Did your alfalfa stand survive winter?
- 15 April 2019
- Le Producteur de Lait Québécois Magazine
As soon as the snow melts in the spring, it is essential to walk in your fields to evaluate the survival rate of alfalfa plants. To evaluate the quality of alfalfa stands, the preferred tool is the quadrat, which determines the number of stems per square foot. If the number of stems is insufficient, it will be necessary to continue by evaluating the root system of the plants or even to consider other options to compensate for a lack of forage, in the most extreme cases.
Using the alfalfa root system evaluation grid provided in the article, plants can be visually evaluated and classified according to specific criteria. To avoid a lack of forage, different alternative strategies are proposed.
Maxime Leduc, Ph.D. and
Robert Berthiaume, Agr.
