This one application will provide 4 to 6 years of adequate sulfur nutrition to the new pasture plants. Visible symptoms of sulfur deficiency include stunting and yellow color, although these symptoms also commonly indicate nitrogen deficiency. If you suspect sulfur deficiency after pasture establishment, cut the top 4 to 6 inches off of leaves at early bloom and submit a plant tissue sample to a lab for analysis. If grass tissue results indicate a sulfur level of less than 0.10 to 0.15 percent, you may have a sulfur deficiency. Common solutions are broadcast applications of soluble sulfur fertilizers such as ammonium sulfate or gypsum.The overriding characteristic common to newly established, dryland plant species is their low seedling vigor and slow growth and maturation. Typically, dryland perennial seedlings are so slow to get started that even several months after seedling their slim, vertical stalks are difficult to see. Since perennial seedlings mature slowly and are particularly susceptible to stress, a grower may not consider the stand to be “established” until it is 3 years old. Potential causes of pasture damage or loss may include lack of moisture and consumption by any number of animals, including cattle, deer, rabbits, ground squirrels, mice, and insects such as grasshoppers. Proper timing of cultural practices, seedling methods, and weed control help improve soil moisture conditions, but grazing must be light and controlled during pasture establishment to avoid excessive seedling losses. Try not to allow grazing in the year of establishment, indoor weed growing accessories at least until the seedlings have completed their growth for the first growing season. Timingwill vary depending on elevation and site conditions, but this usually means no grazing before July 1.

Under favorable growing conditions, the seeded plants will have developed numerous leaves and produced a seed head. After the plants produce a seedhead and go dormant , livestock can graze them down to 3 to 4 inches in height. If growing conditions are poor and the plants do not produce a seedhead, do not allow grazing at all. Regardless of growing conditions, many people merely plan not to graze a newly established pasture in its first year, just to be on the safe side. Proper grazing management is hard to determine during that first year. Often, the greatest benefit to the pasture from grazing is that grazing animals remove weeds such as annual mustards and grasses. Consider any grazing during the first year to be a prescribed clean-up operation rather than an extensive feeding on perennial seedlings. The key is to avoid grazing either too early in the summer, too close to the ground, or in muddy conditions. Grazing in late fall or winter should be avoided if muddy conditions exist, since the pasture will have developed very little sod by then to stabilize the soil and prevent soil compaction or erosion. Although livestock grazing can be controlled during seedling establishment, it is often impossible to control grazing by wildlife. Small plantings usually are the most susceptible to wildlife damage since it only takes a few animals to completely defoliate a small stand. In areas with large numbers of deer, rabbits, ground squirrels, or elk, you can seed areas of five or more acres at a time to reduce the chance of a complete loss of stand from wildlife grazing, although some areas of your planting may still be severely damaged. Along with wildlife, insects such as grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, and black grass bugs can cause significant damage to new seedlings. During a year with high insect populations, you may have to apply some sort of control. In most cases, insecticides provide the best control for insects feeding on new seedlings, since a large insect population can destroy a stand in a matter of a few days.

You will have to choose the most appropriate insecticide to use based on the particular insect pest and local site conditions, so you will do best to consult an agricultural specialist in the area before you apply a treatment. The second season after seedling, your management efforts should still focus on pasture stand establishment and you should continue to follow similar grazing guidelines to those you used the first year. Try to delay grazing until the plants have had the opportunity to complete their full growth for the season. Once drought conditions and cool temperatures have forced the plants into dormancy, graze them to a height of 3 to 4 inches and avoid grazing in muddy conditions.If growing conditions are favorable during the first two years, plants generally are well established by the third spring and you can proceed to manage the field as an established perennial grass pasture. If the first two years are marked by drought conditions, allow a third year of restricted grazing. This timeline is most applicable to introduced species such as crested or intermediate wheat grasses that have good seedling vigor and grazing tolerance. Native species that grow slowly and are sensitive to grazing may need three to five years to become completely established.Be cautious and conservative when you manage livestock grazing on dryland pasture, since desirable, dryland plants are quick to be degraded and slow to recover. Do not start a problem that may persist for years, just in order to get a little extra grazing in one year. Be especially careful when you graze livestock during drought cycles that persist beyond a single growing season. The combined stress of drought and heavy grazing will significantly diminish plant vigor. Under severe conditions, improper grazing can lead to the loss of desired plant species, which will then be replaced by weeds. Weeds make pasture rejuvenation difficult and often lead to permanent changes in vegetation. Historical practice indicates that the best approach is to vary the season of use and to leave half of the forage growth ungrazed. For example, forage used in the spring this year should be grazed later in the growing season next year.

