6 months. It had a black soil and also had a very green field of Kleingrass. I opened the gate and the calves ran into the pasture. A week later I return and the round bale of Wilman love that I had left next to the pen that I had harvested the previous fall had been eaten by the 35 calves I had weaned. They chose it over the green grass. Check out my videos on utube, just search for wilman love. The pasture I videoed is a sandy pasture. It will show how the pasture had been resseeded with wilman love and quite a variety of the orginal grasses. you will have to look up on you tube. Call me if you want to reseed your pasture. Works on sandy and sandy loam soils. 3252476342 Here are some files:
 
40 years ago we ran sheep and goat year around and we had no coyotes. The coyotes came in and we couldn's run sheep and goats. We ran old crop lambs that we bought in September and they ganed 40 to 50 pounds on the weeds and hit the easter market with a bonus price. Also a bigger attack on our grasses was the jack rabbits which teh coyotes eliminated. I planted wilman love grass in a sandy field and began rotating my pastures. The wilman has spread into my pasture by the wind and cattle poop. My volume of grass hads skyrocked. I have videos on you tube, just look up wilman love grass. Some have been concerned that you
should plant a variety of grasses. I just videoed my December pasture showing that the other climax grasses are coming back. I have sold my wilman love grass round bales to folks with sheep. They came back for more because due to the white pulp in the stalks, they ate every piece of the hay and the owner bought more hay. Last spring I weaned my calves in a corral with a big feeder and a round bale of wilman and they ate all of it. I turned them out into a fresh pasture that had been rested for 6 months. It had a black soil and also had a very green field of Kleingrass. I opened the gate and the calves ran into the pasture. A week later I return and the round bale of Wilman love that I had left next to the pen that I had harvested the previous fall had been eaten by the 35 calves I had weaned. They chose it over the green grass. Check out my videos on utube, just search for wilman love. The pasture I videoed is a sandy pasture. It will show how the pasture had been resseeded with wilman love and quite a variety of the orginal grasses. you will have to look up on you tube. Call me if you want to reseed your pasture. Works on sandy and sandy loam soils. 3252476342 Here are some files:

It would be very cool of you to click on your profile and add a location so we don't have to continually ask. Especially since you're talking about location dependent subjects.
 
It looks like it takes over the place like African Lovegrass. We are fighting to control African Lovegrass here, once it goes to seed it becomes a very unpalatable straw of low nutritive value. Sandy acidic granite soils are like fertiliser to it.

Ken
 
It looks like it takes over the place like African Lovegrass. We are fighting to control African Lovegrass here, once it goes to seed it becomes a very unpalatable straw of low nutritive value. Sandy acidic granite soils are like fertiliser to it.

Ken
Hi Ken. I suspect that it does so well there is not necessarily that it has a high preference and loves that type of site, but rather, its nutrient demands are so much lower than any other grasses (it has no nutrient value in the grown grass) that it can simply grow there because literally nothing else can. I suspect that overall the grass really is 'wimpy', And can't compete with anything, but it will grow where nothing else can.
 
Hi Ken. I suspect that it does so well there is not necessarily that it has a high preference and loves that type of site, but rather, its nutrient demands are so much lower than any other grasses (it has no nutrient value in the grown grass) that it can simply grow there because literally nothing else can. I suspect that overall the grass really is 'wimpy', And can't compete with anything, but it will grow where nothing else can.
Mark it is pretty good at dominating on our soils and displacing other grasses, our kikuyu is pretty good at competing against it in certain areas but needs a bit of a help to get going. My bull developing place of 114 acres gas been taken over 100% by it but my home place is basically free of it but it is a battle to keep it that way. My strategy now is to mow it at the end of winter and again mid summer and other times if it gets away from me. I keep the grazing pressure high on it to keep it in the vegetative stage and get good growth of the cattle on it in spring and early summer. From now on it is hellbent on going into the reproductive stage and just wants to go to seed. If left unchecked it completely dominates all other grasses by over shadowing them and nothing grows between the clumps. By keeping it short I am getting clovers, plantain and other grasses growing between the clumps and am seeding kikuyu to try and compete with it.
I am learning to manage it and get good production out of it but it is constant work to keep it that way. Once it goes dormant for winter I supplement the cattle every 3rd day with canola meal and they will utilise the not so rank dry lovegrass. We would still be a lot better without it.
Left unchecked which is how it is on most places here it is a big fire hazard especially the end of winter.

