KSU eUpdate – Some alfalfa stands may be damaged or depleted this summer, and no longer as productive as desirable. This could be due to a combination of factors: freeze injury, winterkill, early-season alfalfa weevil, diseases, flooding, or pea aphids.

If the stand appears to be recovering slowly or too thin to be worth saving, producers may want to kill the stand this summer, plant the field to wheat or oats this fall, and replant to alfalfa in the fall of 2016. It would be best to rotate the field out of alfalfa for a year before replanting due to allelopathy and disease concerns.

Evaluating the stand this summer is better than waiting until fall because it gives producers more time to plan out what they want to do with the stand. Read More . . .