Warmer weather helps crops, but also causes other concerns

With temperatures in the 80s for most of the past two weeks, crops in Winneshiek County have been doing a lot of catching up--but that also has prompted other concerns.

ISU Extension Agronomist Brian Lang in Decorah says the growth rate on alfalfa over the last two weeks, for instance, was at an accelerated rate of about an inch a day as the crops caught up from the earlier cold spring weather.

In his weekly crop report, Lang says many alfalfa fields are over 30-inches tall--which is typically beyond dairy quality forage.  But at the same time, most of these fields just reached bud stage within the last couple of days.

Lang says farmers try to do a balancing act between letting alfalfa grow well into bud stage, and yet harvesting a dairy quality product.