First Year Switch? Weed??
- Thread starter Jayber
- Start date
hillrunner
5 year old buck +
I'd say yes, and the weed looks like mature marestail (horseweed) to me.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
Looks like switch to me. The other looks like an amaranth of sort unfortunately. Could be wrong though.
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S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
Are you thinking the deer are all the leaves off? Curly dock is quite leafy.
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Bill
Administrator
no and yes. At my place the curly doc has big leaves at the bottom at first. But the deer never Seem to let the seed spike grow. By July there isn’t anything much left. Big leaves and all are gone. But some must survive because we always have a few in the early summer. I could be 180 wrong but that seed head looks to me like what curly doc should look like.
Mares-tail throws A rosette.
White Birch Farm
5 year old buck +
A clearer picture would help. From that pic, it looks like young fall panicum.
Here is switch.
Here is switch.
White Birch Farm
5 year old buck +
By planting when soil temps are appropriate for germination, and using a preplant application of Imazapic you would probably not need to mow. Below is a pic I took of some first year Big Blue Last week. As you can see, it is 3’+ above most competing vegetation and producing seed already. In the second pic, you will also some little blue and Indiangrass producing seed heads. Mowing first year plantings of NWSG all but eliminates the possibility you will have reseeding first year, which is a very attainable goal with proper preplant preparation.
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H20fwler
5 year old buck +
That’s the same thing we did the first year in our pasture to keep it crowning good.
Year four the switch/big and little bluestem and Indian are thriving.
White Birch Farm
5 year old buck +
Here are some examples of why relying on mowing, which is fine fallback option when weed were not controlled prior to planting, is less than ideal. While I have lots seedlings that are already 3-4’ tall in the 20 acres I did this year...three months after seeding, I also have seedlings Still emerging all like this. If they emerged at this time of year under a foot of competition, the chances of them surviving winter would be greatly diminished.
I've had horrible luck with switch. I sprayed a file with Gly for a year, had it clean/brown going into winter, frost seeded, applied Simazine before spring green-up, a round of Gly before germination and it looked horrible. That fall had the neighbor mow (don't own one) and I'd say it looked worse this year. I've given up on it.
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White Birch Farm
5 year old buck +
Here you can see the difference between using a preplant herbicide to control weeds and grasses, and not. Both sides were treated the same preplant, with the exception of imazapic being used on the right side, which is a NWSG stand, and the left, which is a pollinator stand. Notice the ground is still unshaded three months after seeding with no mowing. 
Rit
5 year old buck +
I have always found that proper preparation the fall before planting helps tremendously. Switch is slow to germinate so good weed control is crucial. I have used both Simazine and Atrazine. Atrazine at the legal limit surely didn’t seem to help much. I feel the same about Simazine. Disclaimer though I have heavier clay soils. My first year after planting I nuked the first green up with gly. I had some foxtail issues year one but 3 years later most of my switch is 6’ tall (CIR variety) and the Kanlow is pushing 8’. I haven’t done anything else to my switch no mowing, no spraying, or burning. It’s thicker than I’d like but over time I suspect it will thin out on its own. 
White Birch Farm
5 year old buck +
Here is the top of some 3 month old Cave in Rock switch. It was approaching 4’.