When grazing in late spring and early summer, leaving half of the current year’s growth is a conservative practice that preserves the plants’ energy reserves in their roots and stems. If grazing is delayed until late summer or fall, pastures can be grazed down to a 3- to 4-inch stubble height without causing harm. In practice, these recommendations are best suited to producers who have enough pastures to permit a rotation that grazes some fields early one year and late the next year.But if you only have a single pasture to work with, it is best to defer grazing until early summer in order to prevent weed invasion and allow the plants to recover their energy reserves. If the area receives ample precipitation, a single-unit pasture can occasionally be grazed in early spring, but always make sure to leave half of the current year’s growth and stop the grazing before soil moisture is depleted. When wheat grass pastures are grazed in early summer, it may be possible to graze them again lightly in the fall or early winter. If you do allow fall or early winter grazing, begin after the onset of winter dormancy and stop before the initiation of spring growth . Depending on what type of livestock are grazing, you may need to supplement their feed with hay in order to provide adequate nutrition during fall and winter grazing periods. Early spring grazing usually is not appropriate for degraded ranges or areas that are susceptible to invasion by annual weeds. In field trials conducted on Siskiyou County pastures that had high annual weed pressure, early spring grazing resulted in a more extensive invasion of undesirable annuals than in pastures subjected to late spring or summer grazing . This research suggest that canopy removal in early spring allows greater exposure to sunlight and seed-to-soil contact to encourage the establishment of annual weeds that out-compete later maturing perennials. For this reason, it is probably best to avoid early spring grazing.Even if you do not graze your pastures, vertical grow rack system you sometimes have to remove plant cover using non-grazing management practices to prevent insect and disease problems and fire hazard concerns. The decision whether to mow or burn depends on how you want the pasture to look as well as several site characteristics. If unmanaged, perennial grasses create large amounts of dry, dead grass , posing a fire hazard. You can leave some plant material intact to help prevent invasion by non-native annuals and weeds, but if you leave too much it can lead to insect and fire problems. When practical, try to mow and bale excess forage and so reduce the accumulation of thatch and accelerate its decomposition. The best time to mow is after perennial grasses produce seed. You may also want to use controlled burning to remove accumulated thatch. Burning is a risky endeavor, though, and must be coordinated with the local fire department or the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection . The best time to burn is after completion of perennial grass growth, but the exact timing of the burn depends on permit restrictions as well as site characteristics and other vegetation growing on the site. The influence of soil properties on herbicide efficacy has been widely studied as well as the influence of spray water quality on herbicide performance. However, limited studies on the effects of irrigation water quality on herbicide dissipation have been completed. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of water pH and salinity on the dissipation of saflufenacil, indaziflam, and penoxsulam in two representative California orchard soils.The experimental protocol is a modified version of the method published by Sheppard et al.. The experiment was a completely randomized design with each herbicide being tested in both soil types at every water treatment and replicated three times. The amount of soil used in this experiment was determined by the bulk density of the soil and the assumption of a 25 cm2 spray area and a 2 mm soil depth. Each loam experimental unit contained 5.4 g of soil and each sand replicate contained 6.1 g of soil. Soil was first treated with herbicide by weighing appropriate amounts of each soil into a weigh boat, pipetting 1 mL of herbicide solution onto the soil, homogenizing by vigorousmixing, then letting the mixture sit for 24 hours until completely dry. The treated soil was then transferred into a 50 mL centrifuge tube equipped with a 0.22 µm Nylon filter . Soil was brought to field capacity by adding 1.220 mL of water treatment to loam soil or 0.780 mL of water treatment to sand soil, covered with parafilm, and left in the dark, at room temperature for seven days. After the resting period, the parafilm was removed and the samples were centrifuged at 6000 m s-1 for 15 minutes using a Sorvall Legend XTR centrifuge . After the initial centrifugation, an additional 1 mL of the respective water treatment was added to each sample then samples were centrifuged again at 6000 m s-1 for 15 minutes. This process was repeated once more for a total of two 1 mL water treatment aliquots washed over every sample after the field capacity water was removed. A separate pilot study completed to establish the number of water treatment washes needed to remove the unbound herbicide from the sample indicated that two 1 mL washes was adequate for the purpose of the experiment . The centrifuge filter was removed and discarded while all water from initial incubation plus the two 1 mL aliquots were collected from the centrifuge tube and filtered using a 0.22 µm Nylon syringe filter. The filtered solution was collected in an HPLC vial and analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography .Analyses were performed with an Agilent C-18 Poroshell 120 column in an HPLC system equipped with a diode array detector. Mobile phase A consisted of ultrapure water and mobile phase B consisted of acetonitrile with 0.1% formic acid. Chromatography was accomplished using an isocratic elution of 60% mobile phase A and 40% mobile phase B. The method run time was 9 minutes. All samples were observed at 270, 268, and 205 nm which corresponded to the absorbance of saflufenacil, indaziflam, and penoxsulam, respectively. The approximate retention time of saflufenacil, indaziflam, and penoxsulam were 4.9, 2.5, and 2.6 minutes, respectively . Samples were background corrected and converted into units of percent removal from soil using 5-point calibration curves .