The weather has continued to be good for pasture seeding this year and we have been getting just the right amount of rain here Kentucky to get the our new grass up and growing. I would say for areas with latitudes South of Kentucky that I wouldn’t seed any later then the 1st of May unless you leave at elevation, like areas in the Appalachian mountains. For us we have the potential of frost tonight which should most likely be our last so I generally will say plant grass seed no later then 2 weeks after the last expected frost. Any later then that and you risk the grass not having a chance to get established before the risk of hot dry weather sets in.

A lot of people think that once you get the grass seed down that you want lots of rain but that isn’t the case especially when renovating a pasture in the spring. The reason for that is that you want enough moisture to get the grass seed to sprout while at the same time limiting the growth of established grasses and weeds which are going to compete with your emerging seedlings.

I want to briefly discuss Kentucky Tall Fescue and why I do not recommend its use. Horses grazing on Kentucky Tall Fescue that is not endophyte free suffer from a number of problems related to compounds associated to the relationship between the grass and the endophyte. Mares are especially at risk and there is an increased risk of abortion in pregnant mares grazing on tall fescue exclusively. There are endophyte free varieties of Kentucky Tall Fescue but they do not compete as well with the endophyte variety, which are native to Kentucky. So if you completely tilled a field and put it in endophyte free fescue within a couple of years you would have a significant amount of endophyte infected fescue and there is no way to tell by looking how much endophyte infected fescue you have. The truth is you will always have some Kentucky Tall Fescue in your pastures unless you keep them managed like a golf course. Generally the key to managing the amount of native tall fescue that you have in your pasture is to keep your pastures grazed or mowed at heights that do not allow it to go seed. This also allows the other grasses to compete with tall fescue because generally if not managed it will grow above your other grasses, especially your Bluegrass and Ladino Clover and smother them out. Keeping your pastures grazed or trimmed to a nice height will allow the other grasses to fill in and form a dense sod which is also better at holding up under the sharp edges of horses hoofs. I will do a more detailed discussion on the problems associated with horses consuming Kentucky Tall Fescue for a later article because it is something you still see from time to time.

I had said I would go into more detail on the other grasses but I am going to save that for our fall series because I want to talk about using Timothy and Orchardgrass for stockpiling in the fall to extend the use of your pastures into the winter.

I am going to extend this series of articles into discussing specific problem weeds to control in late spring management of newly renovated pastures. The one that I see and have some of in my own pastures is Curly Dock. Thistles, especially Nodding Thistles have also become a problem over the last 2 decades and I will tackle them as well. In short though I am not big on using broadcast amounts of herbicides on a pasture unless it is so overgrown that you are going to use a general kill everything herbicide and re-establish the pasture afterwards. If a pasture is well managed mainly with proper grazing and trimming as well as dragging the percentage of plant species other then what you have specifically seeded will be of no significant negative impact on your pasture or horses.

We are into the middle of March now so this is a good time to start purchasing seed with the plan to get it out by the middle of April. We decided to try something different this year and did our seeding early in March as opposed to early April. So far it has been a good spring for seeding at least through most of Kentucky. We have had enough dry weather to allow us to get into the fields without doing damage while at the same time getting decent periods of showers to wet the top inch of soil.

Now for our choice of varieties of grass and legumes the key is variety. This spring we used Kentucky Bluegrass, Orchardgrass, Timothy, Perennial and Annual Ryegrasses as well as Ladino Clover as our Legume. We used them in different mixes depending on the use of a specific area and condition of the pasture.

We will start with everyone’s favorite, Kentucky Bluegrass. The recommended seeding rate for Kentucky Bluegrass is 10-15 lbs. Per acre when seeded alone. We recommend going to the high side on that and seeding it at 1/3 that rate in a mixture. A good mixture if your pasture has been heavily grazed and you want to get Bluegrass established again is to go with the Bluegrass, Ladino Clover and Annual Ryegrass. In this mixture we would use 2 lbs. Per acre of the Ladino and 5 lbs. Per acre of the Annual Rye. We seed a lower amount of the Annual Ryegrass then what would be normally recommended but our purpose in using the Annual Ryegrass is to get some grass up quick both from the standpoint of protecting the ground as well as giving horses something to graze on which tends to also protect the Bluegrass seedlings without the Annual Ryegrass competing with the Bluegrass.

Next article we will discuss our uses and recommendations for our other grasses and why Kentucky Fescue is not on our list.

So you have had some time to think about how you are going to use your pasture. If you are like us that question was relatively easy to answer. Now with that in mind we need to answer the next question. What is the condition of our pastures as we look at them today? It is still early enough for most of us that you probably don’t see a lot of new growth yet unless you are in the Deep South. So do you see a lot of bare ground with just sprigs of grass indicating that almost all the top growth has been removed or worst yet you see where the grass has been pulled out, roots and all. If this is the case then what you are going to be doing is more reestablishment then renovation.

There is another case where reestablishment may be necessary even if you do not have significant bare ground like we just talked about. If a pasture has been over grazed for a number of years you may not see any bare ground because all you see are weeds. If that’s all you seem to see then before you think about spending money on grass seed you have to eliminate the weeds. There are two ways to accomplish this, either you have to plow the weeds under, or through the use of chemical weed controls to kill them. Because of the cost and local environmental laws you should consulate your local County Extension Agent to decide the best method to eliminate those weeds. In a later series we may get into discussing a variety of weed controls to spot treat pastures but you should get to know your County Extension Agent.

Now if you are lucky if see more blades of grass then bare ground or weeds and all we need to do is some spring renovation to improve both the quality and quantity of what you already have. One of the prime ways to improve grass pastures is to add some variety of legumes to your stand. There are cases where it is impractical to add legumes because grazing pressure will be too intense to allow for legume survival from season to season and it is not cost effective to add legumes back every year. One of the best overall combinations of grasses and legumes for horses is Kentucky Bluegrass and Ladino (White) Clover. This combination forms a dense side that when managed properly is both for grazing and training on.

So take some time and go out and walk your pastures and take an inventory of what you see at your feet. Next time we will get into some of the specifics of different mixes of grasses and legumes.

March 1st is considered the start of Spring pasture renovation for most of us in the Central U.S. and March is probably the one month in the year when it is acceptable to plant grass seed anywhere in the U.S. So it’s a good time to kick off our series on Spring Pasture Renovation.

We need to start by making some decisions on how we plan on using this pasture this year. So the first thing to understand is what is referred to as the pasture carrying capacity. Horses generally should consume at least 1 percent of their body weight per day in forage dry-matter. If the main source of this dry-matter is pasture then a 1000 pound horse will eat and waste about 3 tons of pasture dry-matter during a 6 month grazing season under typical conditions. So for most of us it would take about 2 acres of pasture to maintain a mature horse.

So back to our initial question, how do we intend to use this pasture or maybe more simply how to we plan to have our horse(s) use this pasture? Is this going to be primarily an area for them to get out and have exercise or is the intent to make this a primary source of feed during the growing season and possibly into early winter? Of course there are a lot of variables that play into both that initial decision as well as our management going forward.

For the sake of making this series as helpful as possible we are going to assume that you didn’t do soil test last fall and based on those test you didn’t apply lime and fertilizer as indicated by them. We are really going with the McGyver attitude, we are in a bind and we are going to get creative to make the best out of a bad situation that we can. And who knows, even those of you who already have an annual plan for pasture maintenance can pick up a few ideas to add to your current plan.

So we will stop here and let you think about how you are expecting to use your pasture this year. Certainly if you have questions as we go along please post them in our forums and we will also have some live chats to discuss this subject in real time.