Tag: Alfalfa

Community, Meteorology

Blessed Rain

michaelmccurryphd

It isn’t perfect, but it is improving.  My alfalfa seedlings are recovering from the long dry spell – on the other hand the deer are discovering them and trying to graze them down.  NOAA shows this map for soil moisture:

This next map shows precipitation during August – again, it isn’t perfect, but coming out of a drought it shows us on the fringe of recovery – far ahead of southeast Washington down through most of Oregon and California.

It may be too early to say that we dodged the bullet for another month or so – but at least the recent precipitation has moved us to a place where we can dodge. At least the long-term predictions are pretty much back to normal probabilities of precipitation:

Community, Meteorology

The Weatherman Said

michaelmccurryphd

It looks like we’re into some near record or even record breaking high temperatures.  Kalispell’s record high was 105 degrees back in 1961.  I probably handled that by heading into the creek.  Still, that’s fairly gentle, compared to Glendive in 1893, or Medicine Lake in 1937 – both of which saw 117 degrees. 

As I look at the predictions for the next few days, my mind goes back to the concept of growing degree days, and then to the temperature limits on plant growth.  Corn, for example, doesn’t grow unless the temperature is at least 50 degrees, and anything over 86 is wasted.  Today’s heat isn’t much help for the sweet corn in the garden.  Wheat, as I recall handles temperatures up to 90 – but there isn’t much good to be said about 100+ degree weather for crops or people.  Alfalfa doesn’t notice the temperature until it tops 104.  (All of this is from memory, and the last time I taught the class was 35 years ago – I don’t believe that I’ve lost it since then, but checking the numbers won’t hurt my feelings)

The excess temperature has the spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and similar leafy greens bolting – going into seed production early.  I’m not sure how the early heat is going to affect the tomatoes and peppers this early in their growth.

Still, I’ve been through the hottest day Montana could offer – I was manning a target so we could tie in two separate benchmarks on two separate mountains . . . the kind of job a monkey with passable radio discipline could handle.  I’d figured on waiting for the radio call to shift the target, then napping in the shade.  When I got to the only shade available, I saw a rattlesnake slide into a crack in the boulder I had planned to use as a back rest.  It was a shady, smooth boulder – and if I had gotten there 5 minutes later, I would have probably got the nap.  Instead, I stood in the sunlight.  There’s a word for fear of snakes.

A Science for Everyone, Plants

Time to Plant Alfalfa

michaelmccurryphd

It’s time to plant alfalfa again.  I’m pretty sure that I last planted this field when I was in high school, in the mid-sixties, and it has run out.  But the world is a different place now, and many new varieties have developed in the past half-century.

I like alfalfa – it gets a couple harvests each year, even here, and the seed germinates in soil temperatures from 40 degrees to 104.  The big challenge is a well prepared seedbed and avoiding the last Spring frost.  Then comes hoping for rain.

About a century ago, someone decided the easy way to make a field here was dynamite – blasting a ditch that drained a lake and left only a pond.  It was an easy way to make a field, but the soil under the lake was glacial clay and silt, and the years had left it infused with calcium salts.  I don’t recall if the alfalfa I seeded back in the sixties was Vernal, Grimm or 9-19 – buying the seed was Dad’s responsibility, planting it was mine.  This time, I have the task of tillage – with a rototiller on the back of a tractor instead of a plow, and the task of selecting the variety of alfalfa.

I’m looking to the east to find my alfalfa.  Not so far, just east of the Rockies where they have developed salt and water tolerant species to use in saline seeps.  My new variety should be able to handle the water table – it has both lateral and tap roots – and the calcium salts.  The rototiller is breaking up the moss that has moved into the meadow, demonstrating the compaction and reduced fertility.  Sometimes, decisions made a century ago still affect your options a hundred years later.

I’ll be maintaining the half-acre of salina wildrye – a range plant native to Utah.  Mine descended from a pocketful of seeds I picked around 1980, planted in the salt lick, and left it for 30 years to handle the overgrazing.  It’s been successful, and Utah’s Extension Service describes it “Salina wildrye is fair to poor forage for livestock and game animals, being most useful during the early spring. It is used to a limited extent by upland game birds and songbirds. It is a rather poor erosion control plant in pure stands because of its bunchiness. The foliage is harsh and tough to the touch. Salina wildrye is quite resistant to grazing.”  My half-acre matches that description, but has the advantage that it thrives alongside the 49th parallel, and likes fine-textured soils.  

After I get the first 3 acres of salt and water tolerant alfalfa in, I’ll be looking at the southwest and southeast corners of the field.  They’re up against the quarter line, and I’ll probably plant those edges into a herbicide resistant alfalfa – back to just deep roots, and an easier spot to control the occasional knapweed plant that the deer bring in.  The following year will be another small patch of the salt tolerant alfalfa. 

Maybe the second childhood just means returning to small scale farming.

Community, Plants

Getting Ready to Plant

michaelmccurryphd

Yesterday, I took the snowblower from the back of the Kubota, and took the snowplow from the front.  Today, I mounted the rototiller on the Kubota – I’m getting ready to plant alfalfa in the fields again.  There isn’t much left, and I think the last planting was when I was in high school.  It was harder then, using Dad’s old Oliver tractor, pulling a modified horse disc that still had the seat on it.  We did a couple years of barley then, to make sure the soil was adequately tilled.

Forty years ago, I would have argued against the traditional 9-19 blend or vernal that was often the Trego norm, and gone with Ladak 65.  Still, old decisions affect today’s decisions.  The field was created a century ago, with dynamite used to blast a drainage ditch, drain the lake, and leave a hay field – back in the days when horse logging and river transportation was the way things were done.

This time, I’ll be trying a different variety of alfalfa – salt tolerant, branching roots as well as tap roots, and more tolerant of wet soils.  My soil is glacial silt and glacial clay, and long on calcium salts.  Draining the lake a century ago still left groundwater – but there has been a lot of research and development on alfalfa since I was young.  It’s a bit more expensive – but if it works, it’s worth it.

So I will start working the soil again with the tractor and the tiller – and each pass with the tillage instrument brings back comments from Jack Price, who brought the first tiller to his fields below the hill in the seventies.  Jack explained that the problem with using a plow in wet areas is that it wants to get the tractor stuck, while the rototiller wants to push the tractor ahead.  As I’ve encountered challenges in using the tiller, Jack’s comments about his learning to use a tiller keep coming back when I need them.  It takes a talent for teaching to deliver a lesson that returns over 40 years later.  Jack’s ability to teach was greater than I realized at the time.

I recall hand-seeding the field with a whirlygig seeder, crossing the field with my previous footprints as a guide, then brushing a little cover over the seeds with a drag made of aspen, pulled by a draft horse that knew more about farming than I did.  I’m hoping this experiment with alfalfa works out.  I’m not sure I enjoy haying – but I do enjoy watching a healthy field of alfalfa grow.