By Allen Gahler and Sandusky County
While things are muddy with hints of green in northern Ohio, we are hearing from colleagues in central and southern Ohio that spring is definitely here and bringing things to life, including pasture grasses and hayfields. After green-up happens in your part of the world, it’s the ideal time to be scouting hayfields and pastures for winter damage, legume crown health, heaving of the root systems, and pesky winter annual weeds. Over the next few weeks, it may be necessary to re-scout fields as they receive additional frost freeze events and ponding rain fall.
Depending on where you are located and what type of forage fields you have, winter damage may be one of the most significant reasons to be scouting for now. In northern Ohio, where we do not have a lot of grass hayfields or pastures, but alfalfa fields are plentiful. This is yet another year for major concern. There was never a period of more than 5 to 6 days where the ground was frozen in most of the state, and the same can be said for snow cover. Both of these things can be good for an alfalfa field if they last. But when they do not and leave behind standing water, or provide for constant freeze-thaw cycles throughout the winter, alfalfa and other legumes can suffer and even die. Recent walks in some alfalfa fields in north-central Ohio have revealed just what we are concerned about — heaving of the crown and root system, which can lead to disease, less stems and lower yield, and eventual crown die-off. In some cases, as we saw in the spring of 2020, and again last year, when warmer temperatures occur sporadically in February and March, followed by short freezes, the roots will heave enough to expose the taproot and many plants will not even survive into April and May. Remember, alfalfa suffers from cumulative stress loads — once it is stressed in some way, its yield potential and life expectancy goes down permanently, and those stresses add up over the life of the stand. So be sure to get down to ground level when scouting and observe those alfalfa crowns to see if field renovation with grasses may be necessary, or if there may even be enough die-off to warrant crop rotation and an alternative forage plan for 2023.