TJ Kartes and Andy Linder both have first-hand experience with the highs and lows of cover cropping.
Kartes is an industry professional from southern Minnesota who works with multiple farmers across multiple states. He is also salesperson for the forage and cover crop seed company Saddle Butte Ag. Andy Linder runs a cropping and cattle operation near Faribault County, Minn., where he also sells seed for Saddle Butte and does custom application.
They’ve both learned never to waste an experience — good or bad — by keeping it to themselves.
Below, find their guide to 11 dos and don’ts of cover cropping.
1. Don’t let fear drive your decision-making
Kartes says the biggest obstacle to adopting cover crops on the farm is fear of change.
“You’ve got to get some thick skin to start this in your area because if you’re the only guy doing it, you’re going to get crap all the time about this. ‘You’re going to go broke. You’re going to lose the farm. Your dad would roll over in his grave if he saw you doing this. Are you dumb? This won’t work.’ That can be the real bad one,” he says.
Farmers also — rightly — fear the potential economic or financial impacts of adopting a new practice, he says. And they fear their landlords won’t appreciate them “raising weeds” on their land.
But Kartes says he thinks of land as an asset that can either be depleted or appreciated.
“If you lose an inch of topsoil a year, it’s about $30,000 - $40,000 you’re pissing down the river. Do you want to do that every year? That’s not economics. But that’s a fear. It’s fear of change.”
2. Don’t assume you need special equipment
Linder says many people believe that if they want to start cover cropping, they need special equipment. But farmers are incredibly creative, he says, and can make almost any equipment work with no-till.
“I don’t believe equipment should be an issue anymore. You don’t have to have a no-till planter,” he says. “You add a few attachments to your normal planter, you can plant no-till, you can plant strip-till. In my eyes, there’s no such thing as a no-till planter. There’s a corn planter that’s made to work in the no-till situation.”
There’s a wide range of options for planting cover crops, from planting during manure spreading to flying seed on. In one case, a farmer Linder knows was so desperate to get his seed down before the ground froze that he went out in his Farmall tractor and used an old grain drill to plant his rye. It wasn’t easy, but it worked.
3. Don’t necessarily increase your seeding rates
Planting the highest recommended seeding rates isn’t always the way to go, says Kartes.
If there’s too much biomass on the ground in the spring, it can drop down and stay wet in a mushy layer that doesn’t dry out.
Instead of putting down the highest recommended levels, adapt seeding rates for your conditions and your region’s unique challenges.
Linder puts down 40-60 pounds of cereal rye, but some farmers use up to 150 pounds for weed suppression. But in most cases, he says 60 pounds is enough.
4. Don’t overdo a cocktail mix
Kartes says a popular strategy is to do cocktail blends with dozens of species in the mix. But for farmers just starting out with cover crops, there’s value in starting with 5-6 species and assessing their performance before adding more.
“I think there’s a point where we can overload the system on some of this stuff, and I’m not sure that we’re getting all the benefit,” he says. “Go to more fibrous roots, go to more lateral branching type roots, get legumes in the mix and get grasses in the mix.”
In other words, start with 1-2 brassicas, 1-2 legumes, and 1-2 grasses, and see how they do before adding more species.
Currently, Kartes and Linder use cool season grasses, legumes and brassicas in one mix, and warm season grasses and legumes in the other.
5. Don’t plant and go to the lake for the weekend
Intensive management early on can help troubleshoot problems before they take root, says Linder. The first month after planting, he’s in the field every few days to head off any issues as the crop gets started.
Kartes says this can be a valuable strategy when it comes to pest control. One year on his uncle’s farm, he noticed an infestation of armyworms marching from host to host toward his fall rye. They were able to terminate the rye in that corner of the field and displace the armyworms before they did further damage.
6. Do reduce fertilizer rates slowly
Kartes and Linder say producers should take a conservative approach with fertilizer reductions. It takes a while to get your soils to the point where you can go to zero inputs.
“Cover crops do a lot of recycling, but you’ve got to work your way up the ladder to that point. If you start at that top rung and it fails, it’s a long way to the bottom, and you’re not going to be happy. Start out with cutting back fertility on soybeans, and keep your corn fertility,” says Kartes. “You’re still going to need replacement fertility while going through transition.”
7. Don’t let looks fool you…
The thing about cover crops, says Kartes, is that they sometimes don’t look pretty until late in the season — if ever. But looks can be deceiving.
When his growers no-till beans into fall rye, it takes a while to grow.
“Until July 4, it looks like hell. Your neighbors’ fields look better and everybody is laughing their asses off at you. Then that turns the corner, and it takes off. Then the combine rolls and you go, ‘Look at that yield, and this is all I put into it. What did you do?’ No more conversation after that,” he says.
8. ... But do pay attention to appearances
When seeding into a cover crop, it should either be grass-green because it hasn’t been sprayed or the “crispy kind of dead brown,” says Kartes.
“If you get that in-between, that’s when you have stuff wrapping on planters and doing things that are going to cause you a big headache. I always emphasize dead brown or grass green, and you’ll be fine planting.”
9. Do develop markers to track your progress
Kartes and Linder both use soil tests as part of routine farm management. But Kartes says producers should also develop performance markers based on their farm’s unique features and goals for their cover cropping program.
“There are things you can look for in your field alone that visually you can see and monitor yourself,” he says.
“There are no dumb questions…” – TJ Kartes
Overlay yield data onto field maps and look for trouble spots, for example and continue to watch those trouble spots over the years and see whether they shrink to the point where they no longer affect yield.
“This is data you can collect on your own if you have the yield mapping ability in your combines. This is something you can visually do on your own without buying any more stuff than you have,” Kartes adds.
“In our area, we’ll drown out 4-5 acres in areas during these heavy rains,” he says. “You put all your inputs there, you’ve got no crop. You shrink that down in half and get at least half a crop, now you at least have something to market, and you didn’t lose all your nutrients and herbicide. Those are markers you can visually see in your own field.”
Just as you can see spots that don’t drown out anymore, you can see hillsides that don’t burn up as much, says Kartes.
Linder says one marker of progress on his farm is that trucks don’t make ruts anymore even during rainy falls.
10. Don’t do the same thing over and over
It can be tempting to figure out what works and stick with a routine, but diversity is key when it comes to cover cropping, says Kartes.
There are a lot of options for a cover crop between beans going to corn, for example, and both Kartes and Linder have tried oats, triticale and brassicas. For beginners, cereals work fine as long as they’re carefully managed, says Kartes. But don’t stop there.
“If we keep doing the same thing over and over again, somewhere along the line, Mother Nature will say, ‘Gotcha.’ And she does every time,” he says.
11. Do talk to other farmers
Keep educating yourself on the latest research, says Kartes, but process information slowly and take everything with a grain of salt. It’s countercultural, but talking to other farmers about what is and isn’t working is also immensely valuable.
“Find people that are going in the direction you want to go and talk to them. Because most of us are really willing to share,” Linder adds. “That’s how we keep all of this going. There are peer groups of people who say, ‘What did you do? What worked? What didn’t work? What are we going to try next year?’”
Networking and sharing stories can take the sting out of mistakes. It also means others can learn from them and avoid them.
“The take home of the whole thing is we can make this work. Start easy, work your way up the ladder and work with people like Andy and myself. There’s a lot of other people around here to work with. Ask a lot of questions. There are no dumb questions,” says Kartes.
