I have a major infestation of Johnsongrass. Regular spraying with a roundup-type product is not touching it. Any recommendations?
Mowing in pastures and bar ditches, plowing in fields, it is invasive, just have to keep after it.
2 Likes
Make sure your herbicide proportions are correct when spraying. I wasted money and time THINKING I had them right. Said bad things about “useless herbicide!” Son reading directions corrected me on the ratios. Felt like a real dummy!!
No more “watering” my clover. It is going to die now when sprayed! Ha ha
Just spoke to my extension office agent about pasture management and he brought up Johnson grass. Mowing is your best friend. We bushhog 2-3 times a year and that takes care of 75-80% of the Johnson grass.
Or get cows. Apparently they love the stuff.
When I lived in the Northeast we either burned it out with chemicals, or used a wick and burned it out with fire. The chemicals were recommend to us by the county extension agent, but I cannot remember what they were. Up there you are considered a bad neighbor if you have Johnson grass because it is so invasive, it is eventually going to end up at your neighbors.
Here in the mid South, no one gives a rat’s behind about it. Heck, they don’t even try to get it out of their hay fields- they bale it and feed it to cattle!
We have found that grazing cattle on It helps, as well as regular bush hogging.
Here we are very careful in the fall when grazing anywhere it has Johnson grass.
Some times driving cattle by a bar ditch full of it, if some eat it at the wrong time, it will kill them.
You have to wait until after some frosty days to consider it safe:
2 Likes
Yes to the mowing. I got rid of it in a small pasture by mowing it close to the ground once a week with my riding mower in hot dry weather. I suppose that uses up the reserves in the rhizomes. I still have it in the big pasture but my horses don’t like it and they have lots of grass out there so they can pick and choose.
I had it in my garden area too. It was a BEAR to get rid of there. I would spray with Roundup multiple times and till up the rhizomes. The tiller hated hitting those rhizomes. It took several years but I think I have gotten it out of there.
We have it abundantly in places. You can spray, burn , plow it up, keep it mowed and it still spreads.
We put our cows out on a( new to them ) pasture and have not seen the patches of JG that were in there since. Same thing with my goats pasture. They eat it down to the ground as soon as it even starts to poke up and it eventually kills it.
That is the only way that we know of and it is also the only way according to the ag extension paper we get.
