First, spray your alfalfa for winter annual weeds like mustard, pennycress, cheatgrass, and downy brome as soon as possible. Several herbicides are very effective at removing these weeds, but if you wait until after your alfalfa greens up, these same herbicides can injure your alfalfa and delay its development.
Second, drill legumes into grass pastures. Legumes can improve animal performance as well as provide extra nitrogen to increase pasture yield. It may be too late to broadcast seeds and expect them to work their way into the soil, so consider using a drill.
Third, spray warm-season grass pastures that have lots of downy brome, cheatgrass, and other early season weeds with glyphosate or Plateau. Applying these herbicides now after the weeds green up but before warm-season grass starts growing will give you better pasture this summer when you really need it.
And finally, it's about time to plant oats for early May grazing or for use later as hay. Early planting of this cool-season cereal will give its highest production and earliest use. Note that to get the best results, these hay and pasture operations must be done now.
Bruce Anderson
Extension Forage Specialist
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