2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Deloris Pittman Author

02/26/2020 Added

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2020 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference presentation – Finding the Right Fit with Cover Crops, Abbey Wick, North Dakota State University

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[00:00:21.262]So our first speaker is Abbey Wick.
[00:00:23.050]She's a professor from North Dakota State University.
[00:00:26.540]Her area is Soil Health Extension Specialists.
[00:00:29.240]I was was really jealous,
[00:00:30.073]I was a professor at the time in South Dakota,
[00:00:32.840]when some of these positions were being created
[00:00:34.770]in North Dakota, specifically on soil health.
[00:00:37.000]And we were all very jealous that NDSU created positions
[00:00:40.840]just on soil health.
[00:00:41.910]So we appreciate you coming down,
[00:00:43.490]and we look forward to what you have to share with us today.
[00:00:46.500]Awesome, thank you.
[00:00:48.650]Will this thing kick in and work?
[00:00:50.350]Is it on? Yup.
[00:00:51.830]Can everybody hear me with the placement of this?
[00:00:53.610]I wanna make sure.
[00:00:54.510]You're good?
[00:00:55.343]Thank you.
[00:00:56.176]I always like when people react in the back
[00:00:57.700]and tell you that they can hear you or not
[00:00:59.060]instead of just dead silence.
[00:01:01.320]So thanks for the invitation to be here.
[00:01:03.260]I'm really excited to be in Nebraska.
[00:01:06.030]Like Nathan said, North Dakota about seven or so years ago,
[00:01:09.350]came of the soil health initiative
[00:01:10.620]and they hired six different positions at NDSU
[00:01:13.570]to work on soil health.
[00:01:15.110]So by no means am I doing all this alone up there.
[00:01:19.060]So we have an incredible support network at NDSU,
[00:01:21.960]as of a really great farmer partners.
[00:01:23.750]And that's what I focus on, is partnering with farmers
[00:01:26.100]to figure out how to make these practices work,
[00:01:28.330]and how to make them work effectively.
[00:01:30.816]So a lot of what I'm gonna talk about is
[00:01:32.250]for a very short growing season.
[00:01:35.420]North Dakota does have a very short growing season
[00:01:37.410]compared to what you guys have here.
[00:01:39.110]And as you move from the Southern part of our State
[00:01:40.720]to the Northern part of the State, it gets even shorter.
[00:01:43.578]So when I talk about corn and things like that,
[00:01:45.290]we're looking at mid-80s to high 90s for our varieties.
[00:01:51.200]Our average yields are probably between 185 and 220.
[00:01:54.500]So keep those things in mind
[00:01:55.870]as I talk about corn and soybean.
[00:01:58.140]And I'd say our soybean yields probably 40 to 70.
[00:02:01.280]70 on a really good year.
[00:02:03.318]So just keep that in mind
[00:02:04.151]as I talk about some of these practices we're using.
[00:02:07.090]And hopefully you'll get some ideas from this,
[00:02:09.310]maybe not specific recommendations,
[00:02:11.800]because I wouldn't want to come here
[00:02:12.890]and make specific recommendations,
[00:02:14.300]but some ideas on how you can maybe tweak
[00:02:16.540]or apply some of these things we're doing
[00:02:18.380]onto your systems here.
[00:02:21.460]So I wanted to give some basics,
[00:02:23.410]because I understand there's a whole diversity
[00:02:25.780]of people in here that Some of them are just starting,
[00:02:27.430]or thinking about it,
[00:02:28.290]some that have been using cover crops for a while,
[00:02:29.970]and I think Lauren is gonna go quite into depth things
[00:02:33.520]for people using cover crops for a while.
[00:02:36.080]So I wanna talk about some of the basics
[00:02:37.660]of using cover crops.
[00:02:39.100]And one of the first things that,
[00:02:41.930]when a farmer comes to me
[00:02:42.790]and asks me about using cover crops,
[00:02:44.290]is I ask him, what is your goal?
[00:02:46.600]What do you wanna do with cover crops?
[00:02:49.030]And sometimes it could be,
[00:02:50.820]well, I really wanna manage water,
[00:02:52.290]I want better trafficability in the spring.
[00:02:54.800]Some will say I wanna build soil health.
