Burning clover plot?

So last year I had a clover plot get overtaken by grass and I was wondering if I could burn that grass off this winter and not kill the clover that is under it?

What about spraying it with a heavy dose of Clethodim in the spring? That is made for grasses in clover. I’ve had good success with it.
DT

No, it won’t work that way.

Down in the south and mid-southern states they burn a lot to revive cattle pastures. The grass is the first thing that comes back and it comes back with a vengeance.

As DT says, kill with Clethodim. It’s not exactly cheap, but a gallon goes a long way. It works on grasses except for Sedge, which I have only been able to kill by spot spraying with Roundup.

I have heard of many having success with killing off grass in clover by using lower doses of Roundup. I have NOT tried this myself and you would have to do some reading to arrive at what you think is the right mix ratio because I know in “full” doses, Roundup (Glyphosate) will KILL clover. But apaarently some have found that weaker doses of Roundup will kill the grass but only stunt the clover. Certainly I would test this on a small area of one plot first.

Grouse

I have had success with using 1/2 the normal dose of gly on grass in a clover plot. It worked really well for me. Stunted the clover for a couple weeks but it came back very strong after that and the grass did not. The key is to NOT do it when the clover is stressed like in August. Try doing it on a cool spell a day or so before some rain. Just DON”T do it more than once a year or you will get gly resistant grasses. If the light dose doesn’t kill it it will make them stronger and more gly resistant.

I strongly recommend that you don’t burn it. Raking up a cut into a pile is one thing, but don’t do the entire lot. You’ll have 200% more grass and weeds come back. I know, I’ve made this huge mistake. The weed seeds that are already there will explode into action. Just look at any wildfire 1 year later and it proves this point.

I tried the diluted gly a couple times with mixed results. I ended up reworking most of my clover and reseeding. There is no easy way until the clover has taken over and choked everything else out

Do you have wet or dry soil?

How big is the the plot?

What’s your budget?

What equipment do you have access to?

Have had poor results with cleth. Sure there’s more operator error to it for me than anything, but I can’t get it to kill the grass in our plots. We hold moisture and have poor draining soil, so even when it’s dry, lack of moisture is rarely an issue. That’s why I think it can’t kill the grass, but don’t know for sure.

Stumbled on this by pure accident. Was going to gly a plot by a pond and went lite on the mixture. Disced it and came back a couple weeks later planning on spraying it again and it was all clover shoots. Have done it three times with similar results. Seems like it’s fairly common for others too.

Our land has been burnt once by the dnr through the whip program. It’s amazing how fast the grass shoots back up. It’s darn near instant. But we have great top soil, a fairly decent ph in the high 5.9 to low six’s without adding anything in northern MN and the soil is always at least moist. Trying to keep that grass at bay is a war.

basseyes wrote:

Have had poor results with cleth. Sure there’s more operator error to it for me than anything, but I can’t get it to kill the grass in our plots

I don’t think it’s operator error so much as expecting Cleth to do too much. If the grasses have reached a certain point, Cleth is just throwing good money after bad. Randy is 100% right, there comes a time when replanting is the only option.

You have to have reasonable expectations. Weeds in clover have been an issue since man first planted seeds in the ground. If there WAS a roundup ready clover that you could use full strength roundup on, everybody would be using it fro this exact reason–the next best weed control methods are only so-so.

From my experience with Clethodim, if you spray clover plots twice year beginning in their first full season, grasses are greatly reduced. When I’ve sprayed older plots, there is certainly a kill, but nothing is going make up for the lack of control from the beginning.

I’m going to try the low-dose Glyphosate method per Sticker’s post on my oldest clover plot (3.5 years) and see if that will salvage it for one final season. I wasn’t using cleth at the time I planted this plot, so this is the “worst case” scenario because grasses got a year head start. My other clover plots look great, as I said sedge is the only problem and I belive hand spraying late last summer will take care of most of the sedge. We’ll see what greens up in the spring.

I’m going to take some pictures this year of a couple of 1 square yard areas to really have an objective look at Clethodim and low-dose Roundup control methods in clover. This should be a good science experiment to be able to see before/after pics of an area in detail to evaluate control effectiveness.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

I’m going to take some pictures this year of a couple of 1 square yard areas to really have an objective look at Clethodim and low-dose Roundup control methods in clover. This should be a good science experiment to be able to see before/after pics of an area in detail to evaluate control effectiveness.

Grouse

That’s a good idea.

Here is a pic from 2 years ago. I hand sprayed with a heavy dose of Cleth in the areas where you can see the clover. The whole plot was totally choked out and looked like the right side.
DT

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I would also suggest mowing the plot often. Clover will bounce back almost immediately from mowing. Grass will come back slower. The more you mow the more the clover will thicken up and take over the grass. Clover also spreads thru the roots, so every time you mow you increase the spread thru the roots.

Sticker, great point on the mowing

Thanks for the answers guys. Has anyone tried burning their timber off to thicken and rejuvenate good growth?