General Updates

By Jordan J. Milewski, Progressive Forage Grower Losses begin at cutting: That’s the most basic hay and forage fact in relation to quality. Once the blade slices a hay stem, the quality race is on! The fundamental problem with haymaking is that it’s impossible to preserve all the quality found in a standing crop. Once…

Ray’s Crazy Mix, a diverse summer annual cover crop mix   What if it’s a dry summer? Will cover crops tie up the soil moisture for your cash crop? In most cover cropping scenarios, you will find the opposite. Unless you are using the cover crop in a manner that would normally be considered competitive…

If the fiber digestibility portion of a forage analysis were a visual display, NDFd-30 hour (or 24, or 48) would be a photo snapshot, framing available details at a moment in time, while TTNDFD would be more like a slideshow or even a short video clip. TTNDFD adds another dimension to our understanding of how…

Chuck Schwab, et. al.  Department of Animal Sciences Cornell University, NY “Starch makes milk” is an often heard statement from field nutritionists. This makes sense because starch (and sugar) feeding increases propionate production, propionate is the primary glucogenic volatile fatty acid, glucose is used by the mammary gland to produce lactose, and lactose is the…

Palmer Amaranth – Penn State Palmer amaranth has been described as the “perfect weed” and “pigweed on steroids.” Its cluster of key survival traits seem to use almost every weed trick in the book, helping it evade management and thrive under most standard weed control regimens. Because of its development of herbicide resistance traits, it…

Planting Green in a Cover Crop Last fall we prepared a field for our 2015 corn plots by planting a cover crop mix: We used King’s Vetch and Oats seeded @ 88lbs./acre and Crimson Clover seeded @ 22 lbs./acre. We no-till drilled these into the field after a second cutting of summer annual teff was harvested.…

When weighing your options about when to rotate out of an alfalfa stand, the best advice is usually to quit while you’re ahead. Stand decline in alfalfa is inevitable; the tricky part will be discerning the point in the stand’s aging when you reach your threshold of profitability (ideally you’d rotate out before reaching this…

When it comes to a manure application on your cover crop, be creative. There are more options than you think.  Cover crop use often goes hand in hand with manure application. Crimson clover at full bloom, the stage at which we spread manure the first time around Manure nutrients can be captured quite well, preserved…

Q: What should I plant this spring to reclaim goldenrod land, and what crop should I follow it with? The soil is acidic and low in nitrogen. I have also spread some wood ash. I hope to harvest the crop as haylage, and I am organic. – Customer, Central VT A: We recommend the Spring…

What if you couldn’t plant a cover crop in the fall but need a quick crop before a heavy summer nitrogen user like sorghum, sorghum-sudan, sudangrass, millet, brassicas or vegetable transplants?  Many regions have seen cooler weather with spring arriving later, but you may have time to fit in an extra crop. With a little…