Maintaining Weeds

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This week we finished flushing cows to gather embryos for the embryologist to see and grade. In which we flushed around 15 cows ensuring that we have a good set of embryos. After, we turned out the cattle to a fresh pasture that I have personally irrigated for the past month. Then after we flush and moved, I went and sprayed a chemical mixture to kill of invasive weeds such as pigweed, as well as, dandelions and Canadian thistle.

Some concepts that I would like to challenge is planting in the late spring and early summer. When planting, I understand that soil temperature is especially important for germination of seeds. But with the increase in heat, would the soil temperature become too high and cause the seeds to wilt before any nutrients arrive? Moreover, we planted corn this past week to make soilage for the cattle for late fall and winter.

At this point in my internship, I have some questions as to why some weeds have been known to be kept keeping nitrogen and when sprayed released as a bed cover. So, why wouldn’t you insist on planting these to use as a cover crop that would produce a layer of nitrogen for plants?

From what I have learned this week I have done some research on my own to have a better understanding of what we do here at the ranch. For one, pigweed as I have mentioned, is a hard weed to fight when planting due to its competitive growth and how it mass produces seeds creating more to fight back. That is why we spray chemicals to beat it back, and to give the alfalfa mix we have, time spread a good chance to grow. Then, we used a way of no till planting to plant corn to allow the ranch to have a stretcher for food during the winter.

Submitted by: Cody Long

Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team.