Too late to seed grass?

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MO_cows

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We FINALLY got a tractor running and reclaimed (brush hogged) a couple acres that young volunteer elm trees had completely taken over. I wanted to broadcast some grass seed and then run a drag around the area to help it get soil contact. Hubby says it's too late now, wait til spring. Is it too late??

Also, this area is extremely sandy and never had a good stand of grass anyway. When it was first planted to grass, brome and orchard grass were drilled in along with a nurse crop of oats. It was formerly in soybeans. The oats did great but the grass never took off very well. So any suggestions for pasture grass that can hang on in loose sand would be appreciated, too.
 
Believe it or not Reed Canarygrass handles droughty/sandy soil quite well. So does brome. The problem is neither of those species tolerate continuous grazing all that well. If you can manage it so the cattle are in for 1-3 days at a time and give it a good rest those will do alright. You could even put some grazing type alfalfa in there. Not much else for legumes handles drought really well.
 
You could broadcast winter wheat, graze it and harvest it in the spring. Then plant grass afterwards. Bermudagrass loves sandy soils.
 
Won;t hurt anything to seed the grass now. It won;t do anything much till spring but at least it will be done so that in the spring you will have time to do the other things that are more necessarry in the spring
 
Where i work we rent two no till drills to the public.

someone brought the small one in yesterday and it still had some seed in it.

It had a grass seed orchard or fescue or rye grass ....i could not tell

It also had a tiny seed in it that had a red husk and when you squeezed the husk a tiny round seed would come out.

the folks who had rented it are high dollar operation so I don't think it was a trash seed.

the next guy to rent the drill did not want to plant something that he did not know what it was so we opened the cleanout and it came out in the parking lot. I swept up five or six pounds of it and broadcast it in one of my horse paddocks last night. Paddock had just been grazed and shut off.

woke up this morning and the predicted rain was happening.

i hope I get something good and not a noxious weed.
 
pdfangus":1l7vyz81 said:
Where i work we rent two no till drills to the public.

someone brought the small one in yesterday and it still had some seed in it.

It had a grass seed orchard or fescue or rye grass ....i could not tell

It also had a tiny seed in it that had a red husk and when you squeezed the husk a tiny round seed would come out.

the folks who had rented it are high dollar operation so I don't think it was a trash seed.

the next guy to rent the drill did not want to plant something that he did not know what it was so we opened the cleanout and it came out in the parking lot. I swept up five or six pounds of it and broadcast it in one of my horse paddocks last night. Paddock had just been grazed and shut off.

woke up this morning and the predicted rain was happening.

i hope I get something good and not a noxious weed.
The hull with the tiny seed sounds like unhulled lespedeza
 
You don't see lespedeza this time of year do you?
I think it is too late for a normally fall planted cool season grass. I would just plant a cover crop and get back to it next year. Here in the south Ryegrass would come up fine scratched in with a drag and I suspect it would do good for you as well as a cover crop. Rye and wheat would more likely survive your winter and make some spring grazing.
 
Douglas":26dk7gvi said:
You don't see lespedeza this time of year do you?
I think it is too late for a normally fall planted cool season grass. I would just plant a cover crop and get back to it next year. Here in the south Ryegrass would come up fine scratched in with a drag and I suspect it would do good for you as well as a cover crop. Rye and wheat would more likely survive your winter and make some spring grazing.
Some folks drill it in in the fall. Until last week we still had it growing pretty well in the pastures.
 
Zone 7 here. I just finished sowing Marshall ryegrass, fescue, crimson clover and cereal rye (rye grain). Dry weather and drastic situations can cause a person to revert to high risk tactics. My sericea lespedeza is still dropping a few seed for a natural reseeding. I feel that anything that I get get to survive the Winter will have a better chance if dry weather persists next year.
 

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