When we moved here, the vegetation was about 3 1/2 feet high. A neighbor mowed it for us and we realized we had a ton of weeds. The property hadn’t been maintained in a couple years. We use different products - triclopyr, 2 4 D, etc. My co-op extension office is great! I take pictures of the weed, sometimes even of the roots and he tells me what I need to apply and when. For example, I’m on flood plain and one of my pens was filled with Japanese stilt grass (and I’ve since discovered it was in other pens as well). Some weeds I can’t pull up - even after a soaking rain! Hopefully, regular mowing and seeding does the most and then I apply herbicides as needed. Most of the labels say let the pasture be for 48 hours, so I just rotate pastures. For the Japanese stilt grass, it took about 3 weeks for the grass to die after an application and it took me 3 applications. While they were easy to pull up, just that one pen was an acre. Good luck!
DO NOT USE GRAZON IF YOU COMPOST HORSE MANURE FROM PASTURES SPRAYED WITH GRAZON OR FEED HAY FROM HAY FIELDS SPRAYED WITH GRAZON. It will kill the plants in your garden and taint the soil permanently. (You will need to remove 18 inches of soil if you wish to garden again in the spots where you spread Grazon affected compost.) If you have already sprayed Grazon, you need to wait 18 months (2 years to be super safe) before manure from these areas are safe. Hay grown within the two year contaminated time frame will be forever tainted, no matter how long it sits in the barn. Sad. But true.
EDIT! I need to be more clear. The manure collected for 18 months for two years after eating Grazon grass/hay should NEVER be composted on gardens. It can be spread on pastures, but never in a garden.
I will repeat the warning. Do not compost the manure from horses eating grass or hay treated with a pass through herbicide like Grazon. Be very careful dealing with that stuff and make sure the manure or hay does not get passed on to a second party. I got contaminated hay from the feed store and used composted manure from feeding that hay in my garden. I had no idea what a pass through herbicide was. It took two years to get that stuff out of my soil and it ruined my tomatoes and damaged other crops for two years. And then when I thought I was through with the damage an open bag of fertilizer in my barn somehow got contaminated. And I went through it all over again. It can be really effective for getting rid of broad leafed weeds but you need to treat it like Radon.
Only broadleaf plants not grasses.
I’m another will not use chemicals on our farm. With what we are learning about the microbiome and how delicate horses are and colic - a big fat no. I mow the weeds and currently do have an experiment going with covering clover with landscape fabric and covering with compost and in 6 months will pull it all up and plant grass seeds.
I also found tilling up the clover and reseeding worked. But that was ALOT of work.
But 2D4, Grazon, etc. Nope.
Unfortunately mowing will not remove Amaranth/pigweed. It just sets seeds lower on the stem, and all the cut pieces become new plants, AND the damage causes all the seeds to be released. Digging out doesn’t work either, any little bit left sprouts.
And then there are the woody stem weeds like Sida.
Wish there was another choice but there just isn’t.
Florida is a special place for sure.
And I do agree and understand. I’ve got so much clover that is seems spraying really is the only option and it’s possible I’ll cave and will keep the horses off it for quite a while. Also seeing a buttercup problem on the 6 acres we just bought next door. Possible I’ll spot spray on that after soil testing.
Much appreciate the wisdom and updates, Here in the mid-Atlantic I have some type of wild violet and most awful chickweed-cannot seem to mow low enough unless I scalp the ground. I guess I will just keep mowing short? Or change the PH balance? (I am great at growing chickweed…)
And would the agricultural vinegar work well on fence lines or will I just be killing off one species (grass) to be replaced by a worse one? TIA
Sometimes you are not going to get rid of the broad leaf weeds until you change the soil Ph or change the conditions. I have an area (actually I have several) where I have a proliferation of buttercups. These areas are pretty wet in the spring, compacted soil and most likely very acidic. I did lime the one area pretty heavily last fall and that helped some. If I don’t change these conditions no herbicide is going to reduce the buttercups and get grass to grow. So check the Ph along with herbicide use.
