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Boone Co. Iowa | So, I am going forward very cautiously and slowly. Kept same chem program last year, which was overkill.
Also, my chem dealer, I thought we had an understanding, he would call me before he went and killed my covers. Well, he had machines in the area and sprayed stuff when I would have told him to wait.
So, #1, my wheat had to be sprayed 2x to get the stuff killed, because he sprayed it too early, and it “died” but then 3 weeks later started to green back up. Was too cold when got sprayed 1st time. He paid for pass #2.
On the beans, he sprayed the rye too early, and we didn’t get the growth I wanted. But it killed it, and since I had little growth, I had little weed suppression.
This year, I am going to spray my own. I have a sprayer, but 1 man show so felt having company spray was worth it. I am going to used hired help and/or spouse (who has full-time job) to help me tender.
I had covers for 6-8 years when I had seed corn, had one major incident when rye got too big and ended up with insect problem dinged my beans 15 bpa.
But, had also had a couple years where my beans were 1 pass and had 1-2 bpa difference between beans w covers and conventional 2-pass beans.
Covers behind seed corn was easy and we got a lot of growt, because corn came out a month earlier.
So, it is a process, definitely not the easy button.
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Cover Crops
