I want a cover crop to help prevent erosion that we get from spring floods, and be able to plant into moisture in April.

Anyone plant a cover crop in between the rows of where you will be planting corn?

What I am thinking about is getting a no-till NH3 applicator set on 30" spacing and attached two drill units in between the NH3, with spacing like this NH3-11"-drill-8"-drill-11"-NH3. Apply NH3 and dry 18-46-0 for corn and plant rye or oats with 18-46-0 in the drill rows, during the winter months.

Will foot tall growing rye that is 10" away from the just emerged corn plant hurt it?

Is there anybody that would be willing to build a toolbar to accomplish this and be able to hook to a Great Plains air drill cart?

Seem like in order to get enough growth out of a cover crop to provide erosion protection from floods before corn it uses too much moisture from where the seed will be planted, making it difficult to get a stand.

This year we did 100% urea for our nitrogen in the riverbottom spread in April, some of it got rained in timely, most of it did not. We did oats as a covercrop before corn on two fields spread on in early March rained right after this was done and got a good stand where it was not too wet. Planted two fields to oats that were intending for harvesting for grain, but got a poor stand due to it being too wet so these fields became a cover crop too. Also had a covercrop of rye on some areas of some fields. ( Last years rye self terminated as it drowned out but some higher areas produced seed before this happened.)

Corn planted into green 18" rye second week of April into moisture but barely and would have been too dry if it were not so cool that week.

Corn planted into green 2-3" oats middle of April into moisture even though it has not rained for about three weeks. Oats at this time are barely rooted in and seemed like killing them at this time would result in almost no erosion control from the oats. These oats were killed about a week after planting and had rooted in a lot better in that time. It had rained a day after finishing planting.

Corn planted into 4-6" tall oats that had been sprayed with roundup 4 days prior and 18" tall dead rye that was spayed about 2 weeks prior. Both are in same field and planted both with same planter settings as most passes had some of both treatments. Ground with rye was almost too wet and ground with oats was too dry some corn got into moisture and some did not. This was the end of April when this corn was planted. Two days prior to the oats being sprayed it was too wet to spray and the field that was planted into green oats was sprayed the day before this field.

Flood May 16th, the oats provided some reduction in erosion, but I wish that is was more.

On the fields that the oats were planted on using a drill on 7.5" spacing the oats were much better rooted in from the start. Some of the oats that were spread on the surface it almost looked like they could blow out of the ground.