Yes- we were awash in them last week. Summer arrived Monday. They are nearly all dead and gone.
you are likely mowing too much and stunting your grass, allowing the buttercups to out-compete. If you take more than 50% growth you really damage the roots. If you mow short when it’s hot you create thermal problems in the soil (it can be 40 degrees warmer than the air). Leave the grass a bit longer and let it set deep roots.
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Yes, we know this, but thank you for the PSA.
I just ignore them and feed enough hay that my guys don’t ever touch them. I mow them occasionally that’s about it lol
if it works for you.
The deal though is that
A) they indicate a less than ideal soil
B) compete with the good grass for nutrients and space.
And as the horses eat the good grass down to a nub the buttercups get more space.
In most cases, horses don’t eat things that are bad for them, even if the weeds are as tall as an elephant’s eye and nothing else to be had.
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Oh I know- I don’t want them to have much grass to eat lol. It’s much easier to control nutrition when feeding hay. I’d rather them have plenty of space to roam than have to dry lot. Also I rent my field so I’m not dumping a ton of time and money into someone else’s property
They don’t die in the summer, they go dormant. It’s why spraying is so much less effective once they’re blooming. You need to hit them when they’re actively growing. They go through another period of growth in the fall, so there’s another window that’s often easier to hit, since you’re not working around the spring rains.
Maybe try plain 2,4-D instead of the big guns?
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That’s how it was when we rented our farm in Tennessee. We weren’t rehabbing someone else’s field.
I don’t think buttercups are quite as much as an indicator as people give them credit for. Especially in @tabula_rashah and my area, buttercups will crop up in large quantities in an unused grassy lot or yard that isn’t stressed in any way. Of course, in poor soil they will entirely outcompete the grasses, which is why people associate them with poor soil.
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very true- they pop up in fert’d, irrigated pots of other plants here at the nursery all the time.
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Uh, this thing is amazing—thank you for the recommendation! It just arrived today and I ran outside with it like a kid at Christmas. I don’t have the worst buttercup problem, but I also don’t want to. It doesn’t open wide enough for some of the other weeds with really big bulbous roots, but it did a GREAT job with my buttercups. I learned from this helpful website that they are bulbous buttercups: https://www.google.com/amp/s/botsocscot.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/three-of-our-common-buttercups-telling-them-apart/amp/
Here’s an impressively large mandrake-looking fellow that it also tackled (not a buttercup):
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Exactly what i do with several different toxic weeds…physically remove. I too am pretty dead-set against pouring chemicals onto our land. It’s hard to do, but if you dedicate yourself to it, do a section at a time, eventually you will prevail. I have waged war on several different plants. Only one am i barely treading-water with, all the others are virtually GONE!
We had a small outbreak in about a 4ft long and 1ft wide patch of buttercups. I pulled them out by hand after a nice juicy rain. Was easy enough.
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Mine was just delivered and I can’t WAIT to get out and try it today.
