Gettysburg, PA | Last fall one of our producers here planted a variety of cover crops and then no-tilled corn in this spring. I posted a few of the pictures on here this summer and thought I'd follow with the yield results. The scene: farmer no-tilled 30 foot strips of cover crops into wheat stubble in August of 2007. The strips included: berseem clover, crimson clover, red clover, hairy vetch or oats. The remainder of the field remained fallow. Corn was no-tilled on May 8 and the field received 27 inches of rain in the season although 40% (11 inches) of that was received in September. Average precipitation for us for the season would be about 20 inches, We were a few inches short of normal for the months of June, July and August. Not exactly drought conditions but certainly drier than normal during the critical months. The only fertilizer added was 2.5 tons of poultry manure in December which, based on analysis, provided approximately 75 pounds of Nitrogen. Don’t have the rest of analysis information right now to provide.
The results in bushels per acre:
no cover crop - 122
red clover - 117
berseem clover - 107
crimson clover - 155
hairy vetch - 139
oats - 48
Can't really explain why the oats did so poorly?? For the legumes, the berseem clover winter killed so I understand that being lower. Not sure why the red clover didn't do better? I don't see how/why both did worse than no cover crop??? This was only one plot and clearly not scientific obviously, but, I hope it is worth sharing and discussing. Any thoughts/comments? |
Yeild results from cover crop plots
