Plant Cover Crops

Learning about the benefits of planting cover crops.

Winter Cereal Rye

Root Pit Reveals 40″ Cereal Rye Roots

Rye Pit

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.

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

 

Grazing Cover Crops

These cattle have a great body score as they graze on December 6, 2011 in northern Indiana.

In early December, 2011 I visited two farms in Kosciusko County Indiana (NE IN) where producers had intentionally planted cover crops after their wheat was harvested for the purpose of grazing cattle and improving soil.  One of the producers planted a mixture that was featured in this blog.  His Oats/Cereal Rye/Turnip mixture looked beautiful and it appears he will have more feed than he needs to get the cattle through December without feeding much hay!  Only a severe ice storm or exceptionally wet soil would seem to prevent that from happening.  Here is a video my wife and I took from this field.

Just down the road a different farmer planted a different mixture.  His pastures were decimated by the summer drought and over grazing.  Frankly I would not have recommended the mixture he planted…only because I was not sure how the cattle would graze cover crop radishes.  His mixture was 3# Appin turnips and 3# of GroundHog cover crop radishes.  That was all…When my new farmer friend drove me by the field I did not see the cattle…and even then I was noticing a lot of bare soil (the area between all of the brassicas) and was longing to see oats or some grass species out in the field with the brassicas.  Then we found the gent that planted the field.  He was ecstatic!  The cattle were grazing both the turnips and radishes very well. His cattle had great body condition and his feed bill was way down.  My only recommendation was that he feed dry hay to the cattle along with the brassicas so that they would not end up with some health issues (acidosis, foundering, etc…).  Brassicas should not make up more than 30-35% of the diet for cattle and he was at over 80%.  Watch a video from this field.

Here is my wife in the field of cover crop radishes and Appin Turnips on Dec 6, 2011. Note the uncovered soil...that is just another reason to add oats and or cereal rye or annual ryegrass to this mixture.

 

The cattle needed more fiber in their diet so they ate a significant amount of turnip bulbs. They ate far fewer radish tubers than turnip tubers.

 It is very important to include fiber in the diet of the cattle when grazing turnips and radishes.  The forage quality of the brassica is too high for the cattle to have a healthy rumen. If the producer that planted only the brassicas had fed straw or lower quality dry grass hay the cattle would have been healthier.  I believe that is why the cattle were eating so many bulbs…they needed more fiber.

This line of straw bales were used for bedding in the barns instead of feed for the cattle in the brassica field.

 

Cover Crop Cereal Rye: Is there a (bad) connection with Goss’s Wilt in corn?

Goss's Wilt is becoming quite a problem in the US Corn Belt.

Cover crop cereal rye has been getting some “bad press” over the past month. It has been suggested that there is a connection with cover crop rye and Goss’s Wilt in corn (cereal rye making the Goss’s Wilt disease worse in corn).

I have talked to a few agronomists who had never heard of cover crop rye being a host for Goss’s Wilt, so I did my normal Google search to see what I could find out.

Some corn hybrids ARE susceptible to Goss’s Wilt. Some have greater levels of resistance.  Here is a publication from The University of Nebraska that shows the severity of Goss’s Wilt.  This disease is a real problem in the Corn Belt and there are many frustrated farmers that have Goss’s Wilt on their corn.

I also discovered that cereal rye is more of a deterrent to Goss’s Wilt, rather than a “cause.”  By using cereal grains in between corn crops the Goss’s Wilt bacterium population is greatly reduced.  Cereal rye is actually an excellent choice for a cover crop to help reduce the risk of Goss’s Wilt.

To reduce Goss’s Wilt it would be wise to consider the following steps:

  • use resistant corn hybrids
  • use a cover crop between continuous corn crops
  • control foxtail, barnyardgrass, shattercane, and other known hosts
  • rotate to soybeans, dry beans, alfalfa, small grains, or other non-host crops

For an excellent article on this topic by Sarah Carlson at Practical Farmers of Iowa, click here. You can reach Sarah at sarah@practicalfarmers.org

 

 

 

 

Photo Diary – Soybeans planted into a Cereal Rye cover crop – part 3

My cover cropping and no-till friend Dave from Central Indiana has allowed us to look in at his farming operation this year. (Did you notice I have friends named Dave who plant cover crops?) –  In previous posts Dave has shared about his no-till planting and spraying soybeans into cover crop cereal rye and later he shared about the progress the beans were making in the rye cover crop.  Dave has a knack for photography and farming and I greatly appreciate that Dave is willing to share his thoughts and experiences with all of us. Below is the note Dave sent me about his cover crops and his no-till soybeans. (I am using this with Dave’s permission).

