Getting rid of Johnsongrass

I can't figure out the AFIK acronym....but Johnson Grass is toxic to horses. It can cause inflammation of the bladder and kidneys.The quantity has not been determined. It is supposed to be most harmful after the first frost.

Back in the 50s my brother sister and I chopped out the JG in the corn crop. In a 5 acre field we could each do about 2 to 3 rows a day. We were little kids. Dad finally gave up or felt sorry for us and began using poison weed control, sorry,don't recall what kind. I recall one year he chopped the corn and JG as silage. It got fed out to the pigs mostly. We raised pigs to slaughter so he wasn't real concerned about their good health.

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There are endless combinations of truth.

I agree with the grazing. We dog it up when it first started in our bottoms, then tried to kill it with herbicide for a few years. Nothing worked. Finally, we had a drought one year, so we put up an electic fence and let the cattle in on it. They ate it to the ground. The next year we had no Johnson grass. It appears that between the drought and the cattle keeping it mowed to the dirt, it completely wiped it out.

I suspect this was a special situation, but keeping it eaten down for a few years should work also. We had kept the cattle out of it, because it was only in our 13 acres of creek bottom, and we were trying to keep it from spreading to the rest of the farm. Likewise we had never used it for hay. It save us from burning though all our hay that summer, the cattle got fat, the Johnson grass was eradicated.

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Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

I just remembered that, when living in SW Mo, there was a round patch of it maybe 20ft round. They likely fed JG hay there. Well, it grew up tall. Don't remember if that was a drouth year or not. There is a day or 2 in Aug that is the most perfect time by the sign to kill anything. When that time came, I cut it. I let it dry a month and when a good killing sign came again in the 3rd or 4th quarter, I burnt it. It burnt HOT. Then, when the sign was right again around a month later, I plowed it. Didn't have any next year.

I can tell you the right sign, and the day this year to do that, if you want to.
AUGUST 22/23/24

AFIK= As far as I know. I realize it does not exactly fit.

COWS

I will give you a clump of crab grass than you will be bragging how much you like your Johnson grass

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why did I leave the plow in the field and look for a job in the town

5% vinegar will kill it, esp if applied in the sun. But that's a lot of acreage to do that.

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Send rain I've got the crab grass and buyers for it.

The conventional wisdom for controlling Johnson Grass where I was reared in Fisher County, Texas (zone 7, ave rainfall about 20 ipy) was to plow it frequently during the winter with a disk breaking plow or moldboard (and prior to tractor era with walking sod buster). My understanding was that the aim was to turn the live roots to the surface where they would freeze and dehydrate. Each plowing was to bring another group of roots to the surface and near surface. Since I am age 70, that was well prior to the advent of Roundup and other herbicides. One or two winter plowings will not do the trick. I noticed one poster which apparently stopped plowing at frost, which apparently did not work. The best kill conditions are very cold and very dry.

Johnson Grass in Kansas may have evolved to be more winter hardy than in zone 7 Texas, but you could try what worked there.

I had some freeze out in a field over winter that I had run a sweep plow over ahead of the wheat drill last fall. I've done it before but it's just luck and usually smaller less established patches.