How many of you are using cover crops? What are you seeing for success? What are you seeing for failures? I’m tired of seeing the haters and then the side where cover crops are the best thing I’ve ever done and your dumb not to use them. There is a happy medium, and that has been dependent on the growing season you grow the cover crop in, the subsequent cash crop and also the weather has a big effect. The practices involved to manage the cover crop and individual species also has an effect of your overall success. For a disclaimer I am a firm believer in the practice if you have the time (growing season) to allow them to do there magic. Second: if you don’t want extra management, I wouldn’t suggest cover crops Third: if you have cereals in your rotation or the season to allow them to work, and you can adjust your fert program based off the C:N ratio I believe they work for you very consistently. My failures were moving to: legumes and brassicas hoping to decay my old stalks etc and create a tillage radish to do my tillage before my soil was ready for it. I needed to soften soils with more carbon creating crops before I seen the values.

Posted by Jason Schley at 2023-01-20 01:16:30 UTC