Questions about establishing alfalfa + chicory in late June (northern Missouri)

[Hoytvectrix]

It's looking like we will not be able to rent the drill from the local NRCS office until mid to late June now. We were planning on using that for establishing around 3 acres of alfalfa and chicory into killed off pasture ground made up mostly reed canary grass and tall fescue residues. Because the residues are thick, and the based on past successes, we are thinking the drill is still the way to go. However, we normally would have done this in late April or early May. I have a few questions for the group:

1) would we be better off waiting until late summer to establish these plots with the drill now? The main concern is weeds.

2) if we go forward with late June, should we drill in a companion crop with it? If so, which one?

3) would it be better to not drill them in, burn/rake residue off surface and broadcast seed with/without a companion crop ASAP?

Thanks!

 

[FarmerDan]

If I may, a few questions of my own for you.

1) Have you ever (successfully) seed and germinated alfalfa? I want to say it's one of the fussiest crops going. Maybe that's not it, though. It just demands a lot of management, pre and post.

2) Since you are renting the drill from NRCS (or the local Soil & Water Conservation District) I assume it's no-till, yes?

3) This ground you are seeding is old pasture? And you've killed it and have faith this rented drill will do what it's supposed to do?

4) Have you done a soil test and completed any necessary soil amending? Just part of the necessary management. Usually, I'm not too concerned about soil fertility and pH because it's usually good enough. Alfalfa demands greatness.

5) is your alfalfa seed a variety adopted to your area? Again, fussy management required, I think. Is is glyphosate resistant or the other kind?

6) And is your soil well-drained? Old pasture? Maybe not? Alfalfa doesn't like wet feet.

You didn't ask for all of that, but I think the answers to your questions need answers to these first....all with good wishes!

 

[TreeDaddy]

If I may, a few questions of my own for you.

1) Have you ever (successfully) seed and germinated alfalfa? I want to say it's one of the fussiest crops going. Maybe that's not it, though. It just demands a lot of management, pre and post.

2) Since you are renting the drill from NRCS (or the local Soil & Water Conservation District) I assume it's no-till, yes?

3) This ground you are seeding is old pasture? And you've killed it and have faith this rented drill will do what it's supposed to do?

4) Have you done a soil test and completed any necessary soil amending? Just part of the necessary management. Usually, I'm not too concerned about soil fertility and pH because it's usually good enough. Alfalfa demands greatness.

5) is your alfalfa seed a variety adopted to your area? Again, fussy management required, I think. Is is glyphosate resistant or the other kind?

6) And is your soil well-drained? Old pasture? Maybe not? Alfalfa doesn't like wet feet.

You didn't ask for all of that, but I think the answers to your questions need answers to these first....all with good wishes!

I know enough(now^^^) to know..........

............I wont be planting alfalfa.......

bill

 

[BobinCt]

I’ve always planted perennial plots with a cover crop and I’m located in Connecticut and I always wait to the Fall to do so. For me here, it’s in August to early Sept. You will definitely have more weeds now to deal with than if you chose Fall planting. A good cover crop is Oats or Cereal Rye. But like Dan said, Alfalfa is very picky and needs a neutral PH or close to it. Three acres of Alfalfa with chicory is a good size plot. Do you plan on mowing the field at all? Or will you use herbicides to keep weeds at bay or just leave the field as is when it gets established? It’s harder to control plots with herbicides when chicory is mixed in, too. You have high deer density there ? You might have to mow the alfalfa if it gets tall . How about going with a perennial clover instead with just a touch of alfalfa? Clover is a lot easier to manage. Like Dan said, if you have areas of the field that don’t drain well, Alfalfa is not the plant you want, but there are clovers for areas that don’t drain well. For majority of food plotters, I think the perennial clover is the better choice than alfalfa.

 

[FarmerDan]

I guess God often shakes her head as she looks at me and wonders if I understand my purpose! And I guess I would ask, tell me again, please?

There are all the rules dictated by conventional wisdom, and then there's wisdom that's not so conventional. In this forum we've challenged the wisdom of tillage and debated the use of herbicides for weed control. Is amending the soil necessary or can we do just as well with food plots working with nature's static state? Throw and mow? Or not?

Do we confuse production ag with habitat production and does it matter? Take the best and leave the rest.

To me everything planting-related is about risk and probability, concepts that are impossible to quantify given what we are doing, but yet they seem to be instinctual. Or, maybe learned, modified, and applied thru time and study and the advancement of science and data collection.

To go back to Hoytvectrix's original questions, maybe I focused too much on the alfalfa and not enough on the chicory. Expectations are everything and maybe I assumed too much. There's a lot we don't know about the circumstances, but when I saw alfalfa and old pasture and end of June my thought was of 100% failure. Conventional ag production wisdom would have us planting alfalfa with a cover crop in northern Missouri mid to late August to get eight weeks of growth on the alfalfa before a frost/freeze. Cover crop? I like oats.

But, given the data we have available to us today- and if we want to look at it and consider the risks and rewards - what we think of as "out-of-the question" might become possible.

Here's a map I saw for the first time a couple weeks ago.

https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e66bffd8e4614cc9bf3c770fe6a4d4fc
You might need to register. If you are into maps and all they can tell you it's worth a couple extra minutes.

