With the cool and wet spring in 2022, there haven’t been many opportunities to seed forages. Looking at the calendar date, is it getting too late to plant forages? The short answer is that there is still some time to seed forages this spring.

Scott Shriver, one of Iowa's leading organic farmers, recently conducted research to determine optimal soybean row-width and seeding dates when roller-crimping cereal rye. The soybeans he planted the day of roller-crimping ultimately yielded higher than those planted 13 and 17 days before.

Pre-emergence herbicides can aid in the control of troublesome weeds such as waterhemp and giant ragweed. They can also result in lower weed densities and a more uniform weed height at the time of postemergence herbicide application, aid in the management of herbicide-resistant weeds, and ultimately help protect crop yield potential and profitability. What if you want to plant a cover crop later in the season? Will a residual herbicide that controls weeds also affect your cover crop?

Establishing sorghum-sudangrass in cool-season western wheatgrass pasture at the Kansas State Agricultural Research Center-Hays improved total forage production over two years, 2020-2021.

At very low temperatures (<40F), germination of alfalfa seed is much slower when compared to 40 to 50 F. This University of Minnesota study found that at 32 F, it took 15 days to reach 50% germination. At 50 F, 50% of seeds germinated in just 3 days. Individual seedlings will emerge slowly at low temperatures, meaning a long, staggered period of emergence, while at higher temperatures seedlings will emerge more uniformly.

University of Nebraska educators offer a bevy of tips on how to evaluate alfalfa stands, manage winter injury and navigate through drought conditions.