# What is Your Spring Spraying Regimen?



## VA Haymaker (Jul 1, 2014)

Grass hay here - mostly timothy and a new field recovered with it's native mixed grass.

Since I don't use chemicals with residuals, I've been thinking about spraying twice. Early with 2,4-d ester or Weedmaster and later with Pasturegard. They would be spaced apart and sprayed such that the timing wouldn't preclude cutting the hay when it's ready.

Obviously the goal of spraying is to kill down weeds, but to also take advantage of any pre-emergent qualities of the herbicide to suppress summer annuals to the extent possible for a clean first cut.

You folks spray one and done or more than once?

What is your spring spraying regimen?

Thanks,

Bill


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## SCtrailrider (May 1, 2016)

Well Bill, Fescue here, I've been using Grazon P&D for several years now, I don't have any weeds to speak of. I started off early spring, around April me thinks and again early fall as needed. With the residuals it has worked good here, I have noticed I have a somewhat good stand of vetch in one field and it seems to be getting better, I would have thought the residuals would take it out but it hasn't yet...

One thing that did help me was my fields took me 2 yrs to recover them, plowed & plowed and plowed some more, so my seed bank has been used up a good bit..


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## qcfarms (Dec 14, 2014)

Regimen for my common bermuda is as follows:

Mid to late Feb-1 quart per acre of glysophate, symazine, and 2-4d

Early May-put down all the NPK called out by my soil test

Early June-cut Bermuda and once the field is clear of hay come back in with 1 quart per acre of 2-4D along with 8 oz per acre of Roundup Power Max (trying to suppress sandburs)

Depending on the rains I may top dress the Bermuda with another 100 lbs of N per acre. That gets me another cut in mid July then may again in September depending on rains.


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

For cool season grass hay I typically will use 2,4d or weedmaster in the spring(March) before first cutting if there are any broad leaf weeds. Sometime after first cutting in mid summer I might have to go back and spray again for the summer broadleaf weeds. The weed I have the most problem with in the summer is horsenettle so I will typically spray something like pasture guard or remedy which works much better than 2,4d or weedmaster on horsenettle and still won't have any long lasting residuals in the soil. In the past I have used grazon p&d and milestone but I quit using them because of the long lasting residuals in the soil that become a problem if I wanted to rotate those fields to soybeans or alfalfa.


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