Charloz24 - 8/12/2026 06:15

I have some question about cereal rye as cover crop, because did try it last year and it was not successfull.

Here is what I did:

Last year was VERY dry here in july/august. Rain came back the fist week on september (1.5 inch), but on the dry side after.

In my soybean fields, in the last week of august when leaves started to turn yellow , I seeded with drone oats and also turnips and got good green fields after soybeans harvest.

HOWEVER, in my corn field I tried cereal rye drone seeded @ 70lbs/acre in the last week of september into standing corn between 2 rain event ( about 1/3 inch each event).
(October rain was normal 4.5 inch for the month)
Corn was harvested october 25th
In the spring, that corn field have some cereal rye growing, but not really thick and about none on the combine tracks.

So that my question is was it just a bad year for my rye experiment?
Should I have seeded sooner so the rye could be stronger VS combine tire, or should I have seeded later (just before havesting maybe)
Average first frost here is october 10th.

Forgot to mention Im in a light strip till corn soybean rotation. By light strip till I mean just a pass of strip freshener in the spring.

Thanks in advance

Oats can germinate better in that situation, last year there was some rye flown on soybeans @ the timing you describes, it got a really nice stand, the rye flown on @ the same time didn't grow. We had a lot of rain to get a stand established as well.