YOUR COOL SEASON PASTURE MAY BE SURPRESSING
A NATIVE GRASS STAND

You have just bought a farm which has several fescue pastures on it. One of your first goals is to eradicate the fescue and plant native warm season grasses to improve the forage quality and/or wildlife habitat. Your plans call for the use of Roundup to kill out the fescue. STOP! Don't start spraying yet! There could be a native grass stand and it can be restored.
I've seen it happen a number of times - a pasture which is apparently pure fescue is actually a native stand which has been overseeded to fescue or other cool season grass (CSG). The pasture is then managed for CSG or not managed at all. Invariably the native stand had been mismanaged and was in poor condition. The native pasture wasn't producing and the landowner wasn't receiving any of the benefits of a properly managed native stand. His seemingly logical choice was to overseed with something more productive.

Fall is a good time of year to look for indications of native warm season grasses in a CSG pasture. Warm season grasses begin a color change in the fall just as deciduous trees do. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to see the fall colors of a prairie, they can be just as colorful as the forests. Varying shades and intensities of rusts, golds and yellow are common in the grasses. Forbs add an additional dimension of color - red, purple, green. It is because of these color changes that it becomes easier to identify the native plants. The cool season grasses are still green, providing an excellent contrast to the changing warm season grasses.

Identifying specific species can sometimes be difficult. Pastures which have been hayed late in the season or overgrazed leave little leaf material to identify plants by. Many times the morphology is slightly different as well because of the constant removal of top growth during the growing season. Color usually provides the best indication as to species but is not entirely reliable. Little bluestem is a rust color and the fine leaves are usually still apparent. Big bluestem varies from rust to browns but almost always with a tinge of red. Indiangrass appears brown to gold. The leaves of indiangrass have more yellow color to them than big bluestem. Switchgrass often turns a banana yellow soon after the first hard frost. The intense yellow doesn't last long though. By the time a good freeze hits, switchgrass is tan colored. Don't let other warm season and annual grasses confuse you; they also change color during the fall. Broom sedge, crabgrass and foxtail will be very obvious in a cool season stand. These grasses tend to be less colorful, brown or tan. Very seldom do they show the hues of red or yellow that more desirable species display.

The good news in all of this is that if natives do exist in a cool season pasture, through proper management you can bring them back. You'll be surprised just how quick and vigorous native plants will recover in this situation. A simple shift in management practices will typically show results in one year. It will take up to 3 to 5 years to make the complete shift, but in my opinion it is time well spent. After that point it will take specific management and chances are that you'll never get rid of all the fescue but you can keep the stand predominately native.

The strategy during this conversion is to stress the cool season grasses while enhancing conditions for the warm season grasses. Burning, mowing, timing of the burn and fertilizer (optional) are the tools we are going to use to make the conversion. In some situations chemicals can also be used but more than likely you will be sacrificing some important components of a native stand. Chemicals which will help restoration of some plants will kill others. The chemical and the timing of application become extremely critical and should only be prescribed and used by someone experienced in native habitat restoration. (Remember, we are restoring a native plant community, these are significantly more important ecologically speaking than a planted stand of native grasses and forbs. Eliminating a species haphazardly severely compromises the integrity of the native plant community.)

Start by resting the pasture or hay field as it may be. Mow when seed stalks are forming on the cool season grasses to help eliminate additional seed being added to the seed bank. You will probably have to mow more than once to thwart seed development. Additional mowings need to be weighed against the expense. Although, theoretically it could help, it has arguable benefits. The grasses, if not severely over utilized, have been producing seed for the age of the stand and one year's production will not significantly affect the outcome. In any event if you are mowing be sure to leave enough litter to carry a fire.

During the first year you will probably not be able to burn as late in the spring as needed to get the maximum benefit of fire for the warm season native grasses. The cool season grasses will be too green at that time. With that in mind you should burn the cool season grass pasture four to six weeks after green-up. The fescue will be extremely green at this time but if you have left enough litter it will carry a fire. Your fire prescription needs to be for a low humidity day and preferably with a 10 to 15 M.P.H. wind. Typically I wouldn't recommend burning under these conditions but it will be necessary to get any kind of a burn on fescue that late in the year. Be warned, the fire will be very smoky and slow burning. The smoke will be thick and heavy. Stick with it though, it is necessary to make the conversion.

During the summer you may hay or graze lightly, but it is not necessary. If you choose to hay or graze, do so in June or early July to allow time for regrowth of fuel. Leave six to eight inches of stubble to avoid stressing the warm season grasses. If you do not hay or graze you may want to mow to eliminate the production of seed stalks on the cool season grasses. If you get any kind of response at all from the native warm season grasses it should be apparent during the fall. Before the warm season grasses go dormant there should be some seed stalks visible. Once again their fall color should give them away.

Assuming that you have gotten a positive response to your first burn and management you should burn again the next spring. This burn should be later than the first years burn though. Depending upon the amount of fescue still present, the time and conditions of the burn will vary. If there is still a lot of fescue and few native grasses the burn will have to be done similar to the previous years burn. If you've had excellent response to last years management, burn when emerging native grasses are one inch tall. If you have plenty of fuel prescribe the burn for wet or moist soil and within the limits of accepted burning weather. If the fuel is limited prescribe a low humidity burn once again.

Fertilizer can be used to improve the vigor of warm season grasses if applied at the proper time. Wait until warm season grass plants are four to eight inches tall to apply fertilizer. Apply fertilizer any earlier and cool season grasses will benefit more than warm season grasses. Use 20-20-20 up to 40-40-40 analysis fertilizer.

The burning, fertilizing and mowing scheme should be followed for several successive years to maintain control over the fescue. Utilization can be increased gradually during the restoration period, being careful not to over stress the warm season grasses. After all, it was mismanagement that was their downfall in the first place.