Land/Wildlife Management Without Chemicals?

[Catscratch]

Lol, yesterday I did 2 gallons of spot spraying with gly, then this morning sprayed cleth... right after spouting off earlier in this thread that I don't use chemicals much! Guess all this talk of not using chems motivated me to be a hypocrite.


I live in the middle of nowhere KS. For 2 months straight every yr I watch aerial sprayers carpet bomb pastures around us. Not a inch left unsprayed, including water. They don't shut the spray off when they go over herds (cattle or deer). The mix is usually nasty stuff and they don't pay attention to restrictions. Chemicals are unavoidable in our food supply. It sucks.

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

My farmer sprayer glyphosate/liberty mix yesterday on the beans. The deer were chowing down a couple hours later. I’ll be chowing down on them in a couple months. Sucks but that’s the routine in ag country

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

It is certainly a balancing act, but you can save a lot of manual or tractor labor time by using chemicals. I use some herbicides, but last night my sons and I spent some time pulling waterhemp by hand.

You only have so many hours of free time, so you have to decide if you want to weed acres by hand or use herbicides. Or just have a dramatically smaller food plot.

 

[Barndog56]

Potato fields around here get sprayed heavily, mostly by plane, for Colorado potato beetles. I pick them off my potato plants by hand and give them to the chickens. If I didn't they would defoliate them in a week. No way the big farms could do that.

Some potato farms also spray herbicide to kill weeds just before harvest, to make it easier for the harvest machines. I believe that's done a lot for wheat as well?

An airplane was spraying the green bean field near us this past weekend. I have no idea what they're spraying for as the green beans in my garden don't need anything.

 

[b116757]

It is a ton of work, but I will say the only real problem I have is wild grape. I have that every where. I cut and burn trailer loads every summer. If anyone has a natural way to get rid of it that would be awesome. Hand weeding the gardens is a pia but worth it in the end. Been trying different mulching methods but haven't found one I like yet.
Fields, I work just before planting, then mow where I can a couple times in the summer (this works for pumpkins early on) once everything starts going it kind of shades out the weeds. Still working on a better method, as the weeds kind of take over. I try to mow before that seed out and that helps ,but it's not ideal.

Seen guys use cardboard, old carpet and the commercially available weed barrier

 

[SwampCat]

It is a ton of work, but I will say the only real problem I have is wild grape. I have that every where. I cut and burn trailer loads every summer. If anyone has a natural way to get rid of it that would be awesome. Hand weeding the gardens is a pia but worth it in the end. Been trying different mulching methods but haven't found one I like yet.
Fields, I work just before planting, then mow where I can a couple times in the summer (this works for pumpkins early on) once everything starts going it kind of shades out the weeds. Still working on a better method, as the weeds kind of take over. I try to mow before that seed out and that helps ,but it's not ideal.

How many acres of food plots, gardens, and how many fruit trees do you have?

 

[SwampCat]

Neighboring 70 acres pasture - 25 head of cows on it. A lot of honey locust and green briar. They sprayed with the cows in the pasture. Killed all the broadleafs - including tons of white and med red clover. I HAD two big bee hives right next door that were feeding heavily on the clover. After the spraying - they both absconded - took their honey and left.

 

[Bill Loser]

How many acres of food plots, gardens, and how many fruit trees do you have?

Gardens, this year around 2 acres. With another acre of pumpkins, food plots maybe an acre combined right now. I have 6 acres of corn to the north And 8 more to the east.. food plots not really needed much. 14 apple trees , 4 pear trees, 2 cherry trees. No chemicals for 6ish years now. It's not great, still trying to find the best ways and weeds are non stop. Gardens are a constant fight to stay ahead. But to me it's worth it.

 

[omicron1792]

You nailed it for me @SwampCat. In the south you either have all weeds or use some herbicides. I do only use for summer crops so only spray once a year.

 

[SwampCat]

I purchased a Woods Seeder about ten years ago. I can use it similar to a no-till drill. It is a great tool for planting and greatly reduces erosion. However, to use it in no till fashion realistically requires a chemical burn down prior to planting.

 

[TreeDaddy]

You nailed it for me @SwampCat. In the south you either have all weeds or use some herbicides. I do only use for summer crops so only spray once a year.

Ditto for me in east texas

Any spring planting is fruitless without gly or some other herbicide

bill

 

[BenA]

The only thing I planted in Louisiana that didn't require herbicides in a spring planting were cowpeas or forage soybeans. On both of those, I was able to get a pretty good weed free plot with just bushhogging, disking, broadcasting, followed by a light disking in of the seed. In fall plots, I didn't really need to worry about weeds. If I left the fall plots to fallow, by the next summer, the weeds were over my head sitting on the tractor.

