Growing hay?

[nao57]

I wondered about growing hay and wanted to ask about it?

I don't have enough land to grow hay. In fact, I don't have very much space at all. But it seems logical that some day I'd need to know how to grow hay. If we go back to horse and buggies... you'd need to know how to grow it, since North America generally doesn't have grass during the winter in most of it.

How hard is it to grow hay? And how does its learning curve rate compared to other crops?

Curious what you might think on this. Not every gardener is going to learn how to grow it, but it seems useful.

It also seems like, it might be interesting to go see a mennonite or amish farm and see how they do things, though I doubt there's any in my area.

 

[Sally PB]

The farmer near me plants his fields with alfalfa as part of his crop rotation. He cuts it to feed his cows, and horses can eat it too. When he cuts it, he scalps it right down to the dirt. You'd swear it was dead, but it's not. It fixes nitrogen and enriches the soil.

I've planted alfalfa as a cover crop. It's quite easy to grow, lives through our Michigan winters, keeps coming back after it's cut. It sends roots down as many as 20 feet, pulling up minerals. Once it's established, it seems the most difficult thing to do with the alfalfa plant is kill it without using herbicides.

 

[nao57]

The farmer near me plants his fields with alfalfa as part of his crop rotation. He cuts it to feed his cows, and horses can eat it too. When he cuts it, he scalps it right down to the dirt. You'd swear it was dead, but it's not. It fixes nitrogen and enriches the soil.

I've planted alfalfa as a cover crop. It's quite easy to grow, lives through our Michigan winters, keeps coming back after it's cut. It sends roots down as many as 20 feet, pulling up minerals. Once it's established, it seems the most difficult thing to do with the alfalfa plant is kill it without using herbicides.

Thanks.

Any idea on the ideal watering cycle for it? (Like x times per week?)

 

[Sally PB]

Like any broadcast seed for ground cover, I'd say keep it moist until it sprouts and gets growing.

That said, I planted some on a steep counterscarp last fall. This is what I did:
I found a bag of (several!) years old alfalfa seed.
I broadcast it by hand thickly on the slope and "sort of" raked it in. The ground there was hard and dry, and is mostly clay.
Then I ignored it. It got some rain. It got cold. It sprouted teeny little sprouts and looked like alfalfa sprouts that you'd put on a sandwich.
Winter came. It wasn't a harsh winter, and we didn't get that much snow.
Spring came. The alfalfa grew.

The farmer's field of alfalfa looked stressed this last summer from the heat, NOT from the lack of rain, and September was record dry. That field has been alfalfa for about 2 years now. Those roots are able to reach water, so while the plants didn't like the heat (high 80s and low 90s, which some might say, heat? what heat?), they didn't wilt.

Neither did mine, though it looked a little more stressed than what is out in the field. When we finally got a nice rain, it looked happy again.