RAIN OR SHINE: Always Be Prepared

By David Jessee

Farmers are accustomed to dealing with summer droughts that affect plant growth, but even plentiful rain can provide challenges and opportunities for action plans. Whether the paddock is primarily used for exercise or to offset hay purchases, preparing for two weather scenarios can help you get the most out of your investment in time, effort and money, given weather’s unpredictability.

Separate the feed and exercise areas if you have sufficient land area. If it turns dry, grasses need more time to re-grow, and the feed production area expands. If rain is plentiful, you can expand the exercise area. Summer annuals such as pearl millet can be seeded in late spring for rotational grazing all summer, but it should be prepared for new establishment.

Pay attention to weeds in timing of control for annuals, perennials and biennials. Plentiful rain means plentiful weed growth. Areas of dead weeds can then be reseeded.

Apply fertilizer and lime whether it’s droughty or rainy. On a pasture used for exercise, it’s still very important to maintain P and K fertilization and pH to protect the sod in dry weather. Turf managers have known for a long time that greater traffic and stress tolerance is imparted under good fertility conditions. Farmers know that good fertility increases plant yield in drought, but good rainfall allows nutrient enhanced yield in good weather.

Apply N, P and K: ideally ½ in early spring, ¼ in late spring/early summer and ½ in August or early September. If you have plenty of forage or rain, leave out the late spring application and split fall/early spring.

Use drought as an opportunity to over-seed in late summer and fall. Go ahead and overgraze in late summer to weaken grass competition, control weeds and till (or drag) to further weaken the sod for new seedlings. If you get plenty of summer rain, just control weeds and use fall fertilizer to produce new fall tillers.