Growing forages

You can better manage your farm’s legumes by understanding how alfalfa and other legumes grow and adopting proven strategies to handle winter injury.

Life cycles of legumes

Forage legumes vary in terms of their life cycle, the amount of nitrogen they can fix, how well they can adapt to challenging conditions and their susceptibility to insect damage and diseases.

By understanding the characteristics of forage legumes, you can better identify, use and manage them on your farm.

Crop stress and damage

Winter injury

Many factors can contribute to winter damage of an alfalfa stand. All are important to consider when making spring assessments, and managing injured stands.

Alfalfa winter injury assessment and management includes

How to assess winter injury
Factors that affect alfalfa's ability to overwinter
Managing injured stands
Options if large portions of the stand are damaged

Winter injury of alfalfa: Strategies for livestock producers includes

How to assess the damage
How to determine your forage needs
Options if you're short on inventory