Farmers with a certified organic diversified vegetable farm in South Carolina are seeing some success with using sunn hemp as a crimped cover crop to suppress weeds in fall brassica crops. Wild Hope Farm, located in Chester, S.C., received a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) Producer Grant to explore summer cover crop mixes for organic no-till broccoli. Read more in this article from SARE.
There are some options for fields that have a mixture of cover crop species growing in them and how to effectively terminate the cover crops before corn or soybean production. Read more in this article from Hoosier Ag News.
In this video from Penn State University Extension, learn more about interseeding cover crops into cash crops such as corn. Find out about the machine they developed that does interseeding and fertilizer application at the same time.
In this video from Michigan State University Extension, Paul Gross explains how you can dig a little and learn a lot about soil health on your farm through a soil pit.
A lot can change in 30 years. In the early 1990s, Perrysville, Ohio, brothers Steve and Carl Ayers were adopting no-till and cover crops on 700 acres of continuous corn on their 650-cow dairy operation, creating a standard for other growers in the area to emulate.
In this video from the Iowa Soybean Association, Teresa Middleton discusses when to terminate cover crops, the benefits of cover crops, achieving substantial amounts of biomass, and more.
With cool weather conditions potentially causing delays in cover crop termination, what options are available? Cereal rye ahead of soybean is not nearly as problematic. Read more in this article from Iowa State University Extension.
Weed management is a year-round job, but producers take special care to make sound management decisions prior to planting, and that includes cover crop burndown. According to information from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System (ACES), Alabama Extension Weed Scientist David Russell offers suggestions for planting into a weed-free field and maintaining a clean corn crop throughout the growing season. Read more in this article from Southeast AgNet.
A fall-planted cereal rye cover crop can have both positive and negative impacts, for example by tying up nitrogen, reducing soil moisture prior to planting, increasing insect pressure, reducing weed pressure, reducing soil erosion and allelopathy. The spring rains in 2021 and warming soil temperatures are encouraging cereal rye and wheat cover crops to take off. Read more in this article from University of Nebraska Extension.
Cover crops can serve as a useful tool of an integrated weed management program. Research at the University of Nebraska has shown that cover crops such as cereal rye can provide good control of winter annual weeds and other troublesome species like horseweed, and also provide early-season suppression of summer annual weeds like waterhemp.
The National Strip-Tillage Conference returns August 8-9, 2024!Build and refine your strip-till system with dozens of new ideas and connections at the 11th Annual National Strip-Tillage Conference in Madison, Wis. Aug. 8-9, 2024. Experience an energizing 2-day agenda featuring inspiring general session speakers, expert-led Strip-Till Classrooms and collaborative Strip-Till Roundtables. Plus, Certified Crop Adviser credits will be offered.
Georgetown, Del., no-tiller Jay Baxter was planning on conducting a cover crop experiment with oats, but when Mother Nature got in the way, he quickly pivoted to another idea for a different type of cover crop experiment.