Perry County, 35 miles NW of Harrisburg, PA | Good morning Joshua,
Let me be the one giving the different opinion.
In my opinion, this would be a win for you, assuming this is my understanding of how the events would go:
you harvest, he applies N and drills the rye, 45-60 days go by while the rye grows, he comes in mows and bales off rye and stalks
Again, in my opinion, once he applies N and the drill does it thing slicing and dicing the stalks and during the time it takes for the rye to grow, assuming normal rainfall (assuming you get rain in the fall), I would think quite a bit of decomposition of the stalks occur and a lot of the P and K, would be leached out by the time everything is baled. By the time spring comes, you will have a nice field of rye cover crop, ready for you to plant into (assuming that you no-till). I would think that the benefits of the rye growing all winter will more than offset if the stalks were left there untouched.
Just one note: this is assuming that you would have some control of when the mowing and baling takes place, in order that the fields aren't torn up in case of excessive rain.
My thoughts and opinions.
Dave
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Cover crop proposal
