Roller-Crimper

I think this tools was developed at Rodale and is being manufactured by I & J. My understanding (I don’t have one and have never used one) is that it works effectively on a limited number of crops and that timing is important. Rye and vetch is what I have mainly heard it being used on. You need to roll it when the plant is in bloom, before it has set seed. With rye and other annual cereal grains, at least, once they have bloomed they generally won’t come back if you mow or crimp the stems.
That roller has pretty serious crimpers on it, that crimp the stalk every few inches along its length. I don’t think you would get as effective of a job with something not designed to do it. And if you’re planting into the straw, you want the cover crop to be dead, because cultivation won’t be an option with all that straw.
You could probably get a pretty effective kill with a disk if your timing was good (though you might have to go at it crossways a second time). But with a harrow, you’re disturbing the soil so you will probably get a flush of weeds coming up through the mulch, which will be hard to deal with.
A sickle bar is certainly an option to lay down a stand. The advantage of the roller is that it leaves the stems connected to the roots, and so you can go through with a no-till seeder or transplanter or what not and the disks will cut through the residue. If you mow with a sickle bar, all that residue can move around and is more likely to plug up subsequent operations. Depending on what you’re planting and what your planter is like. I haven’t tried it yet, but some year I’m going to try no till with a mown cover crop, probably using hilling disks to mark out furrows to transplant into (I think just a single hilling disk is less likely to clog with trash than a seeder).

Andy, I am not sure what you have in mind but if the weeds are vegetative they are probably pliable and will not be hurt too bad by the crimper. Crabapple gave a good answer. It works best, some years better than others, on annual grains like cereal rye when they are setting seed and woody and somewhat brittle. Even then, if rolled too soon some will recover and pop up again. I could see where it would bother something like mature Goldenrod but I would not expect it to kill it. I think your best bet would be to clip or mow the pastures after grazing.

If the hay is going to get really rank it might be best to cut it and get it regrowing. Then if might be in good shape by the time you get around to grazing it. I do that sometimes, I like to get it cut and regrowing real soon now. If you wait and it gets into July and gets hot and dry you might not get much regrowth and you will find you have less forage for grazing than you thought you had.

It is hard to manage grazing without cutting hay as well because their is typically a flush of forage in the spring, then a shortage in July and August. I am sure many folks turn their cattle into old hay fields for grazing, but I like to keep the pasture vegetative throughout the growing season. I think it benefits the pasture and the cattle.

Not sure how much you have. There is the option of a scythe and building hay ricks. Give you something to do.

You won’t do it in one day, but you would have the hay, and it would stage the regrowth at different levels which would be good for grazing. Scything would be a skill to develop, try it on a small area and see how it looks. Well built hay ricks can hold up to the weather surprisingly well.

Since this thread has veered so far off track I’ll put my two cents in about scything. I have mowed up to an 1/2 acre with a scythe, and with a good sharp and well fitted scythe it is a joy to do. Hard work yes but very therapeutic. The really hard and tedious work is in tending hay. Raking and tedding and stacking and hauling hay by hand is a lot more work than mowing it. That being said I thik every farm (and farmer) should have a good scythe. An old timer told me once that a scythe is the farmers’ violin it takes a lifetime to learn all the subtleties.

My experience with scythes has taught me the importance of having the right scythe. The Austrian scythe, the type in Tim’s video, is much easier to use than the other type I’ve tried, which might be called an American scythe. There’s a book called The Scythe Book by Peter Vido and David Tressemer that will give you all the information you need to properly use and sharpen a scythe. They work well for trimming under electric fences, too. Bob