Herbicide Free Prairie

Some people have asked me how to establish a native prairie without herbicides. A number of years ago, I purchased a 64.5-acre farm to start a nursery business. I decided not to grow crops on the 60 acres I wasn’t using as a nursery. That land would become a hay pasture. With no money to purchase seeds and no fence to keep animals contained, I’d just let nature take its course. 

In five years, several grasses had begun to grow, forming a prairie. Far too many new grasses were Old World bluestems. However, the next year I began seeing early arrivals of native bluestems. Natural succession was doing what I hoped. The taller natives started pushing out the Old World. 

Making hay and shredding at the appropriate times helped to keep the pasture moving in the right direction. This is a good plan but not what most people want. Wanting instant prairie, many ranchers and wildlife managers choose herbicides to kill everything, so they can start all over. I won’t deny that this works, but at what cost? There are other ways. 

On a client’s land, we hand-planted native grass seed collected along local back roads. We overgrazed the land, dispersed the seed, and allowed the livestock’s hooves to press the seed into the soil. The following year, seeds began to emerge. More seeds were needed, but that year, the number available was limited by drought. We could have mowed the grasses but chose to graze. This was a low-cost way of growing a new prairie, but still slow. 

A friend had a few acres that she wanted to plant back into native grasses. She overgrazed, disked the field, drilled the seed, and covered the entire area with compost. Very quickly, the new native grasses emerged. This method was a lot more costly, but effective. The cost to plant a large area might be prohibitive. But to do an acre or more each year might be affordable. Checkerboarding the pasture will allow for natural seed dispersal and quicker establishment.

Another rancher I know always talked about how he wanted native pastures but didn’t know where to begin. When I talked him into managing his cattle differently, the native grasses “magically” appeared. The simple method was to combine all his herds into one and rotate them through the pastures, giving sufficient time to allow the native grasses to recover. And with good management those grasses are still there, pushing out weeds and non-native grasses.

A new method I am going to try this spring will be to use a subsoiler. This piece of equipment opens a twoinch- wide trench as deep as the soil and the tractor will allow. I have used a subsoiler to open ground while installing irrigation pipe at a couple of ranches. I noticed after using it, a few more native grasses appeared, but I didn’t think much of it.

Anyway, the plan is to open the soil with the subsoiler, plant a few seeds (dusted with mycorrhizal fungi), sprinkle a little organic fertilizer and compost along the trench lines. I will try to plant about an acre for a test plot. The strips will be about six feet apart. If it is successful, I will come back and plant other rows between the six-foot spacing.

According to the book I read, this method allows more water into the soil where the new plants can immediately thrive. This will also be a good water infiltration study.

At the same time next year, I am going to try another method. In another area of the ranch, I will plant a few 1-gallon Eastern Gammagrass. I have been growing these gallon pots since late last year. This area already has a few clumps of that native grass. Cattle love Eastern Gammagrass, and they eat it like candy. I know it won’t grow as thick as plowing and seeding, but this is worth a try. I know of people who have done this. Native American Seed sometime sells both seeds and live root plants to install.

My biggest problem with using herbicides to establish a native pasture is the damage they do to the environment. Herbicide drift will kill a number of non-targeted plants. Plants 5-10 miles away can be killed by the spraying. This happens all too frequently. You can even be drifted on still days with no wind.

All chemical herbicides kill plants; they also kill soil microbes. Sometimes the problems persist for years afterwards. These chemical pollutants move downstream with water runoff. Fish and other aquatic life suffer miles downstream. Agriculture is the biggest polluter of our nation’s streams.

And when herbicides kill soil microbes, they also kill many of the critters living above the ground that eat those microbes. Birds are one of the biggest losers. Quail, turkey, bobwhite and kildeer are some of the birds whose numbers are dwindling due to herbicide and chemical poisoning. The birds live at ground level, eating, breeding, and laying eggs.

Companies that produce these herbicides say they don’t persist very long in the environment. But the effects last longer than advertised (by word of mouth). Manufacturers are reluctant to put the lasting effects on the label.

If you are interested in seeing me trial some of these methods for establishing native grasses, let me know and I will send you an email a few weeks before I start the trials so you can attend.

David E. Will is a rancher and consultant living in Fayette County. He can be reached at 830-629-9876 or by email at dwill207@satx. rr.com.