This is the field of annual rye grass with strip tillage. Pic was taken at planting. This is how the timing should be ideally at planting, with the brown cover.
This close up shows that the annual rye grass is not quite completely killed. This is what will take off and grow and will need the second planned post emerge application.
This pic was taken on July 12th. Nice even stand.
My strip till with cover crop fields planted to corn look as good as any conventionally tilled fields.
We did have some heat and dry weather stress in the first 10 days of July. These fields barley rolled there leaves. In conventionally tilled fields of comparable soil type that wasn't the case, especially if that tillage was performed on the wet side.
This is the field that was chiseled and land planed last summer. The annual rye grass cover mostly didn't survive the winter. I planted it without further tillage. Or what would be stale seed bed.
It took until May the 27th to get started planting. I planted soybeans for one day than started planting corn. Conditions were excellent. Those seven days were the best window for planting this year. Short of a day or two in April if your soil type allowed it. The burn down for my cover crop fields was sprayed on the 20th and 21st of May. Emerged stand counts are running from 30,000 to 32,000 plants per acre on corn and 140,000 to 160,00 plants per acre on soybeans. I drop 32,300 on corn and 180,000 on soybeans.
The cereal rye killed easily as it always does. The annual rye grass looked as though I had a good kill. It was thin and not a lot of growth. In some of the at planting photo's it looks totally dead. In the strip till field with the annual rye grass it all killed the first time. I had an area at the end of the field that was tilled and land planed that was thicker and it regrew.
I had a surprise when I went back to side dress nitrogen. It had grown up right with the corn. I had to respray as usual to get a complete kill. The photo shows the corn suffering a little bit because the annual rye grass had pulled extra moisture away from the corn. It was dry at this point, later we received 1.7" of rain which really helped.
The timing for weed control was difficult this year due to late planting and wet conditions early. There were bigger weeds than normal at planting and emergence of others weren't the same as crop emergence.
