Over the past few weeks I have heard from countless farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, and Iowa that are considering taking prevented planting on all or parts of their farms. Growers Edge just published an excellent piece Prevented Planting Guidelines. Also see my articles on Prevented Planting Row Crop Acres – Which Cover […]
Cover Crops and Prevented Planting Guidelines Read More »
In a previous post I wrote that cover crops can suppress weeds. And many farmers are planting them with that primary benefit in mind. But, can cover crops become weeds? Unfortunately, the answer is “yes, they can.” Obviously we never want this to happen on our farm. And with good management practices, we can lessen
Can Cover Crops Become Weeds? Read More »
If you spend any time at all in cover crop meetings, you may have heard that it’s a good idea to add 20-50# of Nitrogen per acre to your cover crop – if you don’t have a legume in the mix or you don’t have manure available. You also probably heard (or participated in) the grumbling
Fertilizing Cover Crops & Planting Legumes After Soybeans Read More »
Radishes, Crimson Clover, and Bears Walking in cover crop fields in northern Indiana is easy compared to doing it northern Wisconsin. In northern Indiana my main issue is tripping over large radish tubers sticking out of the ground. In northern Wisconsin my main issue was that plus watching out for bears. I’m not talking about
Cover Crops and Bears? Read More »
Terminating cover crops is part of the “stepped-up management” that using cover crops requires. Over the past month I shot videos about killing annual ryegrass, killing crimson clover, and about the difference of killing cereal rye and annual ryegrass. In each of the videos I examined the importance of killing the cover crop…and killing it
Terminating Cover Crops – Use Residual Herbicide 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 »
CISCO Seeds, Robison Farms, and Dougherty Fertilizer are sponsoring a Cover Crop Field Day and Root Dig at the Greenwood, Indiana farm. If you’ve not had an opportunity to see cover crops in a real life farm setting, this will be a great meeting for you . There will be multiple species available to look
Cover Crop Field Day Set at Robison Farms Read More »
The Crimson clover had dense roots and we found a number of them at over 40″ deep. At cover crop field days over the past few weeks many interesting aspects of cover crops were revealed. One reminder about cover crops; it is NOT what is above ground that is the best indicator of success. Please
Cover Crops underground…I was not disappointed, I was a bit surprised! Read More »