I doubt it would work at this point. Alfalfa is hard to establish this late in the season. For spring-sown alfalfa, the ideal time to plant the seed is from mid-March to mid-April because it is a cool-season plant, not a warm season one. It is almost mid-May now so no matter what you try, you're unlikely to get a good stand now because of the heat.

The traditional time to sow alfalfa seed in Oklahoma would be from about mid-September to mid-October, or maybe just a smidgen earlier to help ensure the plants can establish. They need to be large enough to have at least 5 true leaves before the freezing temperatures arrive.

To get a good stand of alfalfa you need a good seed bed, but I know that some people will come back and sow it as a cover crop in a field of corn or some other grain once the grain crop is up and growing. I'm not sure how they get the seed to make good soil contact, but assume the soil bed was well-prepared and had adequate moisture when the corn was planted and that the alfalfa has a fairly good chance of coming up in the corn field and growing in conjunction with the corn

Alfalfa is not the easiest cover crop to get established. You might want to work with easier cover crops like clovers, buckwheats and cereal ryes to get the hang of growing them before progressing on to alfalfa. Also, make sure you are getting a good variety of alfalfa and that the seed is high-quality. Cheap alfalfa seed doesn't sprout and establish as well as the higher quality and more expensive varieties do, and often you have to sow the cheaper varieties more thickly in order to get a good stand. Also, the best alfalfa stands are semi-permanent. Once you plant the alfalfa, you leave it there for at least 3 or 4 years, and just cut it back repeatedly. Be sure you are putting the alfalfa in an area where you're willing to let it grow for several years.

The easiest way to grow alfalfa is to accidentally sow the seed somewhere that you totally don't want it, so that when you see it growing, you'll utter curse words and blame yourself for sowing the wrong seed in the wrong place. That will ensure every dang seed will sprout and grow where you don't want it.

Dealing with wind and water erosion, hot or cold temperatures, soil that is too wet or too dry....it comes with the territory no matter what you're planting. I generally don't mulch cover crops at all....the whole point, to me, of having the cover crop is to cover the ground as a living mulch. I'm not gonna mulch my living mulch when I have other plants that need the non-living mulch more. As the cover crops grow and establish, they should choke out the weeds infiltrating their growing area. If they aren't doing that, sow their seed much more thickly. When you sow alfalfa seed in a well-prepared seed bed during a time when the soil temperatures are in the right range and there is adequate moisture available for the seed, you should get sprouts in a week to ten days or so.

Finally, did you use an inoculant? That helps a stand grow and produce better.

LOL @ the cursing. Yeah, I'm not familiar with growing it. I'll clip this for review this fall. Seems I started it about the 2nd week in April. I watered lazy, so it all bunched up in one area. Then, I reseeded it again, watered properly and covered it with a tarp to keep it from drying out while the seeds sprouted (was VERY windy).

Will it last much longer in the heat? I can always pull or cut it for the bunnies. At least I got a feel for its troubles. I swear it's related to carrots!

If it is established enough and well-rooted it could survive the heat. Much depends on how early we get hot, hot and hotter and whether adequate moisture is available. I have a perennial clover behind the garage in awful soil and it comes and goes. Sometimes it just fades away and I think it is dormant or even dead, and then suddenly it seems to just reappear out of nowhere. Generally it does better in spring and not so great in summer, but sometimes after a good summer rain, it resprouts and revives and looks great.

Okay.