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Little River, TX | Just curious.
I am not clear about the rational for a Nurse (cover) Crop.
I always believed it was to select the weed we wanted to be competing with our seedling alfalfa.
Heard it is a Northern Thing.
With RR alfalfa the seedling weed problem is greatly reduced. If you want to pick your weed, I expect oats is as good as any. Your can control it with Select or Post.
Each climate, and soil is different as are the management needs.
Is the reason for Spring seeding is the winter freeze out possibility? Here we like to seed around Labor Day and get a few months growth on the roots. In the short days most of alfalfa growth is in the roots. HERE we do not have enough root growth to handle our Annual Summer Drought.
If it were not so dry our second cutting would be in the barn. I probably will be cutting my seedling stand in another few weeks. Local thing, we want as much root strength as we can get, to Go into our Summer Drought. No irrigation, no water.
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Cover Crop for Alfalfa