[00:02:57.720]For me, the building soil health
[00:02:59.050]is actually really challenging,
[00:03:00.390]because we don't know how to measure it very well.
[00:03:02.870]So some of the specific operational goal
[00:03:05.140]is really gonna help you figure out what you wanna do
[00:03:08.420]and how you're gonna do it.
[00:03:10.400]So developing a goal is usually the first step,
[00:03:12.550]and then there's usually another set of questions
[00:03:15.270]after that on, what are you growing this year?
[00:03:17.330]What are you growing next year?
[00:03:18.650]What are you comfortable controlling?
[00:03:20.320]What are your weed pressures?
[00:03:21.740]And then fitting that system together to make it work.
[00:03:24.930]And it could be for,
[00:03:27.420]it's gonna be different for every farmer,
[00:03:28.740]it's gonna be different for every field
[00:03:30.400]that you farm in a lot of cases.
[00:03:31.790]So keep that in mind as we kind of move forward.
[00:03:36.510]But here's one example of a primary goal in my region,
[00:03:39.380]is to reduce erosion.
[00:03:40.860]We have terrible wind erosion when we had gusts,
[00:03:43.330]yesterday is was like up to 50-some miles an hour.
[00:03:46.560]I flew down here in a blizzard, so that was kind of fun.
[00:03:49.658]But our primary concern is reducing erosion.
[00:03:52.710]And so we try to keep our fields covered.
[00:03:55.070]Turning off the chopping head on the combine
[00:03:57.960]and leaving the corn stalks standing.
[00:03:59.800]Getting some cover crops growing in there underneath
[00:04:01.530]to use moisture the next spring.
[00:04:02.890]We are also very waterlogged,
[00:04:04.190]we have a ton of water right now
[00:04:06.010]that we're gonna have to really manage going into next year.
[00:04:08.640]And I understand your guy's soil profile
[00:04:10.210]is also pretty full right now too.
[00:04:12.700]So water management may be one of your goals.
[00:04:17.200]Building aggregation, biological activity.
[00:04:20.801]A lot of where our water management comes from
[00:04:22.640]is from building aggregation,
[00:04:24.360]because that creates large pores, it creates small pores,
[00:04:26.750]it allows water to move through the system,
[00:04:28.460]it allows the soil to maintain the water as well.
[00:04:30.970]So having that kind of diversity
[00:04:32.560]of aggregation in the soil can be really important.
[00:04:35.530]So here's an example of,
[00:04:36.590]this is a really nicely aggregated soil.
[00:04:38.397]You can see the earth worm activity in there.
[00:04:41.030]This is under a cover crop after wheat.
[00:04:43.440]We grow a lot of wheat in our region too.
[00:04:47.100]It could also be to manage compaction.
[00:04:48.616]And when we think of compaction,
[00:04:49.920]we think of the tillage radish, right?
[00:04:51.190]I mean, that's probably the primary one
[00:04:52.410]that we start thinking of for alleviating some compaction.
[00:04:56.040]But we also like to use oats for compaction.
[00:04:58.690]We like to use the fibrous roots on oats
[00:05:00.650]to build some of that aggregation,
[00:05:02.510]help get through some of the compaction.
[00:05:04.700]So in our season,
[00:05:05.670]where we've left a ton of ruts in the field
[00:05:07.670]during harvest this fall,
[00:05:09.200]we're gonna have a lot of preventive plants
[00:05:11.430]and hopefully on those fields that we're starting,
[00:05:13.230]we're gonna plant oats to start fixing
[00:05:14.550]some of that compaction, and maybe throw in some radish.
[00:05:18.570]Managing water in the spring,
[00:05:19.850]this is usually how our fields look in the spring.
[00:05:22.870]This is a tiled piece that's conventional tillage.
[00:05:25.970]This is a untilled piece with no till.
[00:05:28.820]And so this farmer is using several approaches
[00:05:31.730]to manager water.
[00:05:32.563]He's got the transpiration by the plants,
[00:05:34.530]he's got the infiltration by the plant roots
[00:05:36.370]and the structure he's built.
[00:05:37.730]He's got some evaporation as well too.
[00:05:40.240]And then this field is managing it
[00:05:42.450]with probably just evaporation
[00:05:44.190]and the tiling here is trying to move water out.
