|
Southern MN | Fairly long story will try to make as short as possible. My families farm is trying to do some organic acres. In our area we really struggle with demand for anything but soybeans and corn. Alfalfa hard to get up before the rain every other day and not much of a market close. So we are growing first year corn and were thinking of just planting a cover crop for year two of transition. We have a consultant on the organic side who recommended we plant cereal rye as a cover crop after our first year transition corn crop to keep the weeds down the next year. Broadcast seeded it and it comes up nicely this spring. I had planned on disking it down but then was told to harvest the rye. While trying to find someone interested in buying my harvested rye I talked to a gentleman who convinced me to plant into the rye and then crimp it. Have obviously heard about it and seen pictures but NO ONE has done this in our area. So I rent a crimper from an agtalker and mixed results getting the rye to lay down. I am guessing this is because we planted it way to thin? Only planted around 40 lbs as we had no plans on doing any of this when we broadcast the rye. Crimped some of it twice and there is still a fair amount of standing rye. Will include pictures below. Just drove the soybeans today and I could not find a weed so very happy about that.
So my questions
Is the standing rye in the soybean field going to be a problem? Also we only crimped about 40 acres and are planning on harvesting the rest of the field for seed to plant some cover this fall. We have been told by numerous sources that as long as we do not let it get established, working any rye regrowth this fall and keeping anything worked down that grows in the spring we will not have a problem in our organic corn next year. Is this true because we have heard horror stories about killing cereal rye in an organic situation. Should we try to go into the soybeans with a mower or stalk chopper to cut the heads off of the rye that is still standing? I know we are quite a bit farther north than anyone else doing this but what are your experiences?
Edited by Jrditchdigger 6/30/2020 18:34
 (image (full).jpg)
 (image (full).jpg)
 (image (full).jpg)
Attachments
----------------
 image (full).jpg (245KB - 155 downloads)
image (full).jpg (186KB - 170 downloads)
image (full).jpg (246KB - 189 downloads)
| |
|
|
Cereal rye, crimping and soybeans
