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Understanding Cover Crops, Benefits, and Selection

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A guide to saving your soil Understanding Cover Crops, Benefits, and Selection $10.00 1 Contents Introduction 3 Some Late Summer Legume Cover Crops 37 or Mixes for Overwintering Cover Crop Terminology 5 Early Spring Planted Cover Crops 38 Selecting and Using Cover Crops 8 Late Spring Planted Cover Crops 38 Short Term Crop Rotation Benefits 38 Non-Legume Cover Crops 8 Interseeding and Relay Cropping 45 Small Grains: The Backbone of Many 8 Case Study: Interseeder Research 50 Rotations Plots, Mill Hill Farm Legume Cover Crops 11 Why Inoculate, Exactly? 14 Cover Crops and Soil Improvement 53 Cover Crop Selection Criteria 17 Cover Crops and Pest Management 54 Cover Crops and Weed Suppression 55 Cover Crops in Grazing Systems: Building 22 Soils with Good Forage Disease 55 Cover Crops in Organic No-till and Killed 25 Nematodes 56 Mulch Systems Guide to Cover Crop Products 58 No-till Case Study 1: Growing No-till 28 Pumpkins in a Killed Cover Crop Early Spring Planted Cover Crops 58 Mulch System Late Spring to Summer Planted Cover 58 Planting Green to Keep Soil Life Active 30 Crops No-till Case Study 2: Planting Green 32 Summer Annual Mixes 64 into a Standing Cover Crop Late Summer and Early Fall Planted Cover 65 No-till Case Study 3: Dormant 33 Crops Seeding Winter Annual Mixes 65 For Vegetable Growers 36 Perennial/Long Term Cover Crops 80 Minimizing Cultivation with Strip Tillage 37 Putting it All Together: How a Mix is Born 84 © Copyright King’s AgriSeeds Inc. 2017 By Dave Wilson and Genevieve Slocum www.KingsAgriSeeds.com 2 Introduction Soil is one of the most valuable resources on your farm. Cover crops help protect that resource by slowing its erosion, improving tilth, feeding its microbiological life, and improving water holding capacity with the addition of organic matter and root biomass. Cover crops enhance nutrient cycling and help break up pest cycles. They smother weeds and attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. Planting cover crops is a highly proactive step to take in Overwintered cover crop of hairy vetch, crimson clover, and oats. managing your rotation and improving long Nodules visible on roots. term soil stewardship through accumulated Central to understanding the benefits of cover benefits. crops is not necessarily what is seen above ground, but what lies beneath the soil surface. A Long term cover cropping involves a shift in robust and extensive root system actually perspective and management, but it should be provides much of cover crops’ benefits, from viewed as an investment that increases yields, breaking up compaction to depositing organic saves nitrogen costs over time, and ultimately matter to housing the bacteria that fix nitrogen leads to a more profitable system. for legumes. The plant’s root zone environment There is a cover crop for almost any soil type, is also the most active microbial site in the soil. climate, and terrain. There are covers to fit into Keeping soil covered with actively growing plant your rotation, whether it be the most material that maintains a living root zone more demanding large-scale corn-soybean rotation or months of the year helps in unseen ways, a smaller, diversified produce or livestock beginning with increasing the biodiversity of soil system. Many cover crops can also double as fauna and leading ultimately to a more resilient forages – green chop, hay, or silage, or to help soil web of life. extend grazing systems. King’s AgriSeeds carries a full line of cover The span of cover crop genetic variety has vast crops to fit your cropping system: legumes to and often untapped potential. Adaptability and fix nitrogen, small grains and brassicas to versatility of the cover crop are key in recycle nutrients, improve soil tilth, build successful soil improvement for profitable long- organic matter and help break pest cycles. We term production. Wherever you choose to have diverse cover crop mixes to fit into start with cover crops, adding them into your various growing zones. We encourage you to rotation will set the stage for that success by talk with our sales reps or a King’s dealer close building up nutrients and improving soil to you to find the right crop for your goals and structure, fertility, and permeability. They will growing zone. no doubt enhance conventional tillage, no- Planting note/herbicides: You must make tillage, and minimum-tillage scenarios. sure that the cover crop you select is compatible with your current herbicide 3 program. Be sure that you refer to information cover crop seed. As you try new cover crops on susceptible plants and residual times for some drills may not have a “notch” setting for herbicides that will be used in fields that will be all the cover crop seed you’re using. For planted with a cover crop. example, the John Deere grain drill on our farm does not have