[00:05:47.450]However, I dug in this field and it's very compacted,
[00:05:49.820]and I doubt that surface water
[00:05:51.080]is getting even to the tile line.
[00:05:53.030]So that's another consideration.
[00:05:55.120]But this is what we're starting to look at from management.
[00:05:57.710]And on this field, I could walk all the way
[00:05:59.230]across this field, on this one,
[00:06:00.380]I can't even take a step in it,
[00:06:01.950]'cause I might sink and I about lose my boots.
[00:06:04.630]So that's kind of how
[00:06:05.480]we're looking to manage moisture in the spring.
[00:06:07.380]Increasing trafficability at planting.
[00:06:09.660]I know you guys are doing a lot of reduce till in this area.
[00:06:14.030]Where I work, we're still a lot of full tillage.
[00:06:16.490]And we're concerned about soils warming up,
[00:06:18.850]we're very concerned about them drying out.
[00:06:20.900]So this is what we do to prepare for that in the spring.
[00:06:23.930]But there's an alternative.
[00:06:24.920]Here's a way to use cereal rye,
[00:06:26.690]and planting soybeans right into that rye.
[00:06:28.820]And it's got great trafficability.
[00:06:30.090]He was planting in the rain, managing moisture,
[00:06:33.870]getting his equipment across the field,
[00:06:35.670]and doing a good job with planting.
[00:06:39.100]And then improving trafficability at harvest.
[00:06:41.510]This is one of my favorite picture.
[00:06:44.360]This is when a farmer called me at 9:00 pm,
[00:06:46.280]and he said, "I know what I'm doing is working,
[00:06:48.267]"I need you to come down here tomorrow."
[00:06:50.460]And so I went, because I was intrigued,
[00:06:52.160]I had to see what he was doing.
[00:06:52.993]And this is a field that he was using
[00:06:54.300]no till with the diversartation with cover crops.
[00:06:57.410]They harvested in two wheel drive, their soybean crop.
[00:07:00.930]And they made it across the field, no issues.
[00:07:03.290]Same day, this is a field that's conventional tillage.
[00:07:07.630]Basically corn and soybean rotation.
[00:07:09.920]This guy was harvesting with tracks, same day.
[00:07:12.860]And so you can see that huge difference
[00:07:14.427]and the benefits they're getting
[00:07:16.440]from using these practices at both planting,
[00:07:19.090]and then again at harvest.
[00:07:20.210]And this is a high clay soil,
[00:07:21.430]which you guys don't really have that here, correct?
[00:07:24.010]Most of you are farming loam, loam textures.
[00:07:26.490]We've got 60% clays, which is really a challenge.
[00:07:30.450]But here you can see, this is where using those systems
[00:07:33.570]and integrating it on a wet-harvest year
[00:07:35.210]is really paying out for this farmer.
[00:07:37.220]He could load on the field,
[00:07:38.680]this guy was loading on the road.
[00:07:40.330]You can see how he slipped around.
[00:07:41.760]This guy didn't have to buy tracks, this one did.
[00:07:44.030]So you can see how those thing might pay out.
[00:07:47.690]But where do we start with all of this?
[00:07:49.280]I mean, I think it's,
[00:07:52.220]I get asked quite often
[00:07:53.240]to make a blanket recommendation
[00:07:54.760]for the state of North Dakota on, how do we do cover crops?
[00:07:57.980]And to tell you the truth,
[00:07:59.170]this is absolutely possible to do that.
[00:08:01.500]So each field, each farmer,
[00:08:04.830]sometimes we're even splitting our fields to divide them up
[00:08:07.300]because they have different issues
[00:08:08.570]to really get the best management.
[00:08:10.660]So anything that I say here
[00:08:11.770]is not gonna be a blanket recommendation,
[00:08:13.200]it's gonna be an idea that's in your head
[00:08:15.140]that you're gonna take and turn into something on your farm.
[00:08:19.500]It sounds like you have a great support network here too,
[00:08:21.320]from what Nathan was saying.
[00:08:22.210]You've got a lot of support, which is really good.
[00:08:25.470]So I'm gonna reference to,
[00:08:27.080]this is one of the largest projects
[00:08:28.840]that I have called the SHARE Farm.
[00:08:31.190]And it's the soil health
[00:08:32.410]and agriculture research extension farm.