 

I thought it would be a good idea to snap some final pictures of the soybeans behind my house that were no-tilled into Cereal Rye before we harvested them. It has been very exciting to watch this on-going experiment this season. I am optimistic that this field will yield very well. Since the last photos that I sent you in early July, I foliar fed the field on July 29th, but never had to go back in to spray with Roundup for weed control since the burndown application I made six days after planting. There are a very few random weeds in the field, but nothing of any significance. One negative observation with this field has been that the soybeans got very tall and thus have lodged in some of the darker ground. I planted them at 180,000 seeds / acre in 15″ rows not knowing how they would emerge through that heavy cereal rye cover. Next year I will likely use this same cereal rye cover strategy ahead of soybeans on a much larger scale but will probably back the planting population back to around 120,000 – 135,000 seeds / acre. I also might consider, depending upon the growing season, using Cobra Herbicide at a late vegetative stage to help control the soybean height and also trigger an immune response to help against White Mold. I could see White Mold being a potential problem with this system because of the very heavy residue cover not allowing enough air movement into the canopy. I will probably try to harvest this field next week sometime.

I asked Dave if he saw white mold this year and he replied “I didn’t see a white mold issue this year because the weather turned off very hot and dry. I think if we have average temperatures and average or above average moisture during a growing season, white mold could be a possible problem with this system.”

Now for the photos that Dave sent…

Beautiful soybeans, weed-free, no-till planted into a cereal rye cover crop
These soybeans planted into a rye cover crop are clean and heavily podded on Dave’s farm in a year that has been hot and dry after a wet, cold spring.

The soybeans are lodging a bit in the darker soils but over-all this field looks awesome!

I was speaking at a cover crop meeting this past summer at Purdue University and I mentioned Dave and this “trial” he was doing and a gentleman came up to me after the meeting and he told me he knew Dave.  He told me that Dave is “the best” farmer he has ever met!  It’s obvious that Dave is an “elite” farmer!

 

Why Soybeans Look Great After Cereal Rye

Barry Fisher, Indiana State Agronomist for NRCS in the pit in the grassy area that had shallow roots.

In Mid-August I had the honor of speaking at a cover crop field day in Tipton County, Indiana.  At that field day there were some root pits dug that were quite interesting.  One of the pits was in an area where some top soil had been removed and fill dirt had been put back over the top of where soil had been removed.  Now that area is a “grassy pasture-like” area.  What surprised me was that the roots on the forage grasses were not particularly deep into the soil profile – only 10-15″.  I found them to be much more shallow rooted than expected.

In the other pit the producer had been no-till farming for a number of years and for the past six years using cover crops as well.  In this pit we found soybean roots much deeper than forage grass roots!  See the video here. The cover crop used last year in the field was winter cereal rye.  The soybean crop looked excellent in a very dry time of the year.

Observations from the pit in the soybean field:

  • soybean roots around 40 inches deep
  • large nodules approximately 20 inches deep
  • dense, thick, healthy soybean roots
Markers along the side wall of the soil pit show evidence of soybean roots found at different depths.
Large soybean nodules found around 20 inches deep following a cereal rye cover crop in a continuous no-tilled field.

Obviously we don’t know the yield on the soybeans yet but they sure podded up well and I’m confident went through the drought better than shallower rooted soybeans.

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.

Photo Diary – Soybeans planted into a Cereal Rye cover crop- part 2

I am so pleased to present these photos of how well my friend Dave’s soybeans planted into tall cereal rye looks. Dave is from central Indiana between Indy and Lafayette. See the previous photo diary here.  I know Dave gained lots of encouragement to try this from Howard and Mike Weller from the Continental, Ohio area. Click here see the Weller’s presentation that they gave at the Ada, OH cover crop meeting.  Enjoy the photos sent from my friend Dave!

This photo was taken June 21. The rye is falling down and the beans look beautiful!

 

 

Another view taken on June 21, 2011.
This photo was taken the morning of July 1 after a rain shower. The beans are now just about to outgrow the rye stubble. Note the cleanliness of the field…no weeds and no escapes on the rye.

 

 

 

 

Another photo taken July 1, 2011.

 

 

The soybeans are growing well in this cover crop of cereal rye!
You cannot beat farming! No-till soybeans into a cereal rye cover crop, a rain on July 1 and a rainbow! Perfect!

 

 

 

Photo Diary – Soybeans planted into a Cereal Rye cover crop

I am very blessed to know a number of producers that are passionate about cover crops and crop production profitability.  One such producer is a fellow named Dave from NC Indiana.  (Dave is very humble and does not want notoriety so I will not use his last name or exact town.)  However, Dave has agreed to allow me to “follow his crops after cover crops”.  This will be more of a photo diary.  I think you will be excited to see how cover crops work for Dave and how awesome his crops are.  He has been a ‘cover cropper” for six years now.  This year Dave no-tilled approximately 50% of his acres.  Dave is one of the most innovative guys I know…but he’s also “cautious”; he does not want to lose money!  That’s why Dave loves cover crops!  By using cover crops he has improved his profitability.

An April view of cereal rye that was planted into corn stalks in the fall.
Planting soybeans into standing rye in Mid-May.
Cereal Rye seven days after sprayed with a 100% kill rate.
The soybean stand is “perfect” after being planted into standing cereal rye.

Managing Cereal Rye

Here is a very good article from Penn State on managing cereal rye – via the No-Till Farmer website.

Cereal rye is a pretty common cover crop. Killing it does not take "rocket science" but you need to know what to do to make sure you fully eliminate it.

http://www.no-tillfarmer.com/pages/News—Tips-For-Cereal-Rye-Management.php