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SE PA | Finally have time to report on the field days held here at our farm Nov 1 and 2. After an unusual 7" snow storm 3 days before, the weather turned clear and warm for the event- most of the snow was melted! That brought out a good crowd- 220 people registered from 14 states.
We had 17 plots of cover crop blends with various planting dates and senerio's for intended cash crops the succeeding year. In addition there were field scale cover crop trials that focused on using shorter season corn varieties as a way to plant cover crops earlier and lots of corn yield data from our cover crop test plots. In the coming weeks that data will be posted on our website: http://covercropsolutions.com/ There were some outstanding results this year, i believe due to the extreme weather conditions we experianced. I will post those results here soon.
Farmers always like innovation so the Penn State Cover Crop Interseeder garnered alot of interest. This piece of equipment has potential on smaller scale appliactions. It can side dress N, spray weeds and plant cover crops when the corn is 1-2ft high. Its showing some promise in 2 years of testing.
We also had some top speakers at the event. Frederic Thomas from France. I've seen first hand how he is successfully using cover crops in France and he provided valuable insight as to how we need to be thinking blends and mixes in our cover cropping strategies. Also had Ray Archulata here. He did some dramatic demonstations related to how the soil benefits from using cover crops in relation to reduced fertilizer needs. The Penn State U guys also did a great job of sharing their cover crop research involvement and trends they are observing that are "taking root".
Here is an article about the feild day:
http://www.lancasterfarming.com/-French-Farmer-Shares-Cover-Crop-Kn...
Here are a few pictures.
 (the gathering place.jpg)
 (Ray Archulata doing slake test.jpg)
 (cover crop planter boxes.jpg)
 (root viewing boxes.jpg)
 (Frederic Thomas from France.jpg)
 (one of the concurrent plot tours.jpg)
 (PSU cover crop interseeder.jpg)
Attachments
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 the gathering place.jpg (48KB - 187 downloads)
Ray Archulata doing slake test.jpg (45KB - 198 downloads)
cover crop planter boxes.jpg (57KB - 179 downloads)
root viewing boxes.jpg (52KB - 183 downloads)
Frederic Thomas from France.jpg (37KB - 196 downloads)
one of the concurrent plot tours.jpg (60KB - 164 downloads)
PSU cover crop interseeder.jpg (30KB - 194 downloads)
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Report on our Cover Crop Field Day
