General
What’s everyone’s experience been on cover crops and no till?
Overall it seems like most people kinda like it..is it worth doing if you only partly no till? Or is it an all in deal? What’s people’s thoughts?
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How are some of you guys gonna get a cover crop planted into corn stalks in a year like this? Also i understand being no till you don’t compact the ground like conventional tillage people do but if you make mistakes trying to get a crop
Out on a wet day how can relieve the compaction? All over southern Ohio there’s plenty of corn standing yet. How can the cereal rye germinate when it’s this wet an...
We are no till to a point. After our corn harvest we go in and VT it then spread manure, VT or Disk the manure in, Rip 13” deep, chisel 8” deep, then wait on rain then play haygrazer in. After that it’s all no till. After the hay crop come off we plant wheat back in the haygrazer straw and plant corn in the wheat straw the next year
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Has anyone had experience with cover crops in 16-17” rain fall area. I am primarily in winter wheat/ chem fallow rotation and 2 pass and notill in winter wheat Have been thinking of trying some cover crop plots but moisture is our limiting factor and think that the cover crop would be almost like growing a spring crop and just rob our moisture. Any thoughts?
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The way I have look at it is if there is enough moisture for weeds to grow there is enough moisture for your cover crop to grow. But that hasn’t always been true. We have tried quite a few different species and haven’t settle on just one combination yet, usually we use triticale, turnips, and radishes as the base to every combo though. I try to use a minimum of 5 species. This spring we went with ...
Think I will do some comparisons this year after harvest but we usually don’t get any rain here is SE Washington until September of any measurable amount anyway. What kind of cover Seed are you using Behind wheat?
This will be our 3rd year using cover crops in about a 17 1/2” rainfall area. It works well but is completely weather dependent. We try to get it in as fast as we can once wheat harvest finished and have had 1” of growth on it before winter hit but we have also had 15” of growth on it. It all depends on weather. I will say that we like to put a cover crop in after Millet and that it germinates in ...
Have you looked at Cover crop Strategies by ***********? He's done some teaching in that area. Has experience working with some **************. https://www.covercropstrategies.com/articles/1006-podcast-making-cover-crops-work-in-area-with-less-than-20-inch-rainfall-part-1
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The picture of the ditch shows water from no-till and cover crop field on the right side, it is clear as drinking water. On the other side is water from a field conventional till, it looks like chocolate milk. The second picture is my neighbors field during a wind, it has no cover and is conventional tilled. My field is right beside this dust storm and it has green cover on it so it will never ...
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I grow rye for seed and sell it to brokers. I’m curious what people are paying for seed and how they purchase in bulk, totes, or bags. I grow Rymin cereal so there are no royalty fees. Can contact me at *********************
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yes our cereal rye cost 15$ a bag also. We bye enough to raise our own seed. I just run it though the combine twice. make the settings a little tighter the second time thru. I've never plug my drill that way. It makes my cost around 5.5$ a bushel. I have some small fields or hill sides I grow my rye seed on.
Current bid is $5 bu bin run or $6 bu cleaned, for $2 bu I can get cleaned bagged or totes.
About $15 for bagged rye
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20 to 30 cents a lb what we been buying
About $13/ bushel last fall in SE iowa. We buy in bulk and our dealer loads our seed tender from bags.
I finally convinced my dad to try some no-till on our farm a few years back. As you can imagine, convincing a 70 year old man to completely change how we do things was a challenge. At that time we would chisel plow corn stalks and bean stubble in the fall at 10” deep and use a deep V ripper on any areas we felt were compacted and then follow up with a field cultivator pass in the spring and then p...
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We farm Perry Clay in SE Arkansas. We’ve been doing a cover crop for 9 years. We have increased our organic matter, with increased OM have freed some fertilizer that was tied up, reduced erosion thereby reducing the need to clean drainage ditches and have cut out at least 2 irrigations per year. Our seed to soil contact at planting has never been better. The only downside I see is that we may be ...
