Just curious how a very wet winter affects spring or summer pasture … or if it doesn’t affect it. I am resting my whole back pasture - about 5 acres - and its been greening up nicely this month following an outrageously wet fall/winter so far. I only started resting it in early December. My barnyard which gets heavy use is total mud, but I was wondering if the rain fall had positively benefited the resting field?
Grass needs three things to thrive: water, Sun, and soil with a proper nutrition profile. The first two are Nature’s job, humans have to do that last one.
So, like the rest of stuff in the universe, “it depends.” Since you can’t do anything about those first, two items you should start on #3 by taking soil samples and having them analyzed. Then fertilize and lime are indicated. If you’ve got a strong stand you don’t have to reseed. If it’s not, then that’s item #4.
Good luck in your project!
G.
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Depends on where you are.
In our semi-desert, we don’t “lime and fertilize”.
Moisture in the winters do make our springs and early summer grasses grow.
More moisture all along then helps it last until fall.
Ours are short grass prairie species, the kind that doesn’t make hay, but is very strong, every bite packs a punch and all that eat it gets fat.
I would ask your local Farm Service Agency which kinds of grasses you have and how best to manage them where you are.
I expect Guilherme guided you right, as it sounds you may be in the East, where you cultivate your grasses.
So one thing to watch is that some species of grass will start to become tougher and unpalatable and dry when they get to a certain age and height, not just when the moisture stops, so you’ll want to get the animals munching on it while there’s still some moisture on offer. Ideally you put them on and off of it multiple times through the season, which allows a regrowth in between rotations.
The very wet though means that the ground may be soft and easier to damage.
So my experience is: the wet will benefit it, but it doesn’t necessarily carry over. If for example you have a very wet winter and then it just abruptly stops in March that’s not necessarily the as good as a winter where you get less rain but it keeps going through June.
Your soil type and general weather conditions matter too. Grass can’t grow if it’s too cold (around freezing) water or no. Your soil will either drain the water, store the water pleasantly, or turn into a bog.
My best years here in northern California are to get a good rain in October, so that the grass starts to green up while there’s some length of day and before there are freezes. Then it can hold its own over the winter as long as there’s some rainfall. I hope for a good rainfall total and I hope especially to have regular rains march through june which are the prime grass growing days in terms of sunlight and temperature.
Your Mileage May Vary!
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Depends. We’ve had a couple of very dry winters and they have definitely affected my pasture and my well. But I don’t know that more rain/snow = better pasture. All grass needs moisture up to a certain point. A drought or a very wet season can be equally bad depending on your soil/drainage.
at least in central Texas a wet winter usually mean high grass fire danger in the Fall
My pastures look so much better than my lawn.
I should have said that last summer I had the county extension agent out and we walked the entire property. He took soil samples from all the different pastures and I got his recommendations for fertilizer, etc. 
I was not able to fertilize b/c honestly, we didn’t have the $$ for his recommendations (rate of fertilizer per acre, lime was not needed) but we wanted to get a baseline and we will retest this year when we have the funds to fertilize. I was just curious what people’s experiences were with a wet winter and how it seemed to affect their pastures. Not very scientific! I remember when I worked briefly in the Rockies they said a high snow fall meant good summer pastures so wondered if here on the southeast coast that applied w/ rainy winter.
I’m actually disappointed in our rain fall - we had sooooo little rain late summer it about killed my fields. Then it seemed to flood for fall/winter so far. UGH.
If you have agent test results from the soil sampling, I would not retest. Unless you did something significant, like getting loads of manure dumped on fields from a dairy or chicken farm, the soil will not have changed what minerals it needs. So a second set of testing is wasted money.
I disc my fields just enough to score open the soil, cut grass plants apart a bit, then fertilize with granular fertilizer from the plant. Ask for NO UREA. Urea is bad for horses, can cause laminitus. Get Ammonium Sulphate instead as your Nitrogen delivery method. Same price for both here, with another AS benefit of staying on the field instead of evaporating like Urea will, should you not get rain soon after spreading. This a good time to seed if you plan to. Then I drag after spreading fertilizer/seed, using a chain harrow to smooth the dirt and plants, winter hoofmarks. Fields look quite nice when finished and even better after some rain and time.
We’ve had an outrageous amount of rain over the last few months here in GA. Apparently we are somewhere near 200% of normal - last time we got this much rain was in the 1940s. My pastures are pretty beat up, although we have very well established grass and we overseed, fertilize and lime appropriately. I will probably have to get out the drag and the roller in the spring. As others have said, I don’t think it necessarily leads to better pasture in the summer… in our case the ground is so saturated, the water has no where to go at this point.
