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mrtea1

Chilean Needle Grass - anyone with experience controlling this?

lil
9 years ago

After reading a whole lot of info on the web, I can see that this weed is extremely difficult to eliminate from pasture once it gets established. Apparently, if the land is arable, one could decide to spray out the grass and sow crops over the land for a number of seasons, and deplete the seed bank that way. Probably the most effective approach, apparently. Sadly, most sources then go on to say that whilst this approach will *control* the weed it can never ever be *eliminated*...worse, many of these articles then suggest that the longer term the strategy will inevitably become one of "learning to live with the weed" - i.e. abandoning any notion of raising sheep, going cattle instead, and managing the cattle grazing so they will eat and get at least some nutrition from Chilean Needle Grass, and so on. Which makes me wonder why they even suggested trying to crop it out at all. :S

What I was hoping to see was whether anyone has any first hand experience with trying to get rid of this weed via cropping etc and whether it is true that it is a battle you simply cannot win, even with arable land? Or would it be possible to say do a few years' cropping, then establish good pasture cover, and you shouldn't have much issue with it after that?

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