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cover crop question...educate me,.. dont bash..educate
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James_ncKS
Posted 6/26/2014 09:15 (#3938282 - in reply to #3937289)
Subject: RE: cover crop question...educate me,.. dont bash..educate



Northcentral Kansas		I agree with NKS. Look at what your goals are and tailor your cover crop to your system. If your crop rotation is intensive enough to provide 100% or at least >85% residue cover at all times, you have minimal runoff and thus minimal soil erosion, then you may not gain short term. The 4 keys to building soil health are 1. Minimize soil disturbance. 2. Maintain 100% ground cover. 3. Keep living roots as much as possible. 4. Diversify the crop types. Cover crops are not the solution they are just a tool to address what your system might be lacking. The moisture situation boils down to ground cover. Will a cover crop use moisture? Yes. Does bare fallow use moisture? Yes. I am not a fan of summer fallow and haven't had any on my farm for 10+ years. It been tough lately with the summer fallow wheat yielding so much better than the continuous wheat. Think about this if you don't have reduced yields when you get less than half of you average rainfall how much are you wasting on an average year? Building soil health is a long term proposition. You are not planting that cover crop to fortify the soil for next years drought you are planting it for the drought 10 years from now. After 10 years of notill and a pretty intensive rotation i have added about 1% SOM. This is 19,000 gal per acre additional water holding capacity. Some years that is just enough to get through to the next rain. But as someone else pointed out you need to get to store it. I guess to answer your question. The situation you describe of planting a cover after wheat harvest and before planting wheat. You may not want to begin you cover cropping experience with this window as the CC will dry out the surface and without a well-timed rain you may have a hard time getting a good stand. It will not conserve moisture in this situation because you should have decent residue cover from your previous wheat crop. With your rotation I would try a cover crop after your second wheat. You have a long period during the growing season with no living roots. You have a high carbon source with your wheat stubble so you can get away with a lower C:N cover crop mix and not risk running out of residue. I would shoot for a August 1 plant date. If you want some advise on a mix let me know. I will be having another Soil Health Meeting at Osborne on July 17th at 6:00pm. Ray Ward will be speaking on soil health test. I should also have some additional data from the soil moisture study near Alton. They have had some big rains so we will see if the CC led to any additional infiltration.
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