alflafa and cover

planted 4 acres of alfalfa over the weekend and was thinking about using winter rye as a cover crop. should i wait till my alfalfa too emerge or can i plant the wr now. thanks for your help!
 
89/ i didn't think about oats. what is the advantage with oats over winter rye. both are cheap to buy thats for sure. just trying to learn from the experts.
 
They are normally planted together, especially if you have a grass seeder on the drill. Winter grains are normally seeded in the Fall.
 
thanks for your time and input! i don"t have a drill, just a quad and broadcast spinner on the back of it. just a weekend warrior doing deer food plots.
 
I had some winter rye left in the drill when I planted a couple years ago, the stuff grew a few inches and then sat
there till fall, seems it doesn't do well in warmer drier weather like oats would.
 
Oats is the way to go. We always drilled in our alfalfa or clover right along with oats in the same drill. Just different seed
boxes. Everyone did it that way. That was a holdover thing from the old horse and buggy days but, it worked great. It would be
great to have someone combine the oats for you and then bale up the straw. Feed the oats to horses, young livestock or deer and
use the oat straw for bedding or garden mulch. Let your dog sleep in fresh oat straw. He'll love it, his coat will shine and
you'll never have to give him a bath.
 
Rye is an odd crop, its too thick if you plant it last fall, and it doesn't grow right if you plant it now in late spring.

Oats is the thing to use, and should/ can be seeded at the same time as the alfalfa. You want the oats to come up right away and hold the soil
in place, and shade out weeds. The alfalfa grows very slow early on, but will come on in mid to late summer.

If you wait to plant the oats - or rye - then you don't get any benefit of it at all.

Get our and get the - preferably oats - planted right now.

The oats can be cut and made into hay if you cut it just before it heads - seeds out.

Paul
 
Now you got me thinking about deer and rye, see I was going to warn you about ergot on rye if fed to cattle, but most
told you to plant oats instead, but I have so many deer around here that I wonder if feeding them rye, er I mean
accidentally spilling some ground rye could get them to abort and have fewer deer! Hmmm thanks for the thoughts! LOL
 
(quoted from post at 16:13:17 04/27/16) Now you got me thinking about deer and rye, see I was going to warn you about ergot on rye if fed to cattle, but most
told you to plant oats instead, but I have so many deer around here that I wonder if feeding them rye, er I mean
accidentally spilling some ground rye could get them to abort and have fewer deer! Hmmm thanks for the thoughts! LOL
the deer here in mich love winter rye when small and tender, after that they won't touch it. i wanted to plant rye is to keep the weeds down. as far as oats go, i don't have a drill. i can only broadcast my seeds. can oats be broadcast? i planed on spraying clethodim to kill the rye or oats, once the alfalfa grows enough to survive.
 
I liked barley as a nurse crop better than oats. Takes half the seeding rate, gives good cover but not as thick, so sun hits the ground and new alfalfa, doesn"t lodge as bad as oats, smothering out the new seeding. Has 92% of the feed value of corn, can substitute for it in most rations. Stearns county in central MN is still a dairy county, and grows very little oats anymore. Mostly barley.
 
It should take root as good as pats, if broadcast. I always used a cast iron packer for good seed/soil contact. More alfalfa grows as well. Excellent stand with 10 lbs alfalfa per acre. Without a packer in the early years, I"d seed 15-18.
 

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