Converting scrub to pasture

Pines might be a good idea for our rotational plan.

Goats LOVE pines.

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It depends on what you mean by keep it short. If you mean making sure the tree seedlings get cut down, I agree. You need to let the grass have more height than what I see in the foreground so that it can reseed itself and develop stronger roots.

Yes by short I mean long enough to let the grass stretch its legs but short enough to not let the briars and saplings reseed.

I just saw the Allan Savory talk recently. For the past two decades we've been doing the same thing he suggests. Our climate is not desert but we too have very thin, gravelly, sandy soils but we're on steep slopes. Stoney, sandy, stumpy, sloped soils.

What I've been doing is fencing with the contours of the land because that creates terracing over time as the animals hooves, wind, rain and frost move the soil down hill to the fence line where it builds up. The water then soaks in better so we retain more water rather than it running down the mountain.

Along with this we've been doing rotational grazing varying from mob grazing to rest. This has gradually improved the quality of our soil, the thickness of the top organic matter from about 1/8" to a few inches and in some areas a couple of feet (terracing effect). Additionally the pH has gradually climbed from where it was at about 4.5 to closing in on neutral 7 now all without having to add lime (which we can't do because of terrain).

The technique of grazing to improve land works and is applicable to multiple climates.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Speaking of Geoff Lawton, here's his latest vid on rotational grazing. There's not tons of detail here, it does give the big picture fairly well.

Info starts at about 1:35

http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/63637-cell-grazing?r=y

When I bought my farm, 40 years ago, the first thing I did was prepare a garden. The soil was sod covered clay. I knew I needed to add lots of decaying plant material. The old barn had an accumulation of hay chaff. The stuff that sifted to the bottom of the hay stack over many seasons. This plant material was short bits of straw and dust like dried leaves. It had laid there on the barn's dirt floor, getting wind blown snow on it for over 30 years. I filled wheel barrow after wheelbarrow with this soil conditioner. I thoroughly mixed the clay and the humus with a rototiller. I meticulously removed the grass roots that were in the sod.
A week or so later, I discovered that thistle seed can stay viable for 30 years and this hay chaff was at least 50% by weight thistle seed. Or so it seemed. My garden was a mass of new thistle seeds. It took steady weeding over several years to rid the soil of this pest.
I plowed up a field of grass. It was a variety of grasses, but mostly timothy and a fair amount of red clover. I attacked the weeds with a spring toothed drag and a disc harrow. Every few weeks, I'd cultivate weeds from this field.
With the required 5 tons of lime per acre, I adjusted the ph to match the ideal for the hundreds of pounds of alfalfa, clover and timothy seed I planted.

Through the summer the planted crop grew.
The following spring, the field was alive with greenery. Yellow Rocket or Wild Mustard took over, shielding the alfalfa, clover and timothy. By summer, before the Wild Mustard made seed, I mowed it. It was so thick, when dry, it left an organic blanket over my struggling alfalfa, clover and timothy. I was unable to harvest a crop of hay. The following year, the weeds took over, again. Again I mowed them down before setting seed. Again I lost a chance at a hay crop.
Eventually, with my intervention, I had a hay field. But every year, I battle thistles, dewberries, raspberries, thorn apple, milkweed and several others.

To imagine that a palatable grass is going to spring up from nowhere is folly, IMHO.

So you're saying that if you do everything the opposite way that Lawton, Salatin, Savory, Judy, et. al. say, that what they recommend won't work. I agree.

Be sure to let us know how it worked out in your situation.

Agree with haypoint or not he has given his actual hands in the dirt experiance.

I'm glad he did. I was just pointing out in his effort to disagree with Salatin in particular, he is actually in violent agreement. Since he says he disagrees with Salatin on this issue, I'm confused as to the point he was trying to make.

I make it a point to say that I have little significant expertise in this area, which is why I do so much reading. If haypoint had said he had actually tried the methods advocated by the MIG and mob crowds, I would defer to his experience.

My personal experience, as I've indicated previously is only marginally applicable to Salatin / Savory concepts. But I refer you to post 43. I've yet to put livestock on the pastures I've created from pine forest, but the wild hog love it, to the point of destroying those pastures. They have found the native plants to be highly palatable. I'm working on the fences around the pastures, but they were a lower priority to the orchard, and 2.5 miles and counting of perimeter fence to stop trespassers and poachers. So I'm just getting to the pasture fences. Give me a year to get my livestock on the farm and I'll let you know how the pastures are progressing.

Where my garden/orchard is going in, I have amended it with nearly 100 tons / acre of a combo of sludge, buried wood, wood chips, charcoal, and peat. I've also brought clay up from under the sand as I cleared stumps and have run 3 rounds of cover crops. In 1.5 years I have transformed that area from Florida jungle on white sugar sand with a tested .5% OM to a rich appearing black dirt. The latest soil test should be back in a few weeks; I pick up the sample kits on Thursday. About the only problem weeds are some sort of palm that leaves many tuber-like roots in the soil.

I fully admit my efforts in the orchard are not economically justified in and of themselves, but did fit in well my efforts elsewhere. The sludge costs me nothing but about $10 in diesel to haul each 7.5 ton load, so when I'm driving near the sludge supplier anyway, I take a dumper. The peat came from a dry pond I was deepening to improve water retention. The chips came from slash I had to get rid of after logging. The charcoal came from burning slash I could not chip.

