Air September 19, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Rain is always a welcome sight, but I wonder if anyone is getting nervous that this is going to turn into one of those wet falls when it becomes tough to get wheat planted or harvest completed. On the plus side, it’s sure good for all the new alfalfa that got planted and it should help to get some water back into the stock ponds.

Speaking of alfalfa, this is the time of year when we always wonder when we should take that last cutting of alfalfa. In a nutshell, if you haven’t got alfalfa cut, you may want to wait now until we have a hard freeze. Now the rationalization for that. We normally to maximize the winter survival of alfalfa and optimize early season growth next year, we need to make sure that the alfalfa goes into winter dormancy with 4 to 6 weeks of good growth or about 10 to 12 inches of foliage. A light frost will not put alfalfa into dormancy. You have to get down to about 20 to 25 degrees before alfalfa really shuts down. When is that going to happen? That is anybody’s guess. Historically, that has been anywhere from late September to early November. Our average first killing frost is around October 18th. It will usually be another week before we get temperatures down to that 25 degrees or colder. So we are probably 6 weeks away. But remember it isn’t just weeks, it’s plant height too! You may very well wind up with alfalfa starting to bloom later this month or early October. If you cut then, you will probably not get adequate regrowth before the plant shuts down. If you can cut in the next ten days, you will be okay if we don’t have a hard freeze. Otherwise wait. The alfalfa was stressed this year. We had a lot of weeds move into some of the stands. A fall application, anytime now, of about 40 to 50 pounds of phosphorus would be a very good thing. But we don’t want to stop there. After we have a hard frost, then plan to go ahead and hay off what’s left or turn cattle out to graze on the stubble. We have long known that anything that will remove stubble during the winter will help reduce early season alfalfa weevil infestation. Then, along about November, let’s scout that field for winter annual weeds. If you have a lot getting started we can treat with something like Sencor at that time or wait until a late winter application to help control some of the foxtail that we saw so much of this year. The success of next year’s alfalfa crop, starts this fall.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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