 

[SwampCat]

I do believe the move toward no-till and throw n mow - in other words - reduced tillage planting methods, has resulted in the use of more chemicals. I know it has in my case

 

[BenA]

I do believe the move toward no-till and throw n mow - in other words - reduced tillage planting methods, has resulted in the use of more chemicals. I know it has in my case

I agree. I went to a little Kasco no-till drill in Louisiana in 2006 or 2007. If I didn't use chemicals then, the beans I planted would have probably been choked out by the weeds.

 

[Catscratch]

I do believe the move toward no-till and throw n mow - in other words - reduced tillage planting methods, has resulted in the use of more chemicals. I know it has in my case

And vice-versa, the use of chemicals resulted in no-till. Without cheap gly I think we would have stuck with tillage.

Super weeds were actually started in the south when farmers went to a single mode of control. Relying on a single chemical with no mechanical means built resistance built.

I started playing with TnM in the mid 90's. Mostly fall cereal grains and clover. I didn't spray because I didn't really know about chemicals (pre internet) and I didn't care if it got overrun with weeds the next yr. I wanted attraction for a hunt.

Fast forward to now. I have 10yr old plots that have never been tilled. But last yr I started bacck to some tillage. I can see me do a mix from now on. Likely heavily TnM but with fallow, tillage, and mob grazing involved.

 

[Belo]

Gardens, this year around 2 acres. With another acre of pumpkins, food plots maybe an acre combined right now. I have 6 acres of corn to the north And 8 more to the east.. food plots not really needed much. 14 apple trees , 4 pear trees, 2 cherry trees. No chemicals for 6ish years now. It's not great, still trying to find the best ways and weeds are non stop. Gardens are a constant fight to stay ahead. But to me it's worth it.

I took a half assed attempt at pumpkins this year. Finding the weeding to be a pain in the ass because of these viny sprawling things grow. Any tips or suggestions? Right now I'm just kind of weed wacking around the 20 or so plants I have in about a 1/4 acre.

 

[SwampCat]

And vice-versa, the use of chemicals resulted in no-till. Without cheap gly I think we would have stuck with tillage.

Super weeds were actually started in the south when farmers went to a single mode of control. Relying on a single chemical with no mechanical means built resistance built.

I started playing with TnM in the mid 90's. Mostly fall cereal grains and clover. I didn't spray because I didn't really know about chemicals (pre internet) and I didn't care if it got overrun with weeds the next yr. I wanted attraction for a hunt.

Fast forward to now. I have 10yr old plots that have never been tilled. But last yr I started bacck to some tillage. I can see me do a mix from now on. Likely heavily TnM but with fallow, tillage, and mob grazing involved.

I can get away with throw n mow or no till if I wait until mid Oct to plant. If I plant between Mar and mid Sep, any kind of no tillage planting will likely be overwhelmed with “weeds” before the planting gets established.

 

[SwampCat]

No other way I know how to deal with this mess than herbicide. IF you did not use herbicide, you would have to drain, wait three weeks and bush hog, then disk, then plant - and get half a crop due to weed competition. Forty acres in scattered areas would take a week to plant - plus a lot of equipment, labor, and fuel A drone, herbicide, and aerial seeding accomplished this in five hours, on mud and water.


For you guys who dont use chemicals, if the army worms are eating up 40 acres of millet - you just let them have it?

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

Had a buddy go regenerative with cows. Stopped spraying for a year and rotational grazed his plots and fields. His fields were eaten up with weeds this year. Back to spraying

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

Man this is a great thread! To me, certain grasses are the super enemy. Weeds are very beneficial to all forms of wildlife. I understand in certain instances, you have to knock them out. Like the 6' tall crap that grows around all your fences and outbuildings. But if we can just get over the fact of things not looking (perfect), or what our idea of that is, we'd be much better off. I live in big ag country and you'd be hard pressed to find a weed in a crop field or border, even a ditch. I sprayed 15 acres of pasture after frost last year and walked away, frost seeded a lighter lbs/per acre switchgrass into 10 acres of corn stubble, no spraying. Now seem to have all forms of wildlife up to my neck! Rabbits, squirrels, deer, innumerable song birds, Herons, woodcock, wood ducks, turkeys, bobcats, coyotes and not to mention all the insects. These animals simply didn't exist on this property before when it was being sprayed and managed for cattle. I attribute a lot of this to weeds being able to do what they do instead of trying to control them. Will they need to be managed to a point, absolutely. But we don't need clean, monocultures of everything to fit in neat little spaces in our toyboxes in order to succeed in wildlife and habitat improvement. We had a lot of pheasants running around here in Illinois back in the days of dirty fields, fencerows, and farm yards. Now I go some years without seeing one. And when I do, they're not out front of some beautiful pollinator crp enrolled field. They're usually in some old fallow area that never got developed.

Anyways, spray away or step away. Either one is management and has to be used with caution. I tend to lean towards the latter.