Warm season grasses?

reddog

reddog

Well-known member
With all the warm temps... is anyone seeing any warm season grasses starting to come up yet. I wanted to do some early RoundUp on some cool season grasses, before the warm grasses emerged.

Im bringing the sprayer out to do the yard Thursday. Does anyone think that my Buffalo grass (established) will be greening up yet. I think it takes 60 degree soil temps for it to emerge.

Anybody have more ideas?
..
 
Not yet, I am doing the same. I hope I time it right. The green up just started here. So in 1 week I'll hit her. Die Canada Rye, Die. lol. Can't wait to see the result this fall.

What part of the world are you in? I talked to the grower yesterday, and you have about a week to 10 days for a window. And you want it 60+ degrees in there for round up to work. Then crab, brome, timithoy,canary and rye will get her. You do not want to wait for the warm season to sprout. Here in Mid MN, it just started to pop on Sat.
 
Im in NW Iowa, and there are no ws grasses emerging yet, but the cools are really coming strong.

All of my forbs are up already and looking good.

Sure is a wierd year..
 
I live around the Sioux Center/Orange City area and my WSG are not up yet.
 
Started a thread about 3 days ago about this. Mine already has about 3 inches or so of new green shoots sprouting down in the center of the clumps of little blue.
 
Can somebody tell me what this post is about and what you are spraying for? I am pretty new to pheasant habitat management.
 
So roundup will not kill dormant stuff? In what little reading I have done I thought they recommend some cool season nesting type grasses and some warm season stuff for later in the year. Is that not the case?
 
Roundup or generic glyphosate will not kill plants that are dormant, they must be green and actively growing. As far as cool season grasses for nesting, there are a few somewhat desirable types but I dont know them off hand. Most folks who think of cool season grass think mainly of fescue, or at least I do and its absolutely NOT desirable.
 
The thick stem Cool Season grasses make good nesting and cover for gamebirds. Yes, Fescues, rye grasses, prairie June grasses, Blue grass, Buffalo Grass and the fine stem grasses in general are in many cases OK to spray. Noxious and invasive plants and broadleafs are also sprayed.

Warm Season Grasses are by no means the only good grasses for Pheasant nesting. Alfalfa, Sweetclover, forbes, weeds, and a mixture of grasses Warm and cold are by far the best overall. Not burned, mowed, grazed, disked or baled.:) Trust me.:thumbsup:
 
mnmthunting said:
The thick stem Cool Season grasses make good nesting and cover for gamebirds. Yes, Fescues, rye grasses, prairie June grasses, Blue grass, Buffalo Grass and the fine stem grasses in general are in many cases OK to spray. Noxious and invasive plants and broadleafs are also sprayed.

Warm Season Grasses are by no means the only good grasses for Pheasant nesting. Alfalfa, Sweetclover, forbes, weeds, and a mixture of grasses Warm and cold are by far the best overall. Not burned, mowed, grazed, disked or baled.:) Trust me.:thumbsup:
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O.K. Up till now I was at least sipping the Kool Aid, and open to different and plausible management plan. Then you said the magic word. FESCUE. There isn't anything good about fescue and upland birds, period. If they use it all, it's because there is nothing else, if they are successful at actually raising a brood in this foul toxic fescue tangle it's nothing short of a miracle. As my old vet used to laugh and say, livestock could stand belly deep in fescue and starve to death. ;) I like my cattle with docked tails and belly deep in the pond to ease the fescue toxicity, aborted calves due to placentas which will not break, cows with no milk. Whatever did we do for fun before fescue. :cheers:
 
oldandnew said:
O.K. Up till now I was at least sipping the Kool Aid, and open to different and plausible management plan. Then you said the magic word. FESCUE. There isn't anything good about fescue and upland birds, period. If they use it all, it's because there is nothing else, if they are successful at actually raising a brood in this foul toxic fescue tangle it's nothing short of a miracle. As my old vet used to laugh and say, livestock could stand belly deep in fescue and starve to death. ;) I like my cattle with docked tails and belly deep in the pond to ease the fescue toxicity, aborted calves due to placentas which will not break, cows with no milk. Whatever did we do for fun before fescue. :cheers:
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Hey Old, I think you read his post wrong. I did it also the first time I read it. He's not saying fescue is okay as a cool season grass, he's saying its okay to spray it along with other invasive and noxious weeds, ect. Or at least thats what I think he's meaning.
 
