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| With two or three bushels of oats per acre and the alfalfa early spring seeding, there are no weeds and no herbicide is needed for a clean field. Cutting back on the oats, weeds do grow.
The oats do slow the alfalfa and unless a short and early variety of oats is used, oats can fall over and smother alfalfa patches. There's no chance of a cutting the year of such a planting. I hear there is a good chance of an early fall cutting without the oats, keeping the weeds back with suitable herbicides. I've never tried that. I've never raised a great oat crop because it tended to be short on nitrogen and I didn't want it to grow rank anyway. But I often got some oat for grain and for straw unless I cut it green for oat hay which critters eat like ice cream.
Gerald J. | |
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Cover Crop for Alfalfa
