Don't wanta intefer with a good argument, but I think 2dogs is agreeing with me that its much easier when you combine chemicals with the smothering method. But don't let me put words in your mouth.

Its not that hard to control Johnson grass with chemicals alone. Ain't no Johnson grass in my chufa patches. It can't possibly survive the chemical concoction I use on them.

You'd think correctly. I believe in smothering it all right, with 2% gly.

We had Johnson's grass so bad on our place you couldn't see my old 3600 ford in the plots when we were bushbogging them. Sprayed them twice last year with2% gly. My buddy went up last week to ow plots and they had very little in a couple plots. Most had none. Gonna try to go next week and check and spray the plots that had the spots of grass in them.

If I was dealing with an infestation of JG in my field here at the house, here is what I think I would do to try and control it………

I’d mow it for the rest of this summer to prevent it from going to seed. I’d try to time my last mowing so that I had a little regrowth come back to use for thatch at fall planting time. About 2-3 weeks before fall planting I’d come in and nuke it with gly. At planting I’d broadcast 75 lbs/ac cereal rye along with 5 lbs durana clover, 5 lbs crimson clover, 5 lbs yuchi arrowleaf, and 3 lbs of hairy vetch. I’d then mow the dead JG down over my seed to create a thatch layer and let that be my fall plot……fertilize accordingly.

Next spring you should be looking similar to what PCP’s pic looked like. I think the cereal rye may help even more though because its one of the best weed suppressants we have in our toolbox to use. The combination of the rye with the clover and vetch should have everything completely smothered come spring. Of course there is always going to be some unwanted specie left on the first round. In the spring once the rye has matured….we broadcast a crop of buckwheat into it and mow it down to immediately get another smother crop going. The mowing will also help knock back any JG that may have still been present. After that we are going to double or maybe even triple crop the buckwheat and in doing so it will keep any JG mowed back in the process. Mowing, smother crops, and gly.

Keep repeating this process and don’t disturb the soil bed. I think doing so you could phase the JG out over a couple seasons…maybe three. I’m sure it will vary some depending on the success of each person’s plantings. Eventually you should try and phase herbicides out of your plantings as much as possible. Herbicide resistance is real and something we will see more and more of in the future as we overuse chemicals.

Going up to spray my plots today. I'm mainly after the dang crab grass, but all of it gets a dose of gly.

Mow? Nuke it with gly? So now you've decided to play rough with that ol' Johnson grass.

I'm pretty sure I'll be dead before my chemicals quit working. The next guy can deal with it.

Good plan, CNC. I'm sure that would work.

Looks like farmers are gonna have to break out the plows again.

I'll start to get worried when they become resistant to clethodim and milestone.

Glad to report that the Johnson grass on my place is not yet resistant to Clethodim.

Had a few stalks to come up in a chufa patch on semi new ground. Sprayed it 2 weeks ago. Don't think its gonna make it.

I continue to be impressed by the effectiveness of Clethodim. Its way cheaper than Poast or Fusilade and works better than either one

I don't know how I missed this thread and I just read the first page so I don't know if any of this has been put to bed yet. This is going to be a long post, but hang in there.

First, you can't smother Johnson grass with any cover crop. It grows too fast and will shoot up through the cover crop and tower above it. That's not an opinion, that's just the way it is.

Johnson grass is like bermuda grass in that it has rhizomes in addition to feeder roots. You're not going to passively control anything that has rhizomes.

It takes 3 years of spraying to control Johnson grass. I've been fighting it in hay fields for 30 years. In a food plot I would spray it with Glyphosate. If it's in clover there are other means of control.

Rope wicks work okay, just okay. They work best with undiluted Glyphosate and the Johnson grass MUST be wicked twice per application in opposing directions. For example, drive over it from east to west, then west to east.

I don't know all the crops that Pastora is labelled for or what it won't kill, but in a HYBRID bermuda grass hay field, it will forver more knock Johnson grass and crab grass down. As effective as it is, it still takes 3 years to deplete the seed bank and kill the rhizomes.

Cattle grazing a field of Johnson grass will eventually kill it. The problem is that the rhizomes can lay dormant in the soil for Lord only knows how long.

My parents have one pasture on the farm that was the first row crop field they turned into a cow pasture. That was probably in 1978 or so. I never remember Johnson grass in that pasture. A few years ago the guy that spreads our chicken litter spilled a 1000 lbs or so in one spot in that field when he went over a terrace row. A six inch deep spot of broiler litter will kill any vegetation that I know of. It burns it up. After laying there all year the litter got diluted enough for vegetation to grow by the next spring. That summer, that spot was a pure stand of Johnson grass, like it had been growing there for decades.

Apparently those rhizomes had laid dormant in the soil from the time the cows killed the growth on the Johnson grass until the litter fed them enough to get them going again. It was a span of at least 30 years.