Annual Ryegrass

May 15 2013

Root Pit Reveals 40″ Cereal Rye Roots

I am blessed to hear from farmers around the world about their cover cropping adventures. One young man, Brian Scott, from Carroll County, Indiana has generously shared his information with me again this spring. This post is Brian’s report from early May, 2013. To see Brian’s photographs, click here.

We dug a few pits in our field today that has about 40 acres of cereal rye and another 40 of annual ryegrass. The cereal rye had a pretty good stand, but the ryegrass didn’t do so well over the winter. Looks like we may not be the only farm with that problem this year?

Anyway I was pretty excited for our first year cover cropping that we found cereal rye roots down to 40″ today! And we hit the water table below that since everything is still relatively wet from all the rain. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more roots if we could have dug down deeper. That was on pretty good soil that used to have manure applied every year until about 7 years ago when we got out of the hog business.

The ryegrass was on ground with much more clay near the surface, but I was glad to see we had roots down 2 feet where we did get a decent stand.

Both covers were sprayed today. I think I would have liked to keep the cereal rye a bit longer, but with rain in the forecast we didn’t want it getting out of control if we got soaked again and couldn’t spray. These were all seeded into standing corn on 9/19/2012. In all we had about 200 acres of cover this year and have plans to seed at least 400 in the fall!

Thanks Brian! And to everyone who have been sending info…watch for it to be on the blog soon. Thanks to all who are sharing their stories.

May 08 2013

Cover Crops: Buy One Year, Get Another Year Free

Surprise! That's what our reaction was to the volunteer annual ryegrass growing in our fields nearly 18 months after they were sown. — Surprise! That’s what our reaction was to the volunteer annual ryegrass growing in our fields nearly 18 months after they were sown.

Almost two years to the day I posted an article about Killing Tall Annual Ryegrass.

The problem of a wet and chilly 2011 has resurfaced an ugly head to be a wet and COLD spring of 2013. But over the past week or so temperatures have warmed into the 70’s and 80’s with cover crop annual ryegrass and winter cereal rye having grown tall in some areas of the Midwest. Producers need to kill their cover crops as soon as possible to comply with RMA regulations.

What about the surprise cover crops?

In a previous post I wrote about dormant seed in cover crop species on our home farm.

I showed how radishes were present in soybean fields and how annual ryegrass was coming up even after there was residual herbicide and burndown herbicide applied.

Now here we are in the spring and we have a few new surprises. Fall 2011 planted annual ryegrass and even fall planted winter cereal rye are now growing in the spring of 2013. These cover crops were fully terminated in the spring and summer of 2012; there was effective weed control. So dormant seed has germinated and now grown a full 15-18 months after it was seeded. So yes, cover crops can become weeds.

(But remember, cover crops also suppress weeds.)

So what does this matter?

We have the benefit of a “thin” cover crop and we did not have to pay seed cost or application cost for the second year. In our farming situation it is not a big deal. We terminated all of our cover crops and weeds with a “hot” chemical mix. It is a mix similar to what we used in our no-till fields prior to glyphosate coming on the market. However, if we were growing wheat or oats or barley for grain and straw it could be a problem. Thankfully there are now chemicals to use in cereal crops to eliminate annual ryegrass. I hear reports that Jamie Scott from northern Indiana has seen excellent results with this practice.

We have less winter annual weeds where we have the “volunteer” cover crops and I’m confident our soil health is better where we have the cover crops.

What do we do now?

We enjoy the benefit that we have from the cover crop (even though it is a sparse stand) and we watch to make sure we do not have any cover crops coming back before harvest. The cover crops are now dead and a residual herbicide is applied. Now we wait to plant the corn and soybeans and scout for any additional dormant seed to germinate and grow. A clean harvest is important to all producers. Our goal is to use the information from our own farm to make sure that farmers understand the rewards that cover crops bring and also the risk that comes with the reward. The risk is not huge and it is manageable, but it is risk none-the-less.

This volunteer annual ryegrass was terminated before heading out but it was jointed and would have made a great forage plant. — This volunteer annual ryegrass was terminated before heading out but it was jointed and would have made a great forage crop.

Volunteer Winter Cereal Rye was also growing in the old plot area. The cover crop was terminated well before the corn will be planted.

Mar 30 2013

Do Cover Crops Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring?

Fact or Fiction? Cover Crops that Survive the Winter Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring than Fall-Tilled Soil

This is a question I get over and over again. And most of the time it’s not really a question. It’s actually someone stating to me why they are not going to plant cover crops. But is it really true that a surviving cover crop will keep my soil colder than a conventionally tilled soil?

Several years ago in March I stopped at a cover crop test plot on the Indiana/Ohio border. While I was there I checked the soil temperature where cover crops had survived (Annual Ryegrass and Winter Cereal Rye) to see if it was indeed colder than the tilled soil that surrounded the plot.

Surprising Results

What I found was a bit surprising considering the conventional “widsom” I commonly heard. The soil temperature at 4″ depth was warmer by 1-2 degrees where we had a surviving cover crop than in moldboard plowed dark soil. I sampled on a sunny day when the temperatures were in the 40’s.

Since then I have taken comparative soil temperatures in many locations where no-till was done, where there was no-till with cover crops, and where there was fall tilled soil. In nearly every instance the area where there was a cover crop the soil temperatures were equal to or above the fall tilled soil temperatures. Each of these samples were just taken one time – a snapshot test in time.

More Testing

This spring my brother Don Robison is taking soil temperatures and photos of a soil thermometer from our home farm near Greenwood, IN. He started taking these photos on March 29, 2013. The plan is that Don will take soil temperatures for four or five consecutive Fridays – in annual ryegrass, in no-till soil (that has some winter annuals present), and in fall tilled soil. And since March of 2013 has been quite cold when compared to recent years, the results should be interesting.

Results Will Be Recorded

Each week I will post the temperatures as Don send them to me. Below you can see the temperatures from March 29. Be sure to check back weekly for the results.

Do Your Own Experiment

Send me temperature readings and photos (phone camera quality is fine) and I’ll compile some data from different parts of the country (world) and pass the data along. Please let me know your soil types and general weather conditions when you send in your reports.

The soil temperature on March 29, 2013 at approximately 4 inches in fall tilled soil.

The soil temperature on March 29, 2013 at approximately 4 inches in an annual ryegrass cover crop.

Soil temperature reading on March 29, 2013 in no-till soil. — The soil temperature reading on March 29, 2013 at approximately 4 inches in no-till soil.

Sep 06 2011

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.

Brown and Ayres CC's March 2011 170 — 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.

Mar 28 2011

Cover Crop Annual Ryegrass – Kill it dead!

107_0258 — By mid-October it was very evident that there was A LOT of volunteer annual ryegrass in this field. At that time the question was whether it would survive the winter...the answer was "yes it would". So now what? KILL IT DEAD this spring!

I was recently in a field of ryegrass cover crop that we had looked at earlier and there is still a lot of ryegrass in the field. That sounds good, right? It’s unfortunate that it was volunteer annual ryegrass. This producer had not followed the proper steps to killing his annual ryegrass.

We need to kill the annual ryegrass cover crop in the spring. Take a look at this site from the Oregon Ryegrass Commission on how to have the best opportunity to kill annual ryegrass cover crops. Now, there are questions brought up occasionally about whether killing volunteer annual ryegrass is more difficult to kill than ryegrass that was planted the previous fall. I’ll ask the experts to weigh in on that question in the comments section…I do not know the answer to that question!

Root Pit Reveals 40″ Cereal Rye Roots