Grass burrs/sandburrs

[Howard H.]

I happened on a video a while back where a range specialist mentioned that if you have grass burrs it’s because of poor soil fertility.

I had never heard that before, but since then I have noticed we only have them around our place in
areas where there is rocky outcrops or thin soil.

I was just wondering, does that mean if I fertilized around this specific location on a rocky hill where I store some of my old iron, would that kill them or prevent them? I’d like to get a stand of buffalo grass coming to improve the area, so am not sure what herbicide would work in this case…

Thanks for any tips,
Howard

 

[sandcastle1]

what does your soil test tell you?

 

[da.bees]

Having farmed on sandy soil when hoes were used to control weeds I can tell you grass burs do just fine in fertile soil. Some folks mistakenly believe what you are saying when they see a good stand of grass with few to no burs in it. Get soil in good shape, plant perennial grass, fertilize and it will shade-out burs. We sprig Coastal Bermuda and use pre-emerge to keep burs down first year. If overgrazed or burned off in later years burs can come back with a vengeance. Crabgrass and grass burs are cousins so pre-emergence formulated for Crabgrass works great for burs.

 

[Tx Jim]

In my 35 yrs of custom baling I've seen non fertile & fertile fields of Coastal Bermuda get areas of grass burrs for no good reason or explanation. Yes good fertilization helps grass grow faster and shade out grass burrs. Grass burrs will get stuck into the treads of some rd baler forming belts & are very difficult to manually remove burrs from belt treads. BTDT

 

[showcrop]

The state agronomist used to always say at meetings that the best defense against weeds is a good stand of cool weather grasses