[00:08:34.320]It too me an entire day to come up with that acronym,
[00:08:36.560]so please don't think it's stupid,
[00:08:38.500]because it was a lot of work.
[00:08:40.250]But this is a project that
[00:08:41.590]is funded by our commodity groups.
[00:08:43.060]And we have two of these sites now.
[00:08:44.400]One in the Southeastern corner of North Dakota,
[00:08:45.573]and one up in the Northeastern corner.
[00:08:47.720]Two very different cropping systems,
[00:08:49.140]very different approaches being used.
[00:08:50.950]And I'll talk quite a bit about
[00:08:52.213]what we're doing here with the tillage practices,
[00:08:54.330]and then this is all no-till cover crop.
[00:08:56.373]Then we have tiled ground and untiled ground,
[00:08:58.570]which I'm not really gonna talk too much about the tiling
[00:09:00.380]versus non tiling.
[00:09:02.070]But this is where we get our information,
[00:09:03.670]this is where we collect the data.
[00:09:04.880]This is where we get the farmers to tell us
[00:09:06.770]what they want us to do,
[00:09:08.110]and this is how we build our programs.
[00:09:09.610]So you know that to believe some of these practices,
[00:09:12.770]sometimes you need to see the numbers, right?
[00:09:14.390]You've gotta see the yields,
[00:09:15.360]you have to see how it's working,
[00:09:16.970]and so this is our project
[00:09:18.230]where we get a lot of those numbers.
[00:09:21.130]But I'll talk a little bit too about
[00:09:23.440]where we can fit in cover crops.
[00:09:24.750]And for us, it's after wheat.
[00:09:26.470]I know you don't grow a ton of wheat down here,
[00:09:28.100]so I'm not gonna focus a lot on that.
[00:09:29.840]But we've been flying in cover crops into soybean
[00:09:32.540]and also inter-seeding into corn.
[00:09:34.350]And those are two really great practices
[00:09:36.180]that we're using.
[00:09:37.013]More success, for certain, with inter-seeding corn
[00:09:39.410]than with flying on into soybean.
[00:09:41.460]And then for us, after wheat is a no brainer.
[00:09:43.330]If we get in by August 15th, we're good,
[00:09:45.700]we can get a decent cover crop.
[00:09:46.840]It sounds like you guys have until October 1st
[00:09:49.300]to get in.
[00:09:51.090]So there's all kinds of ways to inter-seed.
[00:09:52.640]And we explore all these different ways,
[00:09:54.950]and there's still more ways that farmers are developing.
[00:09:58.680]I was told, when I started, that I should figure out a way
[00:10:00.880]for farmers, I should figure out the equipment farmers
[00:10:03.510]are gonna need to do this.
[00:10:05.250]And I realized at first,
[00:10:06.160]farmers don't want me to tell them what equipment to do,
[00:10:07.770]they're gonna build their equipment.
[00:10:08.900]They're gonna create what's gonna work on their farm.
[00:10:11.300]What we need to do is figure out how effectively
[00:10:13.150]these methods work so that a farmer can make a decision
[00:10:15.610]on, do I wanna broadcast, do I wanna seed,
[00:10:17.560]how am I gonna do this to get a good stand?
[00:10:20.520]And so again, keep in mind,
[00:10:21.770]on all this we're doing is on 30 inch row spacing,
[00:10:24.050]and mid-80s to high 90s for maturity.
[00:10:28.090]So we try to get upright structure on our corn
[00:10:31.610]when we're doing this, so we can get sunlight down
[00:10:33.880]to the cereal rye that we seed.
[00:10:35.000]So just keep that in mind in your systems.
[00:10:37.470]If light can't get down to it,
[00:10:38.740]it's gonna be a challenge to get it going.
[00:10:41.060]But here we've got a system where we seed it, actually,
[00:10:43.830]in the soil with this rig.
[00:10:45.920]Here's one where a farmer broadcasts it
[00:10:47.550]with his, at side dress time.
[00:10:49.580]Here's another one where we drop it in with a high boy.
[00:10:51.950]And then there's, of course, the airplane.
[00:10:55.190]So here's what we did at the SHARE Farm that I talked about.
[00:10:59.160]We had a company design this,
[00:11:01.430]where they could come in
[00:11:02.700]when the corn is up to 18 inches tall,
[00:11:04.850]and they can actually get the seed to soil contact
[00:11:06.760]of the cover crops in there.
