Plant Cover Crops

Learning about the benefits of planting cover crops.

Soil Improvement

Cover Crops and Ray the Soil guy

Ray Archuleta and I after we spoke at the Southern Indiana Grazing Conference on soil health and cover crops.

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 the word in his field.  His passion is evidenced each time I hear him speak…and every time I hear him I learn something new too.  Ray works for the NRCS and he travels “everywhere”…at least it seems that way as we cross paths pretty often!  Click here to see Ray’s website. I believe you will find very helpful as you consider the health of your soil and how to improve it.

If you ever have an opportunity to hear Ray speak…DO NOT miss it!

 

Cover crops for gardens – and my wife, the cover cropping queen!

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 few years ago we had nearly 50 chili plants of various types (Jalapeno, Serrano, Habanero, etc…) and we raised several bountiful crops.  But we found that after raising these crops that we had few if any earthworms and our soil was becoming more compacted year after year.  We decided to put the gardening on hold in some plots as we look to improve our soil.  Just as last year, Sally planted different cover crops in August into some garden plots.  I need to explain, these plots are in the front of our house…right near the road!  My wife is a pretty bold cover crop user (and a good advertiser as well).

This Austrian Winter pea and cover crop radish mix fill one garden patch.

Why would she plant cover crops in our gardens?  The main reasons are to enhance the soil quality with earthworms and to reduce soil compaction.    Sally is a pretty “eco-friendly” gal as she recycles everything and she knows the value of taking care of the soil.  What we have found in the past 12 months is an increase in our earthworm population and several more roots in the soil to help build organic matter.  I expect that we will have some veggies in these garden plots next year.  I’m confident that Sally is doing the right thing by improving our soils…even if it is only a few square feet at a time!

 

A mixture of turnips, cover crop radish, and crimson clover is helping build the soil in my wife's garden plots.
The front of the Robison "Agronomy farm" house in Winona Lake, IN. Note that Sally let's me have a "Cliveden pasture green" house too! It must be love!

 

Earthworm Population Corn Field Experiment

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 the farm where my brother lives.  Thankfully the area where the cover crop plots were was not tilled.  In mid-August I decided to dig around in the field where the cover crop plots were and in areas where the field was tilled (again, it had been no-till for approximately 20 consecutive years).  Dad tells me that in those 20 years the organic matter has increased by at least one (1) percent.  So the soil on this farm should be pretty healthy.  In 2010 the soybeans averaged around 55 bu/acre in a very dry year.

Earthworms are a good indicator of soil health. Erarthworms enhance soil health as well.

I have included three different videos where I am taking earthworm counts in this post and I believe you will find them very interesting.

The first video is of earthworm channels in no-till where we had annual ryegrass as a cover crop.

The second video is taken in an area of the field where I counted earthworm channels where we had no cover crop in the tilled soil.

The third video is where I counted earthworm channels in no-till where we had a cereal rye cover crop.

Observations:

  • There were always more earthworms in no-till with cover crops (watch the videos to see how many more…).
  • There were more earthworms in the tilled soil than I anticipated.
  • The corn looked healthier (with somewhat larger ears) in no-till and with cover crops than in the tilled w/o cover crops area.
  • There were more earthworms where there was no-till w/o cover crops than in tilled area w/o cover crops.

66″ No-Till Corn Roots Following Cover Crops

This is not a scene from a horror flick...it's a scene from Frank Gibb's experiment showing that smoke was coming up from the tile drains over 200 feet from the tile entry point.

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 not easily found because we found pretty remarkable “things” going on in the soil beneath the soil.  What were those “things” we found?

Watch the Frank Gibbs video to see how special cover crops and no-till make a tough soil a healthy soil!  Frank does some pretty incredible work that shows the value of having a healthy soil.  Now, watch this second video of the smoke test results.  I have seen this test three times and NEVER seen it this awesome!

  • corn roots and earthworm channels up to 5 1/2 feet deep on no-till corn
  • top soil approximately 3 feet deep on top of lake bed soil
  • smoke from Frank’s “smoke test” coming up from 34″ deep over 200 feet away from the entry point

Frank says in the video that often times that the corn roots would “be turning out” when they hit the lake bed soil.  But because of cover crops and no-till the earthworms had plenty to eat for much of the year and the soil was very healthy compared to similar soil types in NW Ohio.  Obviously these roots did not “turn out”…they kept going down all the way to over 5 feet deep!

 

Medium Red Clover as a cover crop

Medium Red Clover frost seeded into wheat provides good nitrogen production and excellent forage/green manure.

Frost seeding clover into wheat has been a standard practice for many years.  Many producers have used “60/40 Plowdown Clover” in their wheat…but in many areas that practice has stopped as double crop soybean plantings have pushed further into northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  If double crop soybeans are not an option (or not desired) then a great choice for a cover crop in 2011 is Medium Red Clover.  While the 60/40 Mixture generally included 60% Mammoth Red Clover and 40% Yellow Blossom Sweetclover it seems more economical to use VNS Medium Red Clover because of the pricing of the seed this winter.  Be sure to use a pre-inoculated seed when sowing into your wheat so you get much improved clover production and N production.

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of using Medium Red Clover as a cover crop.  (This cover crop will pretty much be used in wheat acres.)

Advantages:

Advantages

  • Produces 75-100# N
  • Good root system-soil builder
  • Easy to frost seed into wheat
  • Often least cost cover crop
  • Easily killed
  • Excellent for forage

Disadvantages:

  • May get too tall in wheat and affect harvest