An experiment was conducted at the Moody Research Center (formerly Moody Experimental Farm) in northwestern Iowa to examine the effects of meadow-kill on crop yields and on soil moisture in the spring. The experiment utilized a corn-oats-meadow-meadow rotation with meadow-kill treatments applied to the second-year meadow at various times of the growing season. Twenty years (1958-1977) of data were used for the analyses presented in this bulletin.

Three treatments were used in the experiment. In the first, the control treatment, the second-year meadow was harvested two or three times. The plots were plowed the following spring before corn was planted. The second treatment was a "short fallow” treatment, in which second-year meadow was killed with herbicides in the early fall after the second cutting of hay. The third treatment was a longer fallow treatment, with meadow killed in midsummer after the first hay cutting. Plots receiving the second and third treatments also were spring plowed.