[00:11:07.750]And we're seeding cereal rye and radish.
[00:11:09.770]We keep it really, really, simple,
[00:11:11.410]those are two cover crops that the farmers I work with
[00:11:13.400]are comfortable controlling and managing.
[00:11:15.530]And this works pretty well for us.
[00:11:18.040]Here's what it looks like going through the soil.
[00:11:19.770]This was actually, we started, when we transitioned
[00:11:22.680]to reduce till in our systems,
[00:11:24.460]we start with inter-seeding corn, and then we transition
[00:11:26.750]by planting green with soybean, and going on from there,
[00:11:29.490]because wheat residue is really scary for me.
[00:11:32.579]So we start here, and this is how we often get started
[00:11:34.440]with our cover crops.
[00:11:35.440]And there's a close up of the inter-seeder that we use.
[00:11:39.490]And what we are seeing,
[00:11:40.910]here's the cover crops established mid-season,
[00:11:44.650]well, towards the end of the season
[00:11:45.540]they're getting a decent amount of light to get going.
[00:11:47.980]We don't want them to grow a lot,
[00:11:49.170]we just want them to grow a little bit and get established,
[00:11:50.970]because after the corn comes off,
[00:11:52.570]we really don't have a lot of time
[00:11:54.320]for the cover crops to grow.
[00:11:55.960]And so for example,
[00:11:56.820]a lot of our farmers are still combining corn right now,
[00:11:59.130]because we had such a late season,
[00:12:00.730]and it's really kind of a bummer.
[00:12:02.860]So here's it established,
[00:12:03.800]this is what it looks like non chopping head,
[00:12:05.890]the cover crops growing.
[00:12:07.590]Post harvest using moisture, managing moisture.
[00:12:10.200]There's the cereal rye and then also the radish in here.
[00:12:12.830]And then going into the winter again,
[00:12:14.180]there's where we sit with
[00:12:15.710]that the cover crop establishment
[00:12:18.578]under the residue on the snow.
[00:12:20.500]So corn yields in 2016, these,
[00:12:22.690]we had actually a really good year for corn.
[00:12:25.040]And here it's significantly higher in the no-till cover crop
[00:12:27.840]than it is the conventional till.
[00:12:29.800]And that was a good thing for us to see.
[00:12:31.740]I would be fine if those numbers were the same.
[00:12:34.190]And actually what I think is more interesting
[00:12:35.840]is the variability.
[00:12:36.673]So this is our low, this is our high.
[00:12:38.910]Look how much tighter that is
[00:12:41.210]for the no-till cover crop system
[00:12:42.700]than it is.
[00:12:43.580]It's so variable for the conventional tillage
[00:12:46.230]in our system without cover crops.
[00:12:47.987]And so often times with cover crops,
[00:12:49.430]we're trying to decrease that variability.
[00:12:51.500]We're trying to make it a little bit more consistent
[00:12:53.730]across the field.
[00:12:54.600]And that's what we're able to do
[00:12:55.990]in this system.
[00:12:59.340]And then here's an example of broadcasting.
[00:13:01.150]So we've got, this has a twin tank,
[00:13:03.570]so you can broadcast the fertilizer,
[00:13:05.360]and then also the cover crop seed.
[00:13:08.240]So he's going in at this time,
[00:13:09.430]he can cover a lot of acres, go really fast.
[00:13:11.880]And he's fine with broadcasting in his system.
[00:13:14.600]And this is what it looks like,
[00:13:15.680]here he did 30 pounds of cereal rye.
[00:13:17.620]Here is did 60 pounds.
[00:13:20.860]And in this field it actually got hailed on twice.
[00:13:24.330]And so this farmer, though, he was really
[00:13:26.130]upset about the hail, he was actually really happy,
[00:13:28.180]he had the cover crop growing under there,
[00:13:29.500]because it competed with weeds,
[00:13:30.810]it did a whole nother level of management for him
[00:13:33.760]in that field.
[00:13:34.980]And helped him get through that year.
[00:13:37.854]So you can see a difference in seeding rate
[00:13:41.070]depending on the coverage you want.
