History

Here’s a little history.

On and off since the late 1980’s I’ve been using cereal rye, wheat, and oats for cover crops. Some when I still used conventional tillage. I would plant cereal rye after wheat harvest into the field that would be receiving manure until the next spring. Then it was tilled under and planted to corn. After purchasing my first no-till drill a (JD750) I planted different cover crops after corn stalks that were going to soybeans the next spring. This worked well as soybeans are more forgiving than corn.

As I switched to more no-till corn I started planting directly into standing cereal rye cover. Sometimes it was too thick and caused problems with seed placement. One time it got too big (taller than the tractor) due to a wet spring. This was actually easier to plant into because the straw had a stem to it and kinked over as you ran the planter over it. I planted by the first week of June.

The worst failure I had was corn no-tilled into an old alfalfa stand that had grown to about a foot tall. It also had some orchard grass. The top soil moisture was depleted and it didn’t rain for two weeks after planting. In the mean time mice were having a treat of corn kernels.

The reason my first cover crops were so big was that I sprayed my burn down with the planter as I planted the crop. This sometimes wasn’t the right thing to do. I have since purchased a Spra-Coupe to do separate spraying.

Present day I’ve moved away from no-till corn to strip till. I don’t know if this was a move backwards yet. Time will tell.

It’s still possible to do strips and have a cover crop established. I’ve been working more with annual ryegrass and some cereal rye the last couple of years.