Farmers usually plant cover crops after harvesting their main crop. This prevents erosion of the soil and nutrient leaching. The roots of these crops also stabilize the structure of the soil. It had been assumed that a mixture of different cover crops would result in particularly intensive rooting.
Doug Bos is Assistant Director of Rock County Soil and Water Conservation District, where he has worked for 27 years. When he talks about cover crops, he is not only talking of programs, he is speaking of personal experience.
Some of our fields looked really scruffy, like stands of forgotten, overgrown brush that had given up the ghost and turned that pale, beige color of dead foliage we become so familiar with, and bored of, through the long months of winter. Only the early signs of small, emerging spikes of greenery in rows suggested that the fields had not been forgotten. Read more in this article from Lancaster Farming.
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.