Red River or Mojo crabgrass in fescue pastures

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I don't know your grasses but in my experience competition from existing grasses is hard to overcome and my results have been pretty poor without doing a full seedbed preparation.

Ken
 
My experience, crabgrass will come on strong at the time that fescue is fading in the summer. Sounds like a good match. But if there are not enough cows grazing continuously to keep the crabgrass eaten, it will overwhelm the fescue and smother it out quite a bit. Resulting in a thinner stand of fescue.
 
My experience, crabgrass will come on strong at the time that fescue is fading in the summer. Sounds like a good match. But if there are not enough cows grazing continuously to keep the crabgrass eaten, it will overwhelm the fescue and smother it out quite a bit. Resulting in a thinner stand of fescue.
That shouldn't be a problem in august I'm hoping. I don't have enough pasture to stockpile for the summer slump so I'm hoping the crabgrass will pick up the slack. It seems to grow here when nothing else does. If it can buy me a couple months I can make it to cornstalks and cover crops.

Crabgrass takes over in the yard late summer, have to mow the Devil out of it to keep from having a jungle, so cows grazing shouldn't be much different.
 
I don't know your grasses but in my experience competition from existing grasses is hard to overcome and my results have been pretty poor without doing a full seedbed preparation.

Ken
Do you deal with mostly warm season grass?
 
Yes. Disc the ground lightly, not enough to hurt your fescue but enough to expose some dirt. It will take off when it gets hot
Do you deal with mostly warm season grass?
Yes warm season grasses would be our mainstay but we do have some rye, fescue, cocksfoot and clovers that help out a bit in early spring. Our soil temp doesn't get high enough for the summer perennials to get going until the 2nd half of November (3rd month of spring). While not cold by your standards we are at 960 metres altitude and get heavy frosts so a fairly temperate climate for our latitude.
I have trickled out seed behind the tines of my Keyline plow (deep ripper) and have had very poor results.

Ken
 
In my experience when mixing cool and warm season grasses I was underwhelmed. When the warm season grass grows in summer it's great. When it dies out in the fall/winter it leaves bare soil. Next spring I have a lot more weeds growing from those bare spots.

If you could rotate cold season pasture and time it with rotating on to a dedicated warm season pasture with a planted cool season cover crop through the winter I think it could work.
 
Has anyone spread crabgrass in existing fescue pastures to pick up for the summer slump? I'm talking decent fescue stands.
I am thinking about doing the same thing I plan to run a disk through after some overgrazing. Beat it up real good. I think I will take. Which variety are you leaning towards? I considered mixing varieties.
 
I am thinking about doing the same thing I plan to run a disk through after some overgrazing. Beat it up real good. I think I will take. Which variety are you leaning towards? I considered mixing varieties.
A good friend of mine in North GA has drilled Red River and he is very pleased with it.
 
I am thinking about doing the same thing I plan to run a disk through after some overgrazing. Beat it up real good. I think I will take. Which variety are you leaning towards? I considered mixing varieties.
The Mojo is a mix of maturities, so I'll probably go with it if the price is decent.
 
I've got about 60 acres that's really poor and just doesn't have much grass. Do yall think if I disk it just enough to loosen the dirt then broadcast the Mojo it would come up or will it need a prepared seedbed?
 
I've got about 60 acres that's really poor and just doesn't have much grass. Do yall think if I disk it just enough to loosen the dirt then broadcast the Mojo it would come up or will it need a prepared seedbed?
Crabgrass is a N lover. If you want it to do well over the summer, it requires periodic N. That puts it out of the cheap forage range if you max it out.

Disking fescue to get summer grass is a toss up. What gives you the most return: stockpiled fescue, healthy and hearty, and little to no hay in the winter or summer grass? I never have great mixed fescue. It is adequate but not like a solid stand with legumes.
 
I won't disk it into established fescue. I plan on letting hooves put it in there, but I have a couple places with poor stands that may get some disturbance to help it establish. I've never disked my yard, I have no shortage of crabgrass there. I may not get as good a stand of CG in year one, but I will eventually.

I'm not going to worry about stockpile. I don't have enough pasture acres to provide for that, but I do have crop acres that can be utilized. Cornstalks, covers on soybean ground. I just turned out a few on cereal rye yesterday. I want them off pasture in the winter to rest the grass. My biggest hole is late summer, if I can get the crabgrass started and get it to reseed 50# of N doesn't scare me too bad. $30-35 worth of N for 2-3 months of high quality grazing isn't a bad deal to me.
 
Has anyone spread crabgrass in existing fescue pastures to pick up for the summer slump? I'm talking decent fescue stands.
Short answer: yes. And, it does persist from one year to the next, although an occasional addition of fresh red river crabgrass is needed along with a light discing to provide conditions which allow the red river crabgrass to re-establish each year. I'm not talking discing every year, maybe every 2-4 years. Probably depends somewhat on the aggressiveness of the fescue. I'm not sure where you are. I'm a grazing specialist in south east Ohio with the NRCS. The producer that I know who grows the crabgrass/fescue combination has been doing so for over 25 years.
 
Short answer: yes. And, it does persist from one year to the next, although an occasional addition of fresh red river crabgrass is needed along with a light discing to provide conditions which allow the red river crabgrass to re-establish each year. I'm not talking discing every year, maybe every 2-4 years. Probably depends somewhat on the aggressiveness of the fescue. I'm not sure where you are. I'm a grazing specialist in south east Ohio with the NRCS. The producer that I know who grows the crabgrass/fescue combination has been doing so for over 25 years.

Welcome and good to see another member in SE OH.
 
In my experience when mixing cool and warm season grasses I was underwhelmed. When the warm season grass grows in summer it's great. When it dies out in the fall/winter it leaves bare soil. Next spring I have a lot more weeds growing from those bare spots.

If you could rotate cold season pasture and time it with rotating on to a dedicated warm season pasture with a planted cool season cover crop through the winter I think it could work.
Co-mingling CSG and WSG is not normally recommended because it is 'thought' that they are incompatible. Generally speaking, I would agree. However, if you take time to analyze the biology of specific species of CSG and WSG, You will find that there are specific combinations that do indeed work and provide benefits of both worlds. The annual WSG red river crabgrass and CSG perennial tall fescue is one of those combinations that does work, at least in SE Ohio. I know a producer that has had a pasture with this mix for 25 straight years. The combination I hear people talk about the most and use it to indicate that WSG and CSG don't work together is tall fescue and big bluestem. I need someone to tell me how these could possibly ever be considered to be compatable considering that BBS is to be maintained at an 8 inch stubble height, has very coarse stems and is a bunchgrass and tall fescue is a short, relatively fine leaved sod-forming/bunchgrass (mixed morphology) that you maintain at a 3-4 inch stubble height. Based on these characteristics alone, and not WSG vs CSG, why would someone attempt to 'make' them compatible? Actually, the fact that one is a CSG and the other a WSG makes is barely possible to grow them together. A college of mine tried this and actually was successful, but he described it as 'a nightmare' trying to accomplish and manage. FYI: He is now retired but was an agronomist/grazing specialist and raised livestock as a hobby. If anyone could do it, it would be him. I think his description of 'a nightmare' about sums up if anyone should attempt it.
 
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