Jaytee, I sure hope Old read the hole post through:( If not I can assure Y'all I don't think Fesque is pheasant friendly. There are how ever several varieties of FESCUE some worse then others.
I can't recommend any for pheasant habitat.

Crap MAN! please read through the posts.:cheers:
 
moellermd said:
No but they probably are the best. I have never seen any cool season grasses that have any staying power in snow.
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Fields of matted down cool season grasses are fine for nesting hens. By the time they start nesting the next round of green grass is usually coming up anyway.

Brome being one of the top choices for nesting hen pheasants. The draw back to cool seasons (like Reed Canary) is over growth, making it difficult for chicks to maneuver around once they've hatched.

A warm season grass such as Switch grass can also get too thick for nesting success. A good diversity of warm seasons is good to go, along with fields of maintained cool season grasses.
 
Smooth Brome gets bad mouthed a lot theses days. All in all pheasant do well in a good patch of Brome. The big problem is the fine stem grasses like June grasses are even more invasive then Brome, and it's native. Fine leaf, weak stems. A stand of Brome will be taken over by the fine stem soddy native in time causing a lot of Winter matting.

I like the WSG I have a patch of Switch and a patch of Sideoats. Normal snowy Winters WSG has the same value to pheasants as the Brome.

My Switch is 5 years old and doing well. Not close to being to thick for pheasants. Hard to walk in and I can't see the dogs but the birds are doing well too. Hawks are everywhere, the thick stuff saves a lot of birds.

I can see where Reed Canary gets matted and a burn justified.

1pheas4, Right on, I can't see a straight stand of WSG. On my pheasant habita I will from now on include alfalfa and sweet clover, Western Wheat Grass, and some Switch and Sideoats. Gets thick and nasty as heck, but not soddy, great tenting. Alfalfa and sweetclover has a much sturdier stem then the grasses. Holds up well to heavy snow, tons of insects. Chicks will eat leaves at a young age, good protein. Best of all the old growth canopy for nesting and brood raising.:thumbsup:
 
mnmthunting said:
My Switch is 5 years old and doing well. Not close to being to thick for pheasants. Hard to walk in and I can't see the dogs but the birds are doing well too. Hawks are everywhere, the thick stuff saves a lot of birds.
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I agree. Fields of Switch grass are great for pheasants (besides nesting). I've witnessed many, many birds utilizing the centers of large switch grass fields to find shelter from blizzards and come out rockin' and rolling. Personally, I love the stuff and promote planting it when people ask about planting pheasant "shelter" cover. As you mentioned, it's great cover for bird to escape predictors too.

It sounds like you've got some nice cover in the works for nesting birds with your mixes MnM. Good luck:thumbsup:
 
I am spraying mine tomorrow. I got enough green up to justify doing it. And with it being so warm, I don't want to hurt the warm's. I can do it again next year, then I should be good. Once I feel the cools are pretty much under control, I can add in some sprinkles of flowers and clover. Right now I should end up with Forestberg Switch on the edge(Taller variety for winter) Dakota switch, MN big blue, Itasca Blue, Little blue, indian, & side oats. Then next year I will put in some clover, black eyed susans, and a few other flowers. I went this way so I can really spray the hell out of it to get rid of bad cold seasons, weeds like thistle and others first. Once I am sure the stand is choking most bad stuff out, I can add these others. But no sense if I want to curtail it for a few years first. Right now, you won't find a thistle in it. So it's working good. This fall it should look great.:thumbsup:
 
FC, you mentioned things greening up already. I just checked out a field of cool seasons near my house. The green is already 8 to 10 inches. I can't recall ever seeing such early growth in past years.

Rains have held off a bit in my area. If we keep this up we should have a great hatch. Time will tell. We still have some time before the pheasants start nesting.
 
I was out today doing some field work, had to get some plateau/roundup sprayed in a 1/4 acre area where I'm planting about 700 shubs in the next week or so. I had a spot or two in one of my NWSG fields that had some fescue creeping back in and I was going to spray it while I was at it. I'd mowed this area about 2 weeks ago to expose the fescue and darned if I didn't have about 3 to 4 inches of new growth on my existing NWSG. I was hesitant to spray but I went ahead and hit it with about a 1.5 % mix of RU along with Plateau. I'm hoping the RU wont kill my NWSG, its in its 4th year so it should have a very extensive root system.
 
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