Cheat Grass

CGID · Dec 9, 2014

A while back there was a post on cheat grass and I went off on my personal feelings about this national scourge. Now I am glad to say there is new hope for controlling it. Of the 10,000's of soil bacteria, two have been found which inhibit the growth of cheat grass roots. It's a start. Up to this point, cheat grass has been considered an uncontrollable problem.
West from the Mississippi, from horizon to horizon, the country is covered in a uniform yellow cloak of cheat grass and not a bit of it should be here. It burns like gasoline, clearing it's own path. It is the first thing to come back after the fire and crowds out all the native plants. It's one of those problems so big, the uninformed regard it as normal.

charlespretzer · Dec 9, 2014

Roundup kills it if you want everything else dead. Olympus kills it in wheat. Crop rotation cleans it up. In grassland ,Either don't graze so hard or burn the pasture in April. Here in eastern Kansas it's a minor irritant.

CGID · Dec 10, 2014

The problem is the further west you go and the higher the elevation, arable land gives way to federal and state open range - 100,000's of square miles of it and that is where cheat has become the dominate ground cover. It's fair wildlife forage briefly in the spring. After that it becomes an explosive fire hazard taking new ground every time by burning out native plants along its boarder. As cheat moves up slope in the mountains, the narrow band of forage available for deer and elk in the winter becomes occupied by cheat. Their flat land forage was lost to cheat along time ago. There is no forage for cattle either but they can winter on valley ranches, at expense to the rancher but the deer and elk are left with very slim pickings. As cheat advances upslope it chokes out the smallest of tree seedlings and burns out the older reproduction.
The wall-of-flame western range fires that make national news every summer and fall are all cheat.

T in NE · Dec 11, 2014

BULL!!!! That ground that can't be used is pristine, perfectly natural, you can't put cattle or sheep on it or you'll ruin it!!!!!!!!!

end sarcasm

CGID · Dec 11, 2014

Regardless of what the land may or may not be used for, it's not pristine. It's covered in cheat grass.

Brady V · Dec 12, 2014

Cheatgrass is a huge issue in my part of the world. I serve on our county Weed and Pest District board. For many years our option for controlling cheatgrass was with Plateau herbicide, and while does a great job, it does ding the native species and in 3-5 yrs should be reapplied at a rather significant cost to continue the control to give the native grasses a chance to repopulate, as our annual precip is @ 12". Our W&P has been part of the experimentation of this bacteria through Washington State University and I can tell you this discovery is a huge breakthrough in plant science, our test plots have been unbelievably successful.
I understand this bacteria is going to be available commercially very soon and am told the cost per acre will be in line with the price of Roundup.

They are also working to isolate the different bacterias that control several other species of weeds.

Brady

Cheat Grass

CGID

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charlespretzer

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T in NE

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CGID

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Brady V

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