It's phenomenal if you understand its message and the implications for cropping it holds. There's much more out there. For those who like to push on the edges of all these I'd say, if you can somehow grasp many of the factors that go into making a decision, quantify them (someone else will have done that for you), you maybe can make a decision to plant clover or alfalfa in the spring and be successful with it. Or, just follow the conventional wisdom! It will be changing anytime now....

 

[Bill]

It's looking like we will not be able to rent the drill from the local NRCS office until mid to late June now. We were planning on using that for establishing around 3 acres of alfalfa and chicory into killed off pasture ground made up mostly reed canary grass and tall fescue residues. Because the residues are thick, and the based on past successes, we are thinking the drill is still the way to go. However, we normally would have done this in late April or early May. I have a few questions for the group:

1) would we be better off waiting until late summer to establish these plots with the drill now? The main concern is weeds.

2) if we go forward with late June, should we drill in a companion crop with it? If so, which one?

3) would it be better to not drill them in, burn/rake residue off surface and broadcast seed with/without a companion crop ASAP?

Thanks!

I wouldn't rake any residue off the field. I would go for it but substitute clover for the alfalfa because it will not hurt so much if it fails. July in N. MO could bless you or burn you, that's a crap shoot. if it was me, I'd get burnt. If you really need Alfalfa...toss some buckwheat down and wait until late August for the Alfalfa and oats.

that's after you do everything farmer Dan said. Because alfalfa is finicky.

 

[hillrunner]

It's looking like we will not be able to rent the drill from the local NRCS office until mid to late June now. We were planning on using that for establishing around 3 acres of alfalfa and chicory into killed off pasture ground made up mostly reed canary grass and tall fescue residues. Because the residues are thick, and the based on past successes, we are thinking the drill is still the way to go. However, we normally would have done this in late April or early May. I have a few questions for the group:

1) would we be better off waiting until late summer to establish these plots with the drill now? The main concern is weeds.

2) if we go forward with late June, should we drill in a companion crop with it? If so, which one?

3) would it be better to not drill them in, burn/rake residue off surface and broadcast seed with/without a companion crop ASAP?

Thanks!

Here, I would not plant alfalfa in late June. The seed is too expensive to risk a dry summer and the weeds will make for major competition. I'd wait till mid to late August at this point. Fall rains and cooler weather should give you a great stand come spring.
I know nothing of chicory though.

 

[jsasker007]

Alfalfa doesn't get much support here! I tried a little bit broad cast a couple years ago. That's usually where the does and fawns go first when they hit the plot in the evenings(that plot i can see from my house). They do really like it if you can get it to grow.

 

[dogghr]

I have a 7 yo alfalfa/WC/chicory plot. I would suggest planting late Aug/early Sept. I planted with WR and let it self terminate the following summer. I mow as needed about to about a foot tall. Never have baled. Fert with 0-20-20 plus Boron added. Have occasionally sprayed for grasses approx every 2 years. I overseed each fall with WR.
Planting into old killed fescue is an issue. I did rotational planting for several years before doing the alfalfa plot. The plot is on a dry south facing ridge and I wanted drought resistant plot, i. e. , alfalfa and chicory. Have your ph near 7 and soil test readings high to very high.
Deer love the plot and unless it is a large plot, you must keep a cage on it or you will swear there is no alfalfa. As it enters into its 8th year this year, def the alfalfa is deminished but certainly still 30% of the planting. Good luck.

I might add, first of plot was done with tillage. Plot was doubled in size about 3 years ago using T&M into existing plot rotation, using same premise as already stated.

 

[jsasker007]

So it can be done. Would you be able to over seed with more alfalfa or do you have to give it a break? Have heard it won't germinate well if there is already alfalfa growing there?

 

[Hoytvectrix]

So it can be done. Would you be able to over seed with more alfalfa or do you have to give it a break? Have heard it won't germinate well if there is already alfalfa growing there?

Yes, it is particularly difficult to seed into an existing alfalfa stand due to autotoxicity.

 

[Hoytvectrix]

I wanted to say thanks to everyone for the answers and suggestions.

We are going to hold off on establishing the alfalfa until about mid-late August. More than likely it will be Labor Day weekend. I am so determined to plant alfalfa because there is very little of it around, and the two plots we do have get hit hard up until the first hard frost. We have a bunch of different types of clover plots, but it seems like after the first growing season, deer don't use them quite as much (unless they are nursing does). Our existing alfalfa plots are so popular, I think many deer spend more time in them than they do in our forage or field soybean plots (but this might be a factor of location too).

Regardless, the new alfalfa plots (5 all together, totally 3 acres) will be soil sampled and any chemical deficiencies will be corrected. As far as the existing residue (95% was reed canary grass), it is almost entirely killed off currently and will sit fallow until we drill in the alfalfa seeds. I'm still on the fence on whether or not we will need to burn off the existing residue. My current vote is that it won't be necessary, especially after a summer of being broken down from exposure. I'll take some photos of the process and post back here when we have some progress.

Thanks again!

 

[roymunson]

I disced and put in alfalfa/chicory mix last april when it was somewhat dry. It did well last year.

This year the clover has hit hard, but it is lush and the chicory is beautiful... I can find a little bit of alfalfa here and there, but I attributed it to the deer browsing the alfalfa heavily


It is a stinking beautiful plot tho

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

I've had good luck in SE MN planting clover/alfalfa/chicory plots in August. You can spend all summer killing the weeds and hopefully by then the extremely hot and dry weather has passed. I didn't use a companion or nurse crop.