showcrop
Well-known Member
This topic has come up but not frequently. I take care of some pasture ground for various people around town, liming fertilizing mowing etc. The people next door no longer have horses, but friends use their barns and pasture. Between two ladies there appear to be five horses there now on a five acre pasture. I limed it last fall and ha a lengthy conversation with one of the ladies about making the field more productive. She was looking forward to having it grow much faster with the fertilizer application. Yesterday I applied fertilizer, and she happened to be there, and when I finished she asked me how long to keep the horses off. Well, they had already put the horses out there as soon as it greened up and a lot of the grass was grazed down to a half inch. So I explained to her as I had last fall that it needs a chance to grow, and that without leaves the grass cannot take in sunlight, and without sun, there is no photosynthesis and very little growth. So I urged her to keep the horses off until the grass is six inches high and then take them off when they have eaten it down to four inches. This seems to be a difficult concept for people to grasp. I had described subdividing the pasture to her last fall but the landowner wasn't receptive to a portable dividing fence.