Ken
 

According to TX it IS a native plant?
One thing to remember, invasive does not necessarily mean non-native. There tends to be a correlation in our minds, but in reality, the two terms are really not tied in any way. More non-native plants tend to be invasive than native plants, but that is as far as it goes. Many native plants can be thought of as invasive. Broomsedge for example.
 
I think a mesquite sead can stay dormant in the soil for 10-15 years so he/she will be spraying every year for a good while to get ride of them.
I spend a good portion of my time from first leaf until first frost painting the trees blue. Two things I know and one of them for sure: 1) You can easily leave a single pasture, believing you got them all three times in one season; 2) You didn't.
 
The fact that a backpack sprayer was used, I'm guessing there isn't a solid stand of mesquite over the whole pasture

The fact that a backpack sprayer was used, I'm guessing there isn't a solid stand of mesquite over the whole pasture.
Or the opposite of that. If the trees are thick enough, 4-wheelers or side-by-sides lack the agility to be efficient, especially if there's a bit of breeze and the grass hasn't been grazed in some time.

I've been working on a 100-acre spot for two seasons to get it ready to bale after being a hunting lease for a couple of years. The best I can do from a 4-wheeler is hate my life the whole time. Walking would have been exponentially better.

A sparse stand of trees would be the worst reason for a backpack sprayer.
 
What is the

point of the root rippers in a cultivated field? Just trying to reduce compaction and get below the hardpan?
Yes and Yes. Proper cultivation and irrigation practices must follow ripping. Otherwise, it will return. (Honestly, they probably will return regardless in time, but proper practices slow that rate considerably.)
 
I've become a firm believer that you can't reverse compaction long-term through tillage. The only way to accomplish that is through proper application of all of the soil health principles, and time. These "tillage tools" (rippers, discs, etc.) are essentially the same tools that are used to break down and "mill" soil into a consistently milled and aerated medium, IN ORDER to then gain a consistent compaction of it (squash all the airspace out of it)... so it can more effectively bear up the weight of traffic under a road... just the OPPOSITE of what the goal would/should be to avoid compaction.

I used to own and operate a DMI deep ripper on all of my ground, and remember telling my landlord on his especially difficult piece that I thought I was making progress... it just needs more ripping. I never was able to get it where it needed to go, and the more I ripped, the worse it became. Now, after seeding it down, stopping all tillage and chemical disturbances, and running cattle on it rotationally with the "take half/leave half" method leaving PLENTY of residual behind, the majority of the "difficulty issues" I was attempting to overcome with iron and horsepower have disappeared. And no drainage tile (which that piece "needed badly", ...low lying, very heavy clay soils that wouldn't drain) has been added. I'm not saying that it's "perfect" by any means. But after 15 years of tillage it was never in as good of condition as it is functioning like now, after just 3 years seeded down, and one year of cattle.
 
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The ripper potentially jump-starts reversal of compaction, but RDFF is correct, long term reversal is not possible through tillage alone. Long term it will be several factors including the introduction of organic matter (roots) that break up the soil. Earth worm and insect activity are really big factors. Micro biotic crusts and microbial activity also play parts in compaction. Of course, you have to keep the heavy equipment off the soil when its wet as well.
 
Yes, i spot spray a lot and know sometimes i miss some.
Well, this is embarrassing, but I can't think of the name to save my skin at the moment. (I must be tired) I never ask for it by name at the warehouse. They just know What I'm there for when they see me coming and load me up with a set up of the killer, detergent and ink. I have long since stopped using the prescribed dose, though and use considerably less because *I try to keep track of specific markers and geography while I'm spraying, * most of the time I'm only able to spray from one side of the the due to West Texas wind, and *I get the ink all over everything, especially myself. Whether it's straight or already mixed with the killer, it will get on my boots, gloves, jeans, caps, all of the things, I so I just pour it lighter than called for and hope for the best.

I can get the name for you, though.
 
sometimes i miss some
Some weeks I go out to spray every day, but o thy to not go to the same property within about a 5 day period. By the 5th day after spraying, leaves have at least started turning, so the ink isn't really needed. I just make a run through and shoot anything not obviously dying before moving to next paddock.
 

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