Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one?

   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #11  
What the great Joel Salatin said in the recent Stockman Grass Farmer newspaper when someone asked about how to rid there hayfield of Johnson Grass. " Cows love Johnsongrass : It's a wonderful summer forage. In mid-summer; it's the prefered species and unless the cows are moved from paddock to paddock they'll kill it out with overgrazing."

Joel Salatin is the editor of Stockman Grass Farmer and the owner of the wonderful farm Polyface in Swoope VA.
 
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   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #12  
I see other hay farmers throw chemicals down like theres no impact to themselves, neighbors, the planet, or the animals the feed.
Its a horse! Its a cow! It’s not a member of the British royal family.

Good grief. Some other grasses or weeds won’t hurt anything.
My feed hay Customers are smart. They dont want 1 type of grass saturated with awful harsh chemicals, which could be cancerous or deadly. And their animals are healthy and not picky.
 
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   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #13  
When I saw a field of ungrazed Johnson Grass in midsummer one time I was amazed, it looked like the best stand of pearl millet or sorghum sudan I had ever seen! I did not know what johnson grass was at that point and was sure the farmer had cultivated that crop. How could you possibly want to get rid of that? Especially when there is nothing to compare it to(in the summer), except maybe crab grass! I'll take both please.
 
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   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #14  
2,4-DB is a broadleaf weed killer. It won't do much, if anything, on johnson grass.

Glyphosate is 100% neutralized the instant it touches soil. That's why you can plant in soil immediately after applying glyphosate.

Glyphosate has been classified by ONE organization as a POSSIBLE carcinogen. It has not been proven to be a carcinogen.
Coming from a lawn care guy of all things... I'd really like you to provide a substantiating link for your comments as pronouncements like yours only sew the seeds of doubt and nothing else.

My view of Glyphosate is substantiated by my County Agronomist who is State certified in that field. That is the ingerent issue with a public forum like this. You post a comment like yours and people take it for gospel without anything to back it up, shame on you. Glyphosate does attach itself to soil particles and changes their molecular structure, why I don't use it. That and direct contact with it can contribute to cancer, much like certain solvents can be aspirated through your epidermis and migrate to your liver, causing irreversible harm which is why I always insist that my employees and myself wear surgical gloves when cleaning stainless steel in prepping for TIG welding.

How about some substantiating links that support your patently false assumptions about Glyphosate and how it don't change the molecular structure of soil for starters.

Until then, I call your assumptions phooey.
 
   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #15  
I see other hay farmers throw chemicals down like theres no impact to themselves, neighbors, the planet, or the animals the feed.
Its a horse! Its a cow! It’s not a member of the British royal family.

Good grief. Some other grasses or weeds won’t hurt anything.
My feed hay Customers are smart. They dont want 1 type of grass saturated with awful harsh chemicals, which could be cancerous or deadly. And their animals are healthy and not picky.
Good comment. The less pesticide / herbicide you apply, the less is ingested by the end user, aka: the animals ad because all my hay goes to one customer who raises resturant quality beef cattle, he insists I use as minimal as possible man made innoculants and I comply with his wishes. 99% of his beef cattle wind up on tables of high buck beaneries on the east coast. In fact, they are processed in Philadelphia.

With my ongoing health issues and my age, it's become a hobby for me and why I appreciably downsized this year. At 76 years, I have lots of other things I'd like to pursue other than making hay. Afternoon naps is one of those things.
 
   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #16  
Coming from a lawn care guy of all things... I'd really like you to provide a substantiating link for your comments as pronouncements like yours only sew the seeds of doubt and nothing else.

My view of Glyphosate is substantiated by my County Agronomist who is State certified in that field. That is the ingerent issue with a public forum like this. You post a comment like yours and people take it for gospel without anything to back it up, shame on you. Glyphosate does attach itself to soil particles and changes their molecular structure, why I don't use it. That and direct contact with it can contribute to cancer, much like certain solvents can be aspirated through your epidermis and migrate to your liver, causing irreversible harm which is why I always insist that my employees and myself wear surgical gloves when cleaning stainless steel in prepping for TIG welding.

How about some substantiating links that support your patently false assumptions about Glyphosate and how it don't change the molecular structure of soil for starters.

Until then, I call your assumptions phooey.
It was in the EU, based on laboratory animal studies, e.g. New scientific publication confirms glyphosate causes cancer at EU “safe” exposure levels – evidence ignored in EU reapproval

It might be true in humans, it might not.

Lots of chemicals behave differently in humans than in animals, which is why drugs are tested in humans as a last step before approval and marketing. Unknown issues do crop in human trials precisely because animal testing is not a perfectly accurate predictor of human response. That cuts both ways for drugs and for chemical testing.

One can sometimes see from observing human diseases mapped by geography or profession that there are human health effects (black lung and coal miners, mesothelioma and asbestos workers, silicosis and lung cancer in stone workers, etc.). Some times the effects appear quickly after human exposure, sometimes it takes decades (Erin Brokovich's issue with hexavalent chromium). I don't think that chemical safety testing is easy, and it seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation around for lots of chemicals (pro and con).

