Land/Wildlife Management Without Chemicals?

[SwampCat]

Comments on another thread made me wonder - does anyone intensively manage their land without using chemicals - from fruit trees to waterfowl impoundments. There is nothing I like about using chemicals - but to be honest, I dont see how to get away from it where I live. I am not anti weed. The picture below is a “clover” food plot with more weeds than clover - and I am good with this



However, here in the south, we get a lot of growth during the summer - here is another food plot with summer growth on it



In the south, if you were attempting to control weeds by Mowing, you would never get off your tractor.

Or, you would bury it to the top of the exhaust pipe



I have tried to grow fruit without spraying - I have never grown one single piece of fruit to maturity on fifty trees when I didnt use chemicals.

I would love to never buy another chemical - is it possible to manage land without chemicals?

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

Short answer no. I would contend if you want to change the composition of poor forest management and field management you are kidding yourself if you think you can do that without herbicides

 

[SD51555]

I think it depends on what you're trying to do. Now, I will also say, I don't know anything about the speed of biomass accumulation you deal with in the south. Up north, we get 4 months of frost free growth, and then it's cold the rest of the time, or can be.

How hard a guy tries to bend nature is what'll drive the degree of intervention needed. I've been at all out war with such tasks and trying to figure out how to avoid as many of them as I can. So two big questions come to mind. One, how can I improve my natural habitat? Two, how can I improve my food plot resilience and production.

On natural habitat, I spent years going out of my mind fighting nature with cages, mats, mulch, posts, non-native trees, watering, spraying etc. I was going out of my mind failing while trying to outwork and outspend nature. It's lead me to question how much I should try to bend nature and also question how I could get more out of what was already there and using what I already have. I still use cages and buy some trees from time to time, but that's mostly for aesthetics.

On plots, I don't know what the answer is. What I'm figuring out now is, the do-less method steers a plot right back to what it was supposed to be before I started manipulating it. I keep getting to about 5 years, and my output gets pretty diminished. I am trying something new this fall. Instead of mowing these grassy perennial plots, I'm just going to seed in cereals and roll it down. Nearly all of the standing grass is about gased and finished. What I want to see is if I don't cut it, will that slow down it's regeneration? I want to see if the cereals can root and punch up through the rolled grass. I pitched some old oats onto my lawn a few weeks ago, and those oats are outrunning my lawn grass by a mile.

 

[BenA]

I wish. None of us wants to use chemicals. I don't think it's possible unless you're talking about doing it on an extremely small scale. I cut a tree of heaven, and a hundred more pop up. If invasives weren't an issue or you didn't care about them, I guess you could. But, allowing invasives diminishes the native landscape and the creatures that rely on it.

 

[SD51555]

I don't have invasives, so I have to count my blessings there. The closest thing I have to an invasive is balsam poplar. Good news is, I've found lots of uses for it after cutting it down. I use the chunks to fill the holes I've made around the property fixing things. The brush rots fast enough, so I just leave that lay.

I've also discovered the new sprouts (they have enormous winter buds full of flammable resin) when dried are as good as diesel fuel when it comes to starting fires. I spend time each winter walking around and snapping them off with my hands. Now I can collect them and dry them out and keep as fire starter. I don't know if I need it, but it'd be neat to try to use them to start brush piles instead of diesel fuel and having to haul the firewood and flame thrower.

 

[SwampCat]

While this field looks like johnson grass, it is supposed to be brown-top millet - and there is a fair crop under all the johnson grass. My intentions were to plant sunflowers so I could spray the overwhelming johnson grass - but the sunflowers didnt make and I planted millet. This is not what I consider a weedy field - which I am OK with - this is a weed field with some millet in it - which for a dove field, is not satisfactory compared to my inputs in expense and labor.

 

[Turkish]

Comments on another thread made me wonder - does anyone intensively manage their land without using chemicals - from fruit trees to waterfowl impoundments. There is nothing I like about using chemicals - but to be honest, I dont see how to get away from it where I live. I am not anti weed. The picture below is a “clover” food plot with more weeds than clover - and I am good with this

View attachment 80723

However, here in the south, we get a lot of growth during the summer - here is another food plot with summer growth on it

View attachment 80724

In the south, if you were attempting to control weeds by Mowing, you would never get off your tractor.

Or, you would bury it to the top of the exhaust pipe

View attachment 80725

I have tried to grow fruit without spraying - I have never grown one single piece of fruit to maturity on fifty trees when I didnt use chemicals.

I would love to never buy another chemical - is it possible to manage land without chemicals?