I used Duracor for the clover. It’s a new herbicide and safe for livestock. I keep the horses off the sprayed area for a week. It kills the buttercups, too.
Edited to add: I was also adamantly opposed to pesticides on my little farm. Then the clover took over and my horse became laminitic. It was a hard choice. Clover has exploded everywhere in our area.
I completely understand and will probably have to resort to this. I too have a high insulin PPID horse and another PSSM2. I started covering large patches yesterday with landscape fabric but see this is not realistic over a 4 acre area where I’m easily 30% clover.
Is it possible to hand spray? How did you do it?
Duracor is more environmentally friendly. It became available in 2020. We don’t use our compost; it goes to a landfill.
Edited for a typo. My phone autocorrects in the worst way!
My husband hand-sprayed, but he only did about 1/4 acre at a time. The Duracor also contains a pre-emergent, so the clover did not come up the second year. It did come back this year, so we are spraying sections of the pasture again.
I don’t see the need for broadcast spraying everything, grass and weeds. I walk my pastures and spot-spray individual weeds with whatever herbicide kills a given weed. So if you have thistles, google what controls them and spray that only on those thistles, or if you have curly dock, google what controls that. spraying an entire field is quite literally overkill. when you google what controls a given weed, stick to university sites. Land grant universities have weed science departments that focus on this stuff. I have used lime to control individual weeds as indicated by changing the soil pH. Doing some reading is not that hard and better for all concerned.
This is feasible on small acreage. Not so much on large. But I do the same for my 5 acres - spot spray.
I felt the need to come back and report that my enormous project of covering hundreds of feet of clover - hours and hours of work - did not work. What happened in fact, was it’s like the clover sensed the death I was trying to impose and all around the areas it came up wickedly. Now even coming up in the areas I covered. I’d been told it networks underground.
Even the area I tilled under and reseeded - no small task. Has come back now at least 50% clover.
It’s all so so disappointing. I’ve soil tested and applied amendments for years and the soil should be healthy and leans now more alkaline than acidic which is not helping. I will not be applying lime.
My husband seeded clover without me knowing and did not and does not see it as a problem for horses no matter how many articles I have shown him. You know - sometimes marriage is hard and this is one of those instances.
I now plan to fence off the areas with Horseguard as spraying needs to happen in the spring and we’ve got the drought now so my other turnouts are suffering terribly and getting eaten down.
Just wanted to report back for anyone that covering clover to kill did not work.
I’m kinda with your husband on this one. Our pastures have a lot of clover in the spring and fall, and neither of my horses have ever had a problem with it. They wear grazing muzzles though, and maybe that keeps them from eating too much of it. Clover and other legumes fix nitrogen, which reduces the need for fertilizer; and having some clover can help with maintaining a healthy mix of forage. Clover also supports bees and other pollinators which are declining due to habitat loss and pesticides.
I’ve read articles expressing opposing viewpoints on clover. Some say you shouldn’t have any clover in a horse pasture and others say it’s a healthy addition to forage in moderation. A neighbor’s horse once got slobbers from clover, but other than that I’ve never heard of anyone around here having a problem with it. I will not buy hay with clover in it though, because my horses are easy keepers and one is insulin resistant and they don’t need to eat it at night in their stalls.
… People think horses should eat NO clover?
Have they taken a look at their hay lately? I don’t know when the last time I went through a bale that did not have at least some clover in it.
Because he seeded, my turnouts were at 75% clover at one point. I have a PSSM and a PPID and high insulin horse and from everything I read and their symptoms - I hate clover.
The clover now is down to 50% in the one turnout so I cannot use it for the above reasons - the medical conditions on these two critters and the other one is 30% - unusable.
The problem I’ve observed is if there is enough clover it’s the only thing they eat.
Not healthy from everything I’ve read. In fact, very unhealthy for those conditions.
