ASK Jeff: The Rodale Institute’s farm manager, Jeff Moyer, answers your hardcore farming questions

How can I plant a hay crop this spring in a field harvested last summer without spraying?

Posted April 6, 2004

What Jeff brings to the table

Jeff Moyer, who’s been the farm manager here at the 333-acre Rodale Institute research farm for more than a quarter of a century, receives lots of mail from farmers just like you asking for advice. Jeff’s hands-in-the-dirt experience over the past 26 years has run the gamut from refining the farm's cover cropping and crop rotation systems (including managing 270 acres in a rotation of corn, small grains, hay, and edible soy beans for a Japanese market) to overseeing the Farming Systems Trial, the world’s longest running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional agriculture. We thought it would be fun and informative to share some of these farmer-to-farmer exchanges, and Jeff’s practical wisdom, with our New Farm readers … and we’ll be doing it on a regular basis.

Got a question of your own? Send it to Jeff at:
jeff.moyer@rodaleinst.org

Dear Jeff,

I am taking over a 10-acre field that was planted in winter wheat last year (harvested last summer). I would like to plant a hay crop (orchard grass and clover for cow hay) and would like to do it without spraying. Would you recommend a tillage, say disking, and then drilling the orchard grass seed mix?

Thanks,
Tony Stephan

Hi, Tony,

I’m going to assume here that the straw was raked and baled off after harvest so that the field was left relatively free from the previous crop’s residue. I’m also going to assume that some weeds have germinated from the time the wheat was removed until the present.

If all of this is true, then to try starting any hay crop without chemicals, tillage or nurse crops will most likely end in failure.

If you want to get any type of hay started in the spring organically, it’s best to do it with a nurse crop. In your case, that probably means a full regimen of tillage, then planting oats with the hay crop. The oats will germinate quickly and protect the young hay seedlings from weed pressure early in the season. By July, you’ll have three options: harvest the oats as grain, cut them when they begin to head out as green chop, or simply mow them off periodically until the hay is established.

If you don’t mind some grain stubble mixed in, you might be able to get one cutting from this planting by late August or early September.

The big problem we have with spring establishment of these hay crops in clear seedings is weed pressure. In spring, every weed in the book wants a shot at growing. Hay crops (either grass, alfalfa, or clove) are perennial, so they tend to start slow out of the gate, making them poor competitors.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but I would favor tillage and using a nurse crop. The other option would be to grow some other crop (almost anything), then plant wheat again in the fall; then late next winter or early in spring, frost seed the hay crop into the already established wheat. The freezing and thawing of the soil pulls the small-seeded hay crop into the soil and the wheat acts as the nurse crop.

Hope this helps, and good luck,
Jeff

 

Have some questions to Ask Jeff? E-mail him directly at jeff.moyer@rodaleinst.org.