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The winter of 2018-19 in Virginia was the muddiest, sloppiest, wettest one anyone could remember. Heading into spring, many livestock producers were looking for a forage they could broadcast into their damaged pastures, travel lanes and feeding areas to provide some cover and compete with summer annual weeds.
Weed control in pasture and hay is as much a matter of when you spray as what you spray. I’d like to share some thoughts on both in the hopes it might help you in your weed control efforts this year. Let’s take a moment to first review the basic weed life cycles.
Let’s evaluate your pasture. “Let’s not and say we did,” would likely be the response from most people. Who can blame them? Evaluating pastures is often so subjective that it’s useless, or made to be so complicated that it’s impractical.
Many cattle producers rely on direct access to surface waters, despite wanting to fence out riparian areas and protect water quality. There are many reasons for this, but the big one is the cost of creating an alternative water source.
Fencing is often a limiting factor in managing pastures. Producers often point to cost, time and labor, difficult terrain and short-term land leases as disincentives to installing better fencing infrastructure.
Like many areas, pasture productivity in Virginia is inconsistent. More often than not, we have a glut of grass in spring which is hayed from pasture only to be fed out later in the year – as early as September in dry years.
The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia sits squarely in the fescue belt. As an extension agent, I hear a lot about fescue toxicosis from the academic side, but rarely does it make its way into the real-world conversations I hear in the field.
