How to Get Rid of Broomsedge in Your Pastures

  This time of year, I get a lot of questions on how to rid pastures of broomsedge grass. It's a problem because animals will not eat mature broomsedge grass, though they will graze it when it is immature for about 3-4 weeks. Here in Missouri, that time period starts the end of June and at 6 inches tall it's pretty good forage. But you can't stockpile it and you can't graze it in the spring, so you don't have good pasture. Broomsedge grass thrives on thin, poor soils that nothing else will grow on except maybe moss and cedars. It is also a very selfish grass. It likes to live by itself in a monoculture if given the opportunity, and it creates a dense mat that chokes out other plants. Basically, these plants are an indicator plant that tells you your soil is bankrupt. The old timers in our area called it “Poverty Grass.” Appropriately named I would say.In our thin soils here in the hills of mid Missouri, the common practice is to cut hay on land that is not suitable for grazing or cropping. This land will turn to broomsedge in two years if hay is removed without putting fertilizer back on the land to replace the nutrients that were removed with the hay bales. Almost every farm that we have under lease today was in mostly