Pasture Pro vs Grazon Next

[SusanO]

I need to spot spray in my small pasture and my large one. The small pasture has a bunch of buttercups and I have hand pulled most of them except for the fence line which is covered. I know - the soil is too wet there and too acidic. I can add lime but I don’t want to fertilize the buttercups. The big pasture has several areas with buttercups and assorted sundry thistle plants mixed in with grass. Too much to hand pull. So I need to just get out there and spray a few areas.

I have never used either herbicides so I don’t know which would be best. I don’t think Round-up is up to the task of killing the buttercups with it’s expanding population.

[Foxglove]

On my 20 acres I use Trimec and CoRoN --Trimec is a broad leaf herbicide that will kill your buttercups but not affect your grasses. CoRoN is a fertilizer. I mix them together and do a one pass spray of my pastures each May. I’ve been doing that for 10 years or so. I also do our lawn. We have no weeds. No weeds. Did I say we have no weeds? What we do have is beautiful, lush grass. I use a 25 gallon tank sprayer and pull it behind my tractor --but I’ve put the mix into a hand sprayer before to get some places near my hosta beds (do not spray any place near flowers —you’ll kill them all). Both items are readily available at TSC, Farm and Fleet, any farm store. The hardest part about them is the math . . .so much per acre, so many acres, so much water for dilution --my husband figured it out for me one time --now I keep that paper handy to refer to. I look forward to May —riding my tractor in the sun, spraying my fields, the smell of Trimec . . .oh, check with your vet --not for use where pregnant mares will graze --I only have geldings. Vet said I didn’t have anything to worry about with them, but I keep them off the pastures for 7 days or until there’s a hard rain.

[littlebaypony]

I used Grazon 5 years ago. It didn’t do any better at controlling broadleaf weeds than 2,4 D. Problem has been with the manure from horses grazed on my pastures. I compost the manure for at least 6 months. Sadly, my compost kills tomatoes and beans so can’t be used on gardens. I buried the compost pile after I discovered the problem the following spring. Fast forward to the present. My manure is still killing tomatoes and beans. Squash, zucchini, watermelon and cantaloupe doing ok but tomato leaves are curling up and beans sprout and then die. I’ll never use Grazon again and warn all my friends away from using it. If it’s still active in manure produced 5 years after spraying it can’t be good for my pastures or my horses.
P.S. While it still kills my garden it does nothing to the weeds it is designed to kill.

[Palm_Beach]

I spot spray buttercups with Cross Bow. Depending on what you want to kill, you mix it up different.

[Simkie]

I used 2,4-D on my buttercups this year, but it may be too late for it to be effective now, unless you’re quite north. You need to hit them early.

Crossbow is what’s recommended around here once they’re more mature and blooming.

[SusanO]

I did spray the ones on the fence line with extra strength Round-up. They are deader than a door nail. But my “low maintenance” hahaha pony decided that the dying weeds were the next best thing to alfalfa. I wasn’t too keen with him eating the weeds with Round-up on them so I decided to get something that would not create a vet bill if he ate it.

I bought a small container of Pasture Pro because TSC did not have Grazon in stock. If it is too late for the buttercups there are lots of other things to hit. Hopefully the pony will not chow down on the dying weeds.

Yes I have had the tomato plant + Grazon hay manure disaster. Right now I am not using manure in the garden because when I did a soil test everything except calcium came back extremely high. Almost to the point of having excessive levels so I decided to lay off the manure for a while. I am buying hay from several different people and it is not locally grown so I don’t know what herbicides could be in it. Bummer - it was making the soil very light and fluffy.