Using Technology to Plan and Establish Alfalfa
Whether you’re planting new alfalfa or looking to manage an existing stand more closely, here’s an overview of how you can use ag tech tools to establish a successful alfalfa stand.
Planning for Success
Once you’ve identified a field in which you’d like to plant or more precisely manage alfalfa, it’s important to obtain a better understanding of the field’s characteristics through a few steps.
After you have a good understanding of the field and the possible challenges, the next step is to pick the right alfalfa variety for the field. You can work with your WinField® United retailer to select the best variety for you using the CROPLAN® website and R7® Tool. Here’s how it works:
Before planting seed or making management decisions about an existing stand, take a soil sample from the field. Refer to the maps and notes you took about the field and determine zones that will benefit from close monitoring through soil sampling throughout the season. Once you get the samples back, work with your agronomist to make a fertility plan that addresses issues in the field that will affect the stand throughout the growing season.
For more tips on managing alfalfa in-season, click here.
Planning for Success
Once you’ve identified a field in which you’d like to plant or more precisely manage alfalfa, it’s important to obtain a better understanding of the field’s characteristics through a few steps.
- Working with your WinField® United retailer, use the R7® Tool to review the yield potential map, which is a spatial representation of an optimal crop output given the environment, adequate nutrients and water, and no plant stress.
- Then, review soil and soil variability maps as well as in-season imagery from past crops.
- Identify your soil types to help inform management practices. Are the soils sand or clay? Is there a large amount of slope in the field?
- Review the soil variability maps. These maps help detect where the lighter and heavier organic matter spots are in the field. For example, in the West, these maps are exceptionally helpful for identifying areas where you may have pH or salt issues due to heavy irrigation. Having a pH out of balance or a salt issue can be detrimental to establishing an alfalfa stand. Recognizing these spots and measuring their size allows you to make a plan to address these challenges.
- Look over the past season’s yield potential maps and in-season imagery for any trends, such as water holding issues, which could include poor drainage or hilltops that dry up fast.
After you have a good understanding of the field and the possible challenges, the next step is to pick the right alfalfa variety for the field. You can work with your WinField® United retailer to select the best variety for you using the CROPLAN® website and R7® Tool. Here’s how it works:
- Visit croplan.com and click on the alfalfa icon and select Search for seed.
- From there, select your region, what dormancy you will need and what traits you would like. This will then narrow down which alfalfa varieties are best for the conditions.
- Then, you can use the alfalfa variety placement chart to further identify the alfalfa variety that will work best for the field based on characteristics found through imagery and scouting as outlined above. You can also review variety performance results, including yield and forage quality data.
Before planting seed or making management decisions about an existing stand, take a soil sample from the field. Refer to the maps and notes you took about the field and determine zones that will benefit from close monitoring through soil sampling throughout the season. Once you get the samples back, work with your agronomist to make a fertility plan that addresses issues in the field that will affect the stand throughout the growing season.
For more tips on managing alfalfa in-season, click here.
