Air September 15, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

I don't think I want a hurricane, but I wouldn't mind getting a few days of rain!. It looks like warm dry temperatures for the next several days at least, so why not take a day off and go to the fair. There'll be plenty of time to get the work done after the fair is over, so head on down and enjoy a day off!

One of the questions that always comes up about this time of year is timing the last cutting of alfalfa. Here's a recap of the situation. Alfalfa needs to go into winter with a full tank of gas, if you will, in the root system. That full tank of gas is what makes sure it survives the winter and then starts growing vigorously in the spring. If it goes into winter with a half a tank or worse yet even less than that, then you can expect more winter kill and less vigorous growth in the spring. It takes a while for that new growth in the spring to have enough leaves to produce enough food to support the plant and to start filling the gas tank back up. Back to the present. Once we have a hard freeze, alfalfa shuts down for the season. A light frost won't do it, you need to have one of those good hard, takes forever to scrape the frost off the car windshield freezes. That's going to usually be sometime the around the last week of October, BUT it could be the first week of October or it could be late November. Thoughts of a possible early frost have sort of melted away with the warm September weather we have right now, so I'm inclined to believe we're going to have a more normal frost date. To add to the dilemma, we have dry soil conditions now. If we cut alfalfa now, it may not regrow until we get some rain. So that throws a monkey wrench into the timing equation. IF we had good soil moisture I would say cut within the next ten days and then just let it grow for the rest of the season. It takes about 4 weeks of good growth to get that gas tank filled back up. If you have some growth out there right now that may be worth cutting, I am inclined to just let it be. If we get an inch or more of rain anytime within the next ten days, go ahead and cut it because we should get good regrowth. But if the weather stays warm and dry, I would prefer to see the swather just sit in the shed until we've had a hard freeze. It's not a perfect science, but it never is when the weather is involved!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2004.

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