No it’s not possible. Too many mistakes already made that managers are trying to overcome.

Due to exotics, I’d contend that NOT using chemicals is mismanagement, if your objective is to optimize deer, turkey, and quail habitat in the Deep South. Without exotics, I think you could probably manage openings with fire and disking. I think sweetgum (a native) also necessitates chemical use in woodlands. I don’t see how you manage a forest to benefit wildlife without sweetgum becoming an issue. Maybe you could burn it frequently enough, but I doubt it.

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

If I open up some daylight I will have at minimum one of three invasives takeover. Sycamores trees, sericea lespedeza, or Japanese stilt grass. There’s no method currently known to get rid of those without spraying.

 

[Angus 1895]

I use an E GO weed strimmer, mow, and irrigate. I also try to spray with a hand sprayer to cut down on use. It’s amazing how a hand sprayer cuts down on herbicide use.

We only have one apple tree……..as of yet never sprayed it.

The red currants are doing ok so far.

But the chokecherries are full of midges.

I think to reduce herbicide use one must apply mind over matter.

If you don’t mind them weeds………it don’t matter!

 

[b116757]

I use pretty much no chemicals on my fruit trees only exception would be if I notice a cambium minor infestation on my apple trees then I mix up permethrin. I do throw them a little triple 10 in the spring. Now for pasture managment it’s a diffrent story I spray a lot of selective herbicides for mostly brush control and invasive control we hand cut off hundreds of Osage orange and honey locust sprouts in the last couple days each small stump gets a small dose of Tordon RTU

 

[Catscratch]

Never spray any of my fruit trees.

A gallon of gly lasts a yr, maybe 2. Most of it goes on the driveway, but certainly some on plots.

Cattle and fire are pretty handy at times if you want to avoid chemicals.

Just started doing some tillage in plots the last yr. It's handy too.

 

[Turkish]

I use an E GO weed strimmer, mow, and irrigate. I also try to spray with a hand sprayer to cut down on use. It’s amazing how a hand sprayer cuts down on herbicide use.

We only have one apple tree……..as of yet never sprayed it.

The red currants are doing ok so far.

But the chokecherries are full of midges.

I think to reduce herbicide use one must apply mind over matter.

If you don’t mind them weeds………it don’t matter!

Not to nit-pick, but I’m not spraying “weeds” because I mind them. I’m spraying them because deer and turkeys mind them in their unchecked state. Frankly I think it flies under the radar just how much our landscape has changed due to insufficient give-a-damn about controlling invasives.

 

[Angus 1895]

Not to nit-pick, but I’m not spraying “weeds” because I mind them. I’m spraying them because deer and turkeys mind them in their unchecked state. Frankly I think it flies under the radar just how much our landscape has changed due to insufficient give-a-damn about controlling invasives.

I totally agree.

I had another farm before this one. My last few years there I used 80% of my chemicals on the neighbors land.

It’s just sickening how the weeds are tolerated by many. Even on public lands it’s awful.

What I was saying in a round about sarcastic way is……if .noxious weeds bother you….or matter……you are not going to like not spraying.

 

[Barndog56]

You could try using goats as herbicide. But that would only work if your desirable species regrew faster than the weeds the goats were taking out.

 

[Angus 1895]

You could try using goats as herbicide. But that would only work if your desirable species regrew faster than the weeds the goats were taking out.

Agreed!

Smoked goat is tastier than roundup!

 

[SD51555]

Here’s a look at what year 5 looks like in my permanent perennial plots. There’s some grass, there’s a little Canada thistle left, little trit, little clover.

Some good things happening too. I’ve got a monster bee balm bush this year.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SwampCat]

I think land management in the south is more problematic - in this discussion. I have never found a no spray fruit tree - except figs and persimmon - that is, if you want to produce fruit. With a growing season that lasts nine months - or more - we probably have to contend with a lot more invasive problems

Below is a common amount of growth in one growing season. This was bare dirt in April

 

[SwampCat]

Here’s a look at what year 5 looks like in my permanent perennial plots. There’s some grass, there’s a little Canada thistle left, little trit, little clover.

Some good things happening too. I’ve got a monster bee balm bush this year.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Five years with no equipment or herbicide on the bulk of my land would result in a thicket of head high honey locust, persimmon, box elder, and sweetgum - if upland, add cedar

 

[SD51555]

It's too bad @Crimson n' Camo ain't around. He seemed to have some luck with less inputs in the south, but I don't know how many years we got into his throw and mow plot.

 

[Crimson n' Camo]

I think dgallow had it figured out a long time ago and you really need grazers involved to optimally manage