If you plan to plant tall fescue this fall, decide which variety you want to grow and get your seed ordered as soon as you decide. The seed crop in Oregon looks good, and we expect good supplies of seed tested and approved by the Alliance for Grassland Renewal. For information on the commercial varieties available and a list of certified dealers visit www.grasslandrenewal.com. Note a new variety approved by the Alliance two years ago, “Triumphant Protek” from DLF, will be available again this year. The other varieties on the market are Jesup MaxQII from Pennington, Estancia with ArkShield from Mountain View Seeds, Martin2 Protek and Tower Protek from DLF, and BarOptima plus E34 from Barenbrug. Each has it’s own selling points and origin story so you are encouraged to study them all. Texoma MaxQII will not be available this crop year, but will return next year.
If you plan to plant tall fescue this fall and have not soil tested yet, get samples immediately and plan on liming and fertilizing well before planting. Follow your renovation calendar carefully and apply glyphosate on the optimal date for your renovation strategy. If you plan to use “Spray-Smother-Spray-Plant” and have not planted your summer annual yet, consider switching to the “Spray-Wait-Spray-Plant” system. If you are in drought at the current time, wait until there is significant rainfall and some time for weeds to sprout before applying glyphosate. If it doesn’t rain in time to keep up with your renovation calendar, consider postponing planting tall fescue this fall and instead plant a winter annual.
By June, most tall fescue tillers that produced a seedhead have dropped mature seed. Any of these seeds could come up and contaminate a new seeding of tall fescue. If you planned on planting tall fescue this fall but didn’t control seedheads, continue with your plan but postpone planting fescue until next year and use a cool-season annual (but not annual ryegrass) this winter and a warm season annual next summer. With stands of Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue it should be ok to allow mature seed to develop and build a seedbank to be a future benefit to your pasture.
If you are just now thinking you might renovate some toxic tall fescue pasture, use glyphosate to kill the existing stand now and plant a summer annual, or wait and kill it in late summer and plant a winter annual. Follow with cool- and warm-season annuals and plan for tall fescue planting next fall. While some land should never be tilled, in some situations a tillage step will help incorporate lime and fertilizer, and may result in better stands than no-till. Also, if you are adverse to using glyphosate, then tillage is the best tool you have to get a clean start in a complete renovation. After initial tillage, allow weeds and other crop seed to germinate, and then till again to kill those seedlings. Continue through several cycles of that, and then finally plant the tall fescue into a firm seedbed.
With first-year stands, the challenge of surviving summer is upon us, and conditions are pretty poor across the tall fescue belt. We need to make sure that any grazing from now until cooler weather is light. In a normal year it is the best advice to make hay or graze new stands in April and/or May and then stay off them completely during summer. This year growth has been very delayed due to the drought, so farmers may be taking their first grazing in June. This can work as long as you don’t graze too short, and use a back fence to protect regrowth. Cutting hay in June is not recommended as you will open up the stand to infestation by crabgrass and other summer annuals. A light grazing in late August or whenever there is a lot of biomass available can be used to stimulate tillering and set up the fescue for high quality autumn growth.
Much of the tall fescue belt remains gripped in drought. For any developing stand of perennial grass, make sure to follow the principles of drought management. Namely, never continuously overgraze any pasture, especially a new stand. Instead, if you have no grass ready to be grazed then move the cattle to a sacrifice area where they can be fed hay until rains return and pasture conditions improve. Farmers that practice this approach find that a few weeks after a good rain their fields recover quickly. Even when moisture is adequate, follow the principles of drought management so you are resilient when dry weather does hit.
~ Matt Poore, NC State and The Alliance for Grassland Renewal
The Alliance for Grassland Renewal is a national organization focused on enhancing the appropriate adoption of novel endophyte tall fescue technology through education, incentives, self-regulation and promotion. For more resources or to learn more about the Alliance for Grassland Renewal, go to www.grasslandrenewal.org
The Alliance for Grassland Renewal 