While in southern Minnesota in early September 2013, I was asked when a farmer should plow his cover crop field this fall because he needs the fields to be “black” this winter in preparation for next spring. I shuddered. There I was in a beautiful field of cover crops that were jump-starting some biology on […]
Fall Cover Crop Management Read More »
Folks, If you want to see how cover crops provide a very good ROI across a wide geographic region then this report is for you! Thanks to Rob Meyers from SARE and the folks at CTIC for conducting and publishing this survey. It helps me to see that the results on our home farm (and
Results of Farmer Cover Crop Survey Conducted by SARE and CTIC Read More »
Several farmers have asked me why they need to spend an “extra” 4-6 cents per pound to inoculate the legume seed they are planting for producing nitrogen with their cover crops. I get asked this especially about Austrian Winter Peas and Cowpea. However, if you are planting Crimson Clover, Berseem Clover, Kura Clover, Alsike, Hairy
Inoculating Cover Crop Legumes Pays Off Read More »
During the first week of April I was in several root pits in northwest Indiana and boy did we find plenty of interesting factoids! I was assisted by Eileen Kladivko from Purdue University on one day and Barry Fisher, Indiana NRCS State Agronomist, on another day. What We Found in the Cover Crop Root Pits
Cover Crop Root Pits Reveal Plenty Read More »
Over the past three years I have had the privilege of speaking at a number of meetings when Ray Archuleta is also on the agenda. Ray is a tremendous source of knowledge and information on soil health and how cover crops and no-till help improve soil health. Ray is an “expert” in every sense of
Cover Crops and Ray the Soil guy Read More »
My wife Sally must love me…or at least she is observant to see how cover crops are improving the soil in our family gardens. Over the nearly 19 years we have lived in our home we have had a garden where we often have raised vegetables for the Hispanic families that we minister to. A
Cover crops for gardens – and my wife, the cover cropping queen! Read More »
Robison Farms in the Greenwood, Indiana area have been no-till farming since the late 1960’s. The field that these videos were taken from has been no-tilled for approximately 20 consecutive years. With the wet spring of 2011 the gentleman that now does the field work for dad decided to chisel plow and disk most of
Earthworm Population Corn Field Experiment Read More »
I had a “see it to believe it” moment in late August near Stryker, Ohio (Williams County – NW Ohio). A very long and deep root pit had been dug as Frank Gibbs (Ohio NRCS Resource Soil Scientist) was looking for the tile in a continuous no-till corn field. I’m thankful that the tile was
66″ No-Till Corn Roots Following Cover Crops Read More »