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No Till Notes: 'Cheat grass'

I wish I had all the money I’ve spent over the years trying to control cheat grass on our farm. Cheat grass has been a problematic weed in winter wheat production for as long as anyone can remember.

My grandfather and father were battling cheat grass when I was a young boy starting out farming. We were conventionally tilling our ground in a winter wheat/summer fallow cropping rotation. Dad would use a stubble mulch farming practice to maintain more residues on the soil surface. This would usually involve a couple of early season disking of the field, followed by a chisel plow, then field cultivators and rod weeder to prepare the seedbed for winter wheat planting.

The problem with the early season disking of the fields was trying to kill all the cheat grass in the field. Generally there would always be some cheat grass that would survive and make seed. In the fall when we would plant the winter wheat the cheat grass would also sprout and become a real problem in winter wheat production.

Inevitably we would go back to using a mold board plow and turn the soil over as a way to bury the cheat grass seed during the summer fallow portion of the cropping rotation. This seemed to thin the cheat grass weed problem out temporarily for a crop or two. The plowing of the fields was expensive and time consuming and would sometimes lead to more soil erosion problems because of the lack of residues on the soil surface.

When glyphosate herbicide became available we started to spray the fields in early spring to get a good kill of the cheat grass. This worked well on killing the cheat grass that was growing so we didn’t have cheat grass going to seed. The problem with this early version of chemical fallow was there would always be more cheat grass seed waiting to germinate when we seeded our winter wheat crop and we would wind up with some cheat grass in the winter wheat crop.

Trying to control cheat grass eventually led us to continuous no-till crop production. With the crop rotation we began using we were able to make huge strides in controlling our cheat grass problem in winter wheat production. This system has worked well in helping us manage cheat grass so it isn’t as big a problem anymore, but it is still a problem.

There are better herbicides available now to help manage cheat grass in winter wheat production but the best management practice in my opinion is crop rotation. What we are finding with the introduction of field peas into our crop rotation is that Mother Nature has adapted to this rotation and we now have more spring germinating cheat grass.

After we have planted the field peas we wait until just before they emerge and then apply herbicide to kill all the weeds growing in the field including cheat grass. What Mother Nature has done to adapt to this crop rotation is to have more cheat grass germinate later in the spring after we have applied our pre-emergent herbicide to the field pea crop.

It amazes me how a few cheat grass plants that germinate and grow in the field pea crop can produce a blanket of cheat grass the following year. Cheat grass has to be one of the most prolific and problematic weeds we have on our farm.

To combat the spring cheat grass emerging in our field peas we will have to monitor the fields of peas to determine if the spring cheat grass has established itself this year. If there is more cheat grass coming in the field peas we will apply a grass herbicide to control the cheat grass.

I’ve always felt weed control in crops is more manageable if you can keep the weeds from going to seed. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to weed control. The other lesson I’ve learned is Mother Nature always wins and she will adapt her plants to fit the crop rotations you are repeating in your farming operation.

 

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