Cover Crops

[Shaggy98]

Cover crops are starting to take of with the recent rains.  Just might be able to get a few tons of hay from this field.  Notice they aren't quite as tall as last falls milo stubble.  Radishes were about as big around as my thumb and about 8"-9" in length, they should have moisture now to dig for the depths, I guess we'll see.

[crophugger]

Shaggy or anyone going to be trying cover crop on a couple pivots that are going to be cut for silage this fall. Going to try flying it on then watering to get started any one tried this will be used for grazing in fall timing of application is what I'm interested in. Any certain kinds that will grow better than others with this method.

[Shaggy98]

Can't help you hugger.  I'm 100% dryland and drill all my cover crops.  In my second year using covers and have already learned a ton, some of what should have been common knowledge.  My main lesson is don't plant anything ahead of a cash crop the cannot be killed chemically without harming the cash crop.  This should have been a no brainer, but sometimes we look so hard at everything we overlook the obvious.  Lesson for me is I shouldn't have planted oats as a cover before winter wheat this fall.  Looks like some of the oats is going to set seed before I get it hayed. Volunteer oats in my wheat next near could be an issue, but we'll see.  Should have planted a couple weeks later and substituted sudan grass for the oats, but that's water under the bridge now.  Oats in the fall ahead of milo and sudan grass ahead of wheat in the spring is what I'm considering now.

We all learn from our mistakes and luckily for me I'm only talking 40 acres and not the whole farm. I've said it before and I will continue to say it.  I believe covers have a place in all no-till rotations but might take a few years to get our cover program dialed in.  I'm a firm believer in starting small and sticking with it.  What might work this year could be a total failure the next.  Good luck to you moving forward and post a few photo's if you don't mind.  One ole boy on here always says pictures or it didn't happen, but what else would you expect from a hillbilly, I meant what else would you expect from a Hoosier.  LOL

[clayton58]

hugger, my thought is if your following silage(corn?), you would have time to drill your cover.  IMO youll get a bletter stand that way.  If your folowing sorghum silage, it may be different, depending on how late it comes off.

Shaggy, I doubt volunteer oats will be a problem.  If it does set seed, most should sprout in time to kill it before wheat planting.  The rest will winter kill.  I would make sure you plant wheat into clean ground.  Be glad its oats, not rye 

[Shaggy98]

I want nothing to do with rye. It should be illegal to plant rye in this area IMO. Covers were going to get swathed today but received 2" rain yesterday so it'll probably be a couple days before we can get back into the fields. I'm hoping the covers will generate about 3000 LB's per acre, but we'll see.

[Blacksandfarmer]

Shaggy you ought to see all the off target rye in my area. We have rye growing in fields and ditches where the crop duster either missed his mark or had some rye seed fall out of his plane flying to the next field. I even had a seed customer ask me why the wheat I sold him had rye growing in it? I asked if the field next door to him had a cover crop. He said yes, and after looking at the field it was aparent that the pilot had missed his mark and spread some rye seed into my customers wheat field. Now my customer could end up getting a dock for FM due to rye showing up in the sample at the elevator. Cover crops are great if you have livestock to graze or if you farm on the wind swept plains, Im not sure if cover crops fit on every farm though. As for me, I had considered cover crops, but after all the runaway cover crop issues this year I am somewhat turned off by the idea.

[Shaggy98]

I've said it numerous times before BSF, I believe covers will fit into each and every operation. However that being said, we need to study pro's and the con's of such a program before we implement anything.  In my area it is something that can be chemically controlled before the next cash crop.  I'm new to the whole cover crop program as well, but I've dedicated one quarter as my personal experiment plot and I'm currently in my second year of spring seeded covers ahead of winter wheat.  I'll probably try a few acres of late summer or early fall seeded covers here in a few weeks, but I'm not sure I'll do anything with them except let them winterkill if I get good hay off my spring crops.  Management is the biggest key of making a cover crop progam successful, or at least that is what is being preached to me by fellow area no-tillers.