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I split our farm with a tenant and plant beans no till on last years corn ground. I'm doing about 400 acres. of about 1200 acre farm. Tenant went in real wet in December so im working the ground as shallow as possible to knock down ruts. Also tenant for some reason, ****** nitrogen, mulch finisher, chisel, then Kelly diamond harrow, Turns soil into soup, so no till gives the ground some opportunit...
So you lose rye seed to slugs?
We do same as ****, This past year we had 2 back to back 6"+ rains and had some terrace damage. the past 2 days I have been fixing the terraces. I have had this farm about 5 years. I could hardly find earthworms Friday I was skimming 2 to 4" off above terrace and I was both excited and sick to see earthworms cut in half every 3 to 4 inches, 5 to 6 per square foot and big ones. They are worth about...
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My neighbor 40 A drains accost a corner of my 40 A. He is till and I am no-till and cover crop. I built a catch pond (not big enough it still runs over into my field) at the end of his waterway and installed a 12 pipe. The pictures are at the end of a 1 hour 1" rain. The liquid mud from his field is after some settled out in my catch pond. Compare the amount running off of each farm. I harvested ...
I will be happy to help you avoid the learning curve that I had. I usually plant about 50 to 60 lbs unless I am going for a seed crop and then I double that. When I first started cover cropping I had a skipped row and I did not mined until summer when I was trying to keep the weeds out. I have learned the value of cover crops and I am very particular now. My phone is ************
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I’m also interested to see your sprayer seeder, also how much rye do you blow out?
Hey could you explain more about the patriot sprayer system you built? Have any pics? That peaks my interest! Would like to do the same..
Did no till the last time we had prevent plant worked very well , prevent plant again in 2019 hoping to do it again if it gets dry very heavy soil cover crop last fall, curved tine closing wheels seem to work good for us
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East central Minnesota heavy soil, hard for us to get warm enough and dry enough in my mind for no till , Hoping for the right conditions
Every farm and farmer is different. If you commit to it and have educated yourself on covers and no-till it works great. You can have train wrecks without proper understanding of things. OM here if up over 1%, weed pressure & soil loss are way down, yield are up, and cost of production is down. It works great for us. The halfway in you mentioned can be an issue IF you plan on tilling the cove...
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I know I am going to be a lightning rod here but:
cover crops are the essential oils of agriculture.
the only way to fix soil compaction layers is steel and diesel fuel.
I was a no tiller from 1988 to 2010 then we started strip till and now in line ripping
but tillage is an art form not a science.
I learn something new every year.
what works today will not work after a week of 100 degree weat...
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In the field on my knees with a backhoe and a shovel
I am still learning. And will be until I die.
I have a consultant that travels from Oklahoma all the way to Northern ND.
I get the benefit of the mistakes and what is working from guys further south.
my consultant famously ***: "The teacher will appear when the student is ready."
Where did you learn the art?
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Our experience is very similar to *****'s. We are located in SE Iowa. We've been no-till/conservation till for 30+ years, but added cover crops about 10 years ago, although we only seed cereal rye on corn stalks ahead of soybeans. We seed it with a 3 pt. broadcast seeder while making the same pass with a Great Plains Turbo Max to knock down the corn stalks. The goal isn't to turn up black dirt...
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Where are you getting cover crop seed at good prices?
We have been all no-til and cover crops for 14 years. We have raise our OM between 1 -1.6 percent. In our case cereal rye ahead of soybeans works best. My brother is all conventional til. In adverse years my yields are better. In normal years there is not much yield difference. But I don't have the erosion issues he has either. We have sand and timber soils. We have turned our sand fields black. ...
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We plant all of our cover crops after corn and soybeans are harvested. The drill planting cover crops is usually 1 or 2 days behind the combine. We don't plant spring cover crops.
I have been trying to find someone who is planting cover crops at or about the same time as they plant their corn. Have you run into any issues planting your cover crop first?
we use one cast **** closing wheel and one ************ closing wheel.
This was great insight
Do you have issues getting the seed trench to close on heavy clay soil with cover crops? Conditions have to be about perfect for us to get it to close.