{"id":3320,"date":"2019-04-29T10:58:06","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T14:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/?p=3320"},"modified":"2019-04-29T11:16:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T15:16:40","slug":"addressing-winter-injury-in-forage-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/2019\/04\/29\/addressing-winter-injury-in-forage-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing Winter Injury in Forage Fields"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/strong>Given the long and harsh winter, many farmers are seeing winterkill and damage in their forage fields this spring. If you have yet to inspect your fields, now is the time to begin. Grasses and legumes are beginning to grow and signs of damage can be seen more easily seen at this time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Signs of\ninjury and winterkill include stands that are slow to green up and uneven growth\npatterns in fields. To diagnose damage in a suspect field, examine the plant\nroots. This can be done by walking diagonally across the field and digging up\nshovel full of plants (4-6 inches deep) at regular intervals, about every 4-5\npaces. The roots of each plant should be firm and the interior color should be\nwhite or cream colored.  If the roots are\nsoft and the interior yellow to brownish in color, it most likely was winter\nkilled.  For alfalfa, the majority of\ncrown buds should be white or pink and firm throughout the bud.  It is important to try and inspect as many\nplants as possible to determine the percentage of your stand and\/or areas of your field that\nare injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For fields\nmoderately affected by winter injury, different management practices than\nnormal will be necessary to keep the stand in production. Consider allowing plants\nto mature longer before cutting, or in the case of legumes, allowing them to\nfully bloom before cutting if the damage is more severe. Increasing cutting\nheight, leaving new shoots, and not cutting the stands in the fall will aid in\nthe stand\u2019s recovery and increase production. If alfalfa was lost in a\npredominately grass stand, it could be managed for grass. If the alfalfa stand\nwas only partially injured (25 to 50%), interseeding with a quick germinating\nforage, such as orchardgrass or perennial ryegrass, could provide additional\nproduction. When dealing with winter injured stands, it is particularly\nimportant to adequately fertilize and to control for weed competition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For fields\nseverely affected by winter injury, such as over 50% killed, you may want to\nconsider replanting. A small grain\/field pea mixture or annual ryegrass will be\ngood choices if the forage is needed in early\/mid-summer. Corn silage will be\nthe best choice for optimizing full season forage production, but at later\ndates (mid-June to early July) you may want to consider planting a summer\nannual. A few options include Sudangrass, sorghum, sorghum-sudangrass hybrids, and\nmillet.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More\ninformation on managing winter injury in forages can be found in the following\nresources: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvaluating\nand Managing Forage Stands for Winter Injury\u201d by NWCS, UVM Extension.  https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/media\/managing-forage-winter-injury.pdf<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cManaging\nCereal Grains for Forage\u201d by NWCS, UVM Extension. https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/media\/managing-cereal-grains-for-forage.pdf<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvaluating\nHay and Pasture Stands for Winter Injury\u201d by Iowa State University Extension. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.extension.iastate.edu\/Publications\/PM1362.pdf<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AGiven the long and harsh winter, many farmers are seeing winterkill and damage in their forage fields this spring. If you have yet to inspect your fields, now is the time to begin. Grasses and legumes are beginning to grow and signs of damage can be seen more easily seen at this time. Signs of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Addressing Winter Injury in Forage Fields”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":909,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38211,56875,56876],"class_list":["post-3320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-forage","tag-winter-injury","tag-winter-kill","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"outcropn","author_link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/author\/outcropn\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67qLh-Ry","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3322,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions\/3322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/outcropn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}