Silage Management, Persistent Forage, and First Field Days!

Featured this month are several resources related to spring management on the farm, scouting, and the first of many 2025 field days! Read below and visit our website to learn more.

Silage Storage Maintenance – Are you really ready for spring?

Proper forage production starts in the planning phase as growers make variety selections, test soils, and create nutrient management plans, identify optimum harvest intervals, and ultimately cut, harvest and ensile the crop. However, all this hard work can be negated by using silage structures that fail to preserve the crop or allow for spoilage or additional contamination. 

Climate-Related Resources for Wisconsin Fruit Growers

Our new fruit outreach specialist, Josie Dillon, created a one-stop-shop for information on current and future climate trends, including resources for Wisconsin fruit growers wanting more information on combating climate-related challenges.

Research Brief: Interseeding legumes into grass pastures

Because legumes provide a wide range of benefits to perennial pastures, many graziers routinely reseed them. This study compared two methods of establishing (no-till drilling and frost seeding) red and white clover populations in meadow fescue pastures.

Evaluating alfalfa stands for profit in spring 2025 

Many farmers across Wisconsin intend to rotate out rough-looking alfalfa stands at least in part due to winterkill. This may not be a bad idea, but it’s helpful to know the process of objectively evaluating an alfalfa stand’s condition to know if it's good enough to keep. 

Soil Health in Wisconsin: Characteristics of healthy soil

This article highlights the characteristics of healthy soil and describes how these characteristics, and soil health generally, can contribute to sustainable crop production and indirectly impact society beyond the farm field.

Listen: Good Bugs and Planting Naked Seed

Most farmers use treated seeds, but insecticides can harm beneficial predators. Some now plant untreated "naked" seed to save money and protect helpful insects. Will chats with colleague Dane Elmquist and farmer Tom Ripp.

Our Farm Management program has been hard at work compiling resources and creating tools to help you compare risk management options, cover cropping and soil health decisions, and more. Explore a curated list of tools below. 

Regional crops educator Kevin Jarek outlines key points for 2025 crop farming here.

We are conducting a survey to estimate custom rates for common Wisconsin farming operations and we need your help. Hiring custom operations is an important part of modern farming, but determining fair rates to charge can be challenging. To help meet this need, we are conducting this survey and will publish a short report summarizing our findings on typical custom rates for Wisconsin. The link below takes you to an online survey.

If you are a farmer or a custom operator who performed or hired custom services in 2024, please click the link below to the survey and complete the sections that pertain to you. The survey asks about rates for tillage; planting and seeding; fertilizer and chemical application; manure services; grain harvesting, hauling and drying; silage, haylage, and hay services; and tractor and machinery rental. 

As a token of our appreciation, those who complete the survey with valid responses will be entered into a raffle for one of ten Fleet Farm and/or Cabela’s gift cards for $100. Participants will be asked to provide their contact details at the end of the survey for the raffle. Read more and take the survey here.

Field Notes

Will Fulwider, Regional Crops Educator, hosts Field Notes, where specialist guests, farmers, and industry reps collaborate with them to combine their skills, knowledge, and experience to help farmers and agronomists develop research-based solutions to issues facing agriculture in Wisconsin. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts or check out the episodes here!

The Cutting Edge

Join the UW-Madison Division of Extension as they search for new crops for Wisconsin growers, processors, and consumers on The Cutting Edge. The strength of Wisconsin’s agricultural economy is its diversity…something that doesn’t just happen by chance. It is a product of the relentless drive of researchers and farmers to innovate, explore, and experiment. Join us for a glimpse into the exciting new research and development bringing new crops and diversity to Wisconsin. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts or check out the episodes here!

Badger Crop Connect Webinar Series

Second and fourth Thursdays from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. beginning April 10

The Badger Crop Connect series provides agronomists, crop consultants, and farmers with timely crop updates for Wisconsin. Webinars take place all season long, from April through October. CCA CEUs are available by topic for each presentation.

OGRAIN Spring Workshop: Reducing Tillage in Organic Dairy

April 16 from 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Viroqua

For more information, please visit the OGRAIN website. Our speakers will share the latest research on reducing tillage in organic corn, equipment for minimizing tillage in organic, tips to help with organic certification, and crop rotation recommendations. We’ll leave ample time for discussion, so bring your questions!

Cover Crop & Equipment Demonstration Field Day 

May 15 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Marshfield Ag Research Station

This field day is designed for farmers, conservation staff, agronomists, crop advisors, and more to see demonstrations of termination of cereal rye cover crop using a roller crimper and planting into rolled cover crops, learn how to set up a planter to establish row crops into cover cropping systems, learn how cover crops affect the management of nutrients, and learn how farmers from across the state participating in the Wisconsin Cover Crop Data Network incorporate cover crops into their cropping systems.

Save the Date: UW–Madison Agronomy & Soils Field Day

August 27, 2025
Arlington Ag Research Station

A day of rotating field talks from faculty experts and researchers in crop management, pest management, forage, and soils.

Wisconsin Vegetable Crop Update Newsletter

Veggie producers, sign up to receive tailored updates from the UW–Madison Departments of Plant Pathology, Entomology, Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, and Soil and Environmental Science. 

Sign up by contacting Dr. Amanda Gevens.

Wisconsin Fruit News

Fruit producers, sign up to receive tailored updates from the UW–Madison Fruit Program. Sign up and read more here.

Field Notes - DATCP's Pest Survey Program Newsletter

Sign up to receive pest monitoring data and maps, current articles on economically important plant pests affecting Wisconsin's field crops, fruits, vegetables, nurseries, and forests. Sign up on DATCP's website or read newsletters on the web here.  

UW–Madison Division of Extension Crops and Soils Program

Find articles, resources, educational events and more at cropsandsoils.extension.wisc.edu

Partially supported by National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Crop Protection and Pest Management-Extension Implementation Program award number 2024-70006-43559.

An EEO/AA employer, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension provides equal opportunities in employment and programming, including Title VI, Title IX, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requirements. Please make requests for reasonable accommodations to ensure equal access to educational programs as early as possible preceding the scheduled program, service, or activity. For communicative accommodations in languages other than English, please contact oaic@extension.wisc.edu.  For communicative accommodations based on a disability, please contact Heather Lipinski Stelljes at: heather.stelljes@wisc.edu for the public.