a setting for rapeseed. So we After planting the cover crops, take notes on planted rapeseed using the grass seed box of emergence, overwintering capability and stand the drill, calibrating it to the crimson clover or establishment. Also, be sure to consider the pearl millet setting (both have a seed size similar “spatial niches” on your farm. Strip cropping to rapeseed). With a little tinkering, we’ve provides a simple method for rotating a cover found that there’s usually a solution close at crop with a vegetable planting. Alternate field hand. strips or beds of a fall- or spring-planted cover crop with strips of early-planted vegetables like The biodiversity you bring into your system potato, onion, cabbage, lettuce or peas. Adjust with good crop rotation delivers many benefits, the width of your fields to accommodate easier including improved yields, reduced and often cover crop seeding (using your seeding prevented disease transmission, insect control, equipment as the standard of measure). Strip weed suppression, soil nitrogen management, cropping is a low-cost, low-input way of getting improving soil tilth and structure, improved the benefits of a cover crop. water utilization and reduced soil erosion. Cover crops are key in any rotation and, in the For agronomic crops planted on a larger case of organic farming, are often the underlying acreage, the strip-cropping concept can still drivers of the system. apply, but the strips will be large, field-sized strips with the width adjusted for your particular farm planting and harvesting equipment. Rotating cover crops in field strips arranged parallel to the contour slope of a hill makes good agronomic sense; these rotated cover crop strips will prevent soil erosion over time. Even where the topography is largely flat, cover crop strips provide other added benefits—such as attracting beneficial insects, providing crop diversification, and buffering effects—which can all help break the rapid spread of disease and insect epidemics that often plague large monoculture cropping systems. A summer pollinator mix that draws beneficial insects and soil building Think about the big picture. How will you get your cover crop established? What type and size of drill is available? What are the speed- ratio drive settings of the gearing for the seeders? Do you need to make adjustments? Check the drill manual to determine the proper fluted feed opening required for your particular 4 Cover Crop Terminology Allelopathy: The weed-inhibiting effects of many cover crops. Allelopathy is defined as “the inhibition of one species of plants by chemicals produced by another species.” It can be any direct or indirect harmful effect produced in one plant released into the environment. The magnitude of the detrimental effects depends on the extent of any other stressors, such as biological factors or environmental conditions (e.g. insect or disease pressure) that occur at the same time. Allelopathic compounds and effects of cover crops vary greatly. Some include: Winter-killed Daikon radish (left) and Braco white mustard (right) can leave a weed-free field in the spring, partly with the help of allelopathy. Peas, lentils, vetches: Beta-(3- isoxazolinonyl) alanine. Released as root Cover Crops: Cover crops are those crops exudates. Supresses lambsquarter, that are planted to provide cover for the soil. yellow foxtail, yellow nutsedge, and They may be grown between orchard trees as a pitted morning glory. more permanent cover, or as a temporary Buckwheat: Diethyl phthalate. Mostly in break crop in fields in between cropping the stem rather than the shoots, so it is seasons, regardless of whether they are later most likely to be active in weed incorporated. They are primarily a biological suppression after buckwheat is conservation tool to prevent soil erosion by harvested. It is especially active on water and/or wind, and are used to help build pigweed, but not very effective on soil health. They are usually planted before and plants in the mustard family. after the main designated cash crop in a Cereal rye: Contains several rotation. Functions of a cover crop may include: compounds. The most active are two ground cover or mulch, green manure, nurse hydroxamic acids and their breakdown crop, or smother crop. When crops are grown products. primarily as forage or food for animal and Crimson clover has been shown to human consumption, they are not necessarily suppress putted morning glory, wild termed a cover crop, but still provide the main mustard, and Italian ryegrass. benefit of a cover crop – keeping soil covered Sorghum-sudangrass: Sorgoleone. with a living crop. Cover crops can be annual, When residues decay they inhibit biennial, or perennial species, including legumes, pigweed, velvetleaf, large crabgrass, grasses, and brassicas. They have many benefits barnyardgrass, green foxtail, and to the crop that follows and improve and common ragweed.
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