You may remember from a previous article that I had mentioned grazing the grass just a few inches, kills the same amount of root thereby creating organic matter in the soil. This is a good thing. There needs to be lots of organic matter in the soil to feed the microbes. But here is another thing. Leaving a lot of leaf on the plant allows the grass to capture more of the available, late season sunlight for regrowth. Around here, it freezes and remains fairly cold in the winter. However, in the deep South, winter grazing is a very real thing. The winters are warmer there, obviously, so the potential for winter growth is great, indeed. Around here, the days are short in the in the fall, but is still relatively warm well into December. The trick is to develop a system that allows for the growth of late season grass. Such as Tall Fescue. Jim Gerrish says that not another grass compares to the nutritive value of Tall Fescue in cool weather. So the logical step is to plant some Tall Fescue. The management of that would be to maintain a leaf presence that will allow the fescue to grab all the sunlight it can, even during the shorter days.
As for the pasture mix, Alan Nation recommends a sizable portion of you pasture to be warm season perennials, over seeded with a short season annual. This recommendation is for the deep South, but I think it can be tweaked for those of us in the not-so-deep-South.
On the topic of legumes and what to plant, if anything, has been gnawing at me. Our land is very acidic. It grows blackberry brambles and queen Ann's lace very well. We do have some little bluestem, orchard grass and fescue. I don't know about the orchard grass, but the little blue stem doesn't come on until June. We have no legumes other than a few incidental plants that sprang up from some red clover hay we fed last year. So what do I plant?
In this book, Mr Nation spends little time on grass species and what all their attributes are. But the little he does talk about them are golden nuggets, in my eyes. I was reading one of those nuggets about Lespedeza. It piqued my interest because I know that many farmers and ranchers around here use it or have used it in the past. I had developed a bad taste in my mouth because of all the Sericea Lespedeza we have here. "A DNR fiasco", I would say. Then, quite by accident, we found that the Dexters will eat it. So that got me kind of changing my mind, but not totally. Then I read about Korean Lespedeza in this book (Quality Pasture by Alan Nation). Now, I believe that I have completely changed my mind.
Korean Lespedeza looks to be the immediate answer to my "legumes won't grow in acidic soil" problem. It can be sown by broadcasting, which is a bonus because we don't own any tilling equipment or machinery. It can be sown into existing pastures, another bonus. But here is the kicker. Lespedeza, based on research in our state (MO.), showed that lime on heavily acidic soil will improve the yield. So, not only will it grow on our soil, but it will grow better with lime, something that needs to be done anyway.
The ideal use for Lespedeza is for summer pasture. Here is the plan, thus far. Some kind of annual Ryegrass and small grain, then lespedeza in the summer. Once the Lespedeza is established it may be managed through volunteer reseeding. Another bonus.
That's not all. I read that Lespedeza can withstand close grazing. That seems to have been a major mistake of mine. I have allowed the cows to graze the pasture too short in the past. I have to manage the grazing so to leave some leaf of the plant to encourage new growth. But, if I should slip into my old habits, the Lespedeza can take it.
Lespedeza will reseed itself from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to the Atlantic coast states. It appears that North of the Iowa-Missouri state line the value of Lespedeza is limited. The Korean variety is recommended for eastern Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, Missouri, southern Illinois and across southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It can provide a quality legume forage during the hot summer slump. This may be it for us. Like I said, I know a lot of farmers around here have, or do, use it.
(Remember to look for Alan Nations book, "Quality Pasture". Check out the Stockman GrassFarmer's website.)
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