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Mild winter impacts to alfalfa

An extension crops educator is curious about how mild winter conditions in the Upper Midwest impacted alfalfa.

Dave Nicolai with the University of Minnesota says growers are evaluating stands.

“In respect to how much it would’ve been affected from a winterkill standpoint. We also are concerned about what we call ‘ice sheeting’ that would occur, but we didn’t have a lot of ponding and water up on the top.”

He tells Brownfield a good assessment usually can’t be done until later in April or early May.

“We didn’t see a lot of reemergence of the alfalfa plants per say when we were warm, but there’s still probably, if we didn’t get enough snow cover, farther north where it got excessively cold some of those days could’ve caused a problem.”

Nicolai says he’s more optimistic about alfalfa in the southern part of the state because it was warmer.