Regarding the “correct” seeding rate for sorghum and/or sudangrass, old-timers typically recommended 15 – 20 lbs. of seed/acre (or one bag for three acres). At this rate, seed drop/acre ran about 225,000. This means slightly less than one inch between plants on 30-inch rows.

Advocates for this practice swore it would increase total performance, since – they said – smaller stems are more digestible. Most modern plant scientists question such traditional wisdom. Plants crowded this intensely grow thinner. Often such spindly individuals just fall over before harvest. Perhaps defying logic, the smaller stems have a huge increase in percent of rind (the outside rim of the stem with high lignin). This factor markedly decreases forage digestibility.

Thus we recommend that seed drop be lowered significantly to 60,000 seeds/acre. Higher rates predispose to lodging. Make sure your drill can plant that low. Sorghum flour from ground-up seeds doesn’t germinate. If it can’t plant the 4 lbs./acre of whole seed, plug every other hole to allow the star drive to open wide enough to let the whole seed through.

Researchers found that increased spacing within the row let sorghum stalks get as big as corn stalks; lodging issues basically vanished. Yield and digestible fiber were still maintained. Several years ago, during my visit to the Cornell research farm in Valatie, I saw sorghum plants so burly that the only visible trait indicating their non-corn status was absence of an ear.

A single cut of brown midrib (BMR) sorghum-sudan, sudangrass or pearl millet yields highly digestible forage at the end of September. In conducting field research, crop scientists have harvested two to three tons of very decent forage, even though it was planted in mid-July with a warm autumn.

An often-overlooked crop is BMR pearl millet. Pearl millet seed costs more than Japanese millet seed, but the latter crop doesn’t boast the BMR option. Other forage researchers found that pearl millets have very high feed quality. In replicated studies, grazing corn was 12.9% crude protein, sorghum-sudan was 14.2% and the BMR pearl millet was 20% crude protein. The energy was similar – very high – between the BMR grazing corn, BMR sorghum-sudan and BMR pearl millet. All three had very high plant sugars.

Pearl millet does not suffer from prussic acid issues. It yields very well in late summer and has naturally thinner stems, that may be easier to round bale for wrapping. However, be cautioned that pearl millet it is so nutrient-rich (high in sugars) that it can cause bloat. In recent crop trials at Valatie, BMR pearl millet, with its narrow rows and tillering trait, yielded close to sorghum-sudangrass.

Leaving these hot climate summer annuals (HCSAs) behind, we now examine cool-season crops which can thrive in the decreasing temperatures of autumn conditions. Stands of straight cool-season grasses, if fed with nitrogen and sulfur in August and receiving adequate autumn rains, can produce good yields in early October. But they don’t dry down fast in autumn; thus, wide swath, same-day haylage, and the proper inoculant, will successfully preserve this high-quality forage. Keep the cut bar at or slightly over four inches, or you will have mostly weeds next spring.

These perennials produce very high-quality forage, as they keep growing in increasingly cool autumn weather. Yields may be less than outstanding, because they grow when day length and intensity decrease every day.

Some farmers take legume cuts after a killing frost. For those short on milking cow-quality forage, this is a possibility. But legumes thus managed seldom achieve the hoped-for high-quality goal, due to the lack of sufficient day length and sun intensity needed to optimize digestible components. This shortcoming also negatively impacts legume regrowth next spring – a problem solved by rotating the field in question to corn.

For folks planting in early August, late-planted oats for forage have huge potential, thus a practical option for many producers. Planted at 100 lbs. of seed/acre (higher seeding rates rarely increase yields), we can expect grain-type oats, with seed treatment, to yield at least two tons of high quality digestible dry matter by the end of September, in most of the Northeast. Farther north, you can plant slightly earlier; farther south, you should plant later.

For each region, as forage oat late-planting is delayed, yields fall dramatically. But the normally cool night temperatures of September conserve the sugars and produce forage of very high fiber digestibility. With sufficient nitrogen plus sulfur (or manure),0 forage oats commonly achieve 18% crude protein.

However, planting at July’s end, or the first of August, especially in more southern areas, risks aphids bringing in barley yellow dwarf virus, which can kill the plant. Cool nights with heavy dew seem to knock out those aphids, thus reducing loss potential. Elson Shields, Ph.D., at Cornell reported, “Since barley yellow dwarf virus is circulative, a neonic seed treatment will kill many aphids before they can transmit the virus… most of your problems would be in the disease area like rust.”

Cornell’s Gary Bergstrom, Ph.D., said rust populations in New York have developed the ability to overcome certain oat resistance genes, and they can now infect older, previously resistant varieties.

From Dr. Mark Sorrells’s work at Cornell, we know there are resistant varieties on the market, called ‘Steuben’ and ‘Hayden,’ which solve the issue (for now).

One last promotion for the HCSA named Japanese millet: This species doesn’t offer a BMR version. However, it may fit in nicely on a meadow where a first cutting took place way too late because of a super soggy spring. Moldboard or chisel plow, and follow with moderate disking. The seed rate should be a little heavier if spun on – one bag per two acres. If drilled, one bag for three acres. If spun on, drag in seed lightly. Then fertilize according to test.

This should easily outyield whatever the tired sod would have tried to produce for second cutting.