So I've got experience with sandy soil, but not with livestock being the means of transforming forest to pasture.

Again, we have agreement. Adding 100 T/ac of compost will enrich soil.
It will be educational as the native Bahia grass competes with native and invasive weeds.
In my experience, livestock avoid some weed species, allowing that weed to multiply.
Will you follow the recommendations from your soil test and add lime and bag fertilizer, if needed?
As the weather warns and everything greens up, it will be interesting to see the OP's briars sprout from the mature root system as undesirable weeds sprout from years of weed seed accumulation. Unabated, it will race back to it's former bramble by summers end.
This isn't out of a book. This is something you can watch.

Decades ago, Mother Earth News had an article about an old Asian guy that believed if you got the soil healthy, bring every aspect to ideal for the crop you wanted, then flood the soil with that crop's seed and keep adding that seed, while preventing other plants to make seed, year after year, you could have weed free pastures without the use of harmful herbicides. That seems believable, while stocking cattle on arid range land doesn't.

The length of the grass won't matter regarding the saplings and the briars. You haven't killed those plants, just whacked them off. They will regrow from the stubs that are left. About the only way to prevent them from coming back is to actually kill them. That would be mowing constantly until the roots have lost all their strength to regenerate, chemical herbicides, or digging them. As for any annual that reseeds itself, you have created a perfect mulch that will hold enough moisture to help them come back.

Have you done any soil testing to see how much nitrogen you need for the grass to grow? Do you know what kind(species) of grass it is?

geo

Sorry that this comes from a "book" but here is the scoop on bahai grass. IT actually is an invasive/introduced species, having come from Brazil in 1913. Today it is used as pasture/forage grass in much of the Southeastern states, along with Bermudagrass. It can--if properly fertilized, carry one animal unit per year per acre. It has a medium to low protein content, and will slow production during the late summer months. If you do not fertilize it(however you wish to do that, chemically or organically), your carrying capacity will be lower and you will have to supplement with hay or other protein sources, plus sequester the animals in another area. The grass can be quite invasive in a garden situation. http://www.caes.uga.edu/publications...cfm?pk_id=7862

Just offering it for your use; you may already know this.

geo

In my pasture, the bahai, over the course of last summer fought a losing battle against weeds and pigs. I think the pigs like the roots of the Bahia or possibly something else that lives under the Bahia. I mowed weeds, spread 1T of sludge /ac to see if the smell would deter pigs since they will not go in the orchard where there is 45 - 50 T / ac, planted cereal rye in the fall, pigs attacked again. I've left the pasture looking like a bombed out war zone until the fence is complete and then I'll start over. But my results are similar to yours in the battle of the weeds vs improved pasture when grazing livestock is not part of the picture and I agree that without mowing or grazing, the OP's field will return to brambles this summer.

The sludge is a lime equivalent because it contains about 50% coal ash and 50% humanure. It is very high calcium but not a great source of OM. I used it on the new pastures and 40+ ac of existing silvopasture at the rate recommended by soil tests. I used it so heavily in the orchard, creating a too alkaline soil that will need sulfur, because it improved the tilth so much.

I think the point you are missing about stocking rate of livestock is that, according to the Savory/Salatin crowd, we have been doing it wrong for the last 100 years. This is one of those cases where the experience of grandpa farmers is wrong. In Savory's full version of the TED talk, he discusses how in his earlier life, using all the standard stocking density wisdom of the 21st century, he recommended shooting elephants in order to reduce density, but found the ground continued to deteriorate. Now he believes that was all wrong and has results to back up his new perspective, that higher stocking density actually builds the soil. MIG relies on high density to force livestock to eat or trample most everything in a small area and then move them off for weeks or months. This avoids livestock eating the favored forage to death and causing the pasture to become nothing unpalatable weeds. It also mimics nature where tightly packed wildebeest and buffalo continuously move across the plains.

Had I only seen Savory's talk, I would have been interested, but not a believer. I'm a doubting Thomas by nature. Having read and seen the results of the MIG folks, it has made me a believer.

The wagon tracks of the Oregon Trail are still visible after 150 years "rest". By your account, the trampled area would by now be represented by two strips of lush grass across the dry high plateau.

Consider the "grazing" response of most plants.

When a plant is grazed, it will often respond by sending out new growth quickly to start capturing solar again before its energy reserves in the root systems are depleted.

If the plant is crushed underfoot (or under wheel) then there is no grazing response.

In a heavy drought year, you can see everywhere I have walked the same path more than once during the next year, but where the cattle or goats graze there is no real sign of their passing, except droppings.

Nearly every pasture I have ever seen has cow paths. I do not see how trampling encourages plant growth. I was responding to "MIG relies on high density to force livestock to eat or trample most everything in a small area and then move them off for weeks or months."

Depends on the length of time the area is trampled. Sure if there is constant trampling for a prolonged period of time there will no doubt be damage, but if there is a short term trampling effect what you get is seed transfer.

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Agreed. I would not think trampling would do it either. And I would never leave livestock of any sort in a pasture so long as to let them trample everything down. I'm an advocate of rotational grazing. But wanted to mention the grazing response that plants have.