Glyphosate may have a human effect, it may not, but it has been used by lots of humans (e.g. farmers, and homeowners) so if it were potent, one should be able to see the effect. As of the moment, there doesn't appear to be a huge cancer or toxicity signal, but that doesn't mean it is zero either. One in a billion risk may not be large in the big picture, but it matters a great deal to the one. Even water is lethal in excess, and I don't mean drowning.

Personally, I try to avoid additives in my food, and I try not to put them in/on our land as well. When we first moved here, I tried to use glyphosate on poison hemlock patches we had. (Poison hemlock is really toxic; tradeoffs) As it turned out, a flamethrower was a better tool for poison hemlock here, and we quit using the glyphosate after about two years.

Then again, I try to avoid exposure to things like nitrates, and aflatoxin (a mold that grows on foods like damp corn or peanuts) as it is an extremely potent potential or of certain cancers. Like arsenic in ground water, not all problematic chemicals are man made. Life is, after all, a fatal disease.

All the best,

Peter
 
   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #17  
Life is a finite thing assuredly. If it wasn't, we'd all die at the same age in time. Of course some need to pass sooner than others and some should not even be here at all...

My issue with Glyphosate isn't the application of it, but handling it in concentrated form as in preppig it for application. Latex gloves are mandatory, just like mandatory for using acetone as a cleaning agent for prepping metal for welding. Hard to beat acetone for prepping stainless or aluminum for welding but aspirating acetone through your epidermis is bad and why I insist my employees and myself wear latex gloves when handing it.

Life is too short to end it prematurely.
 
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   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #18  
Seriously? Johnson Grass is known to produce prussic acid, especially when it's stressed (after a frost, during a drought, etc). That acid is highly toxic. Around here is it hated by cattle farmers. Most states also have strict rules on distributing Johnson Grass, i.e. you must thoroughly clean implements before transporting them.

I HATE the stuff. It pops up in my residential lawn and it must be manually dug out because it spreads underground via aggressive rhizomes. I have gotten to where I will not overseed my yard anymore because the bags of lawn seed usually have 1% or so Johnson Grass and that's all it takes to start an infestation.

I categorize Johnson Grass in the same folder as ticks and mosquitoes. EVERYTHING we have that is a nuisance was imported from other countries. Honeysuckle, Johnson Grass, Tree of Heaven, etc. Ugh.....
 
   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one? #19  
Coming from a lawn care guy of all things... I'd really like you to provide a substantiating link for your comments as pronouncements like yours only sew the seeds of doubt and nothing else.

My view of Glyphosate is substantiated by my County Agronomist who is State certified in that field. That is the ingerent issue with a public forum like this. You post a comment like yours and people take it for gospel without anything to back it up, shame on you. Glyphosate does attach itself to soil particles and changes their molecular structure, why I don't use it. That and direct contact with it can contribute to cancer, much like certain solvents can be aspirated through your epidermis and migrate to your liver, causing irreversible harm which is why I always insist that my employees and myself wear surgical gloves when cleaning stainless steel in prepping for TIG welding.

How about some substantiating links that support your patently false assumptions about Glyphosate and how it don't change the molecular structure of soil for starters.

Until then, I call your assumptions phooey.
Here is one link from the EPA. Glyphosate | US EPA
Specifically in the second paragraph it says: EPA found that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label. EPA also found that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen.

Here is another article about POSSIBLE related cancer. Can Glyphosate Herbicide Harm Your Health?

And this list shows other "Probable" carcinogens. Known and Probable Human Carcinogens

Note that some of the items on this list include: night shift work, red meat, frying, malathion, being a hairdresser or barber...

You can choose to believe whichever science you want to believe. I choose to believe that glyphosate is safe and has helped reduce the cost of food around the world.
 
   / Weed wiper... Johnson grass. Anyone using one?
  • Thread Starter
#20  
Seriously? Johnson Grass is known to produce prussic acid, especially when it's stressed (after a frost, during a drought, etc). That acid is highly toxic. Around here is it hated by cattle farmers. Most states also have strict rules on distributing Johnson Grass, i.e. you must thoroughly clean implements before transporting them.

I HATE the stuff. It pops up in my residential lawn and it must be manually dug out because it spreads underground via aggressive rhizomes. I have gotten to where I will not overseed my yard anymore because the bags of lawn seed usually have 1% or so Johnson Grass and that's all it takes to start an infestation.

I categorize Johnson Grass in the same folder as ticks and mosquitoes. EVERYTHING we have that is a nuisance was imported from other countries. Honeysuckle, Johnson Grass, Tree of Heaven, etc. Ugh.....
This is exactly the issue I have. When it is stressed, prussic acid is produced. If cattle or other ruminants eat it at this stage, it basically turns into 'cyanide'. And given Summer heat stress/drought as well as fall frost, IS A THING, it is bothersome. Cattle will clearly prefer it as it is less affected by drought. If it wasn't for this basic problem, I'd love it.

I have several pastures which are new planted Novel Endophyte fescue... so I "MIGHT" be able to move them and utilize the JG when its good and OUT of it when its concerning. But that is a lot of questioning and concern. I'd prefer LESS JG and more good other forage. While I've never lost anything from JG... I've heard the horror stories.
 

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