[00:13:42.920]So he saw that, and the thought well, heck,
[00:13:44.670]I got variable rate,
[00:13:45.650]I've got sandy hilltops,
[00:13:46.770]I've got high clay lower parts of the field,
[00:13:48.860]I'm in a just variable rate,
[00:13:49.900]and I'm gonna sit in the broadcaster,
[00:13:52.040]and I'm gonna bump it up to 60 pounds
[00:13:53.350]in my low parts of the field,
[00:13:54.450]I'm gonna drop it down to 10 on the high parts
[00:13:56.200]on the hilltops.
[00:13:57.370]And so that's what he did.
[00:13:58.440]This is a hilltop where he has less,
[00:14:01.090]and then here's the low part where he's got more cover crop.
[00:14:04.410]So you can kind of customize things.
[00:14:05.730]As you get comfortable with it, you can take it
[00:14:07.920]to a whole nother level and say,
[00:14:08.897]"I don't want as much moisture usage on the hilltop,
[00:14:11.167]"because I know it's gonna dry out faster,
[00:14:12.747]"so I'm gonna reduce my rate, and I'm gonna bump it up
[00:14:14.777]"on the low parts of the field."
[00:14:16.430]Or you could even go through the field
[00:14:17.850]and just seed your cover crop in the low parts of the field,
[00:14:19.570]where you're gonna have trafficability issues,
[00:14:21.990]and get it established there,
[00:14:23.140]but just don't do anything on the hilltops.
[00:14:25.320]So there's a lot of different variations on this
[00:14:27.230]that you could do to help it fit your system.
[00:14:30.580]Dropping between rows.
[00:14:31.860]This is a Heggie unit that we had run around
[00:14:34.950]to do a few fields for us.
[00:14:37.290]So this is how it looked mid-season after harvest.
[00:14:41.210]So you can see the cover crops, they get established nicely.
[00:14:45.200]Again, it's a broadcasting method,
[00:14:46.500]so it's gonna rely a little bit on moisture,
[00:14:48.660]or predominately on moisture to get it going.
[00:14:50.880]But when you have this residue in here,
[00:14:52.330]I think that helps quite a bit
[00:14:53.430]to get the cover crops established and growing.
[00:14:56.620]And then flying it on with an airplane.
[00:14:57.940]I think this is the easiest, right?
[00:14:58.773]Because it's one less person you gotta manage.
[00:15:01.820]It's a phone call.
[00:15:02.800]It's making sure the seed gets to the airport,
[00:15:05.350]and then it's done.
[00:15:06.183]And I have a lot of farmers that do this
[00:15:07.650]because it's just the simplest way to get it done.
[00:15:10.900]So they'll go on about tasseling, and bump up their rates,
[00:15:14.560]nearly double them, if they're broadcasting versus seeding.
[00:15:18.470]And they will get this kind of establishment
[00:15:21.520]after one month.
[00:15:22.410]And you might look at that and be like,
[00:15:24.027]"Oh what a failure, why did I even bother spending the money
[00:15:26.317]"on doing this?"
[00:15:27.570]But then the next April, that's how it looks.
[00:15:29.640]And it grows the cereal rye over winters,
[00:15:32.070]and it grows in the spring.
[00:15:33.950]You guys might have more flexibility with your annuals here.
[00:15:36.320]In North Dakota, that's what we have is cereal rye.
[00:15:38.360]That's our primary tool.
[00:15:42.090]And then rainfall, like I said, is important.
[00:15:43.940]This one was seeded a day before one inch rain.
[00:15:46.240]This is literally taking a step from here
[00:15:48.760]over to here and taking a picture.
[00:15:50.170]And this was flown on a day after a one inch rain.
[00:15:52.680]So rain is really, really critical
[00:15:54.570]if you're gonna broadcast.
[00:15:55.530]So if you have the flexibility with a pilot
[00:15:57.680]to get him in there right before a rainfall event,
[00:15:59.520]or something like that,
[00:16:00.680]often times that's not the case,
[00:16:01.920]but if you do, that could really help with establishment.
[00:16:05.630]We've done some comparisons, kind of side by side
[00:16:08.916]with either seeding the cover crop
[00:16:10.420]and then broadcasting it in,
[00:16:11.700]so I wanted to show a little bit of that.
[00:16:13.680]There wasn't really much for yield to collect
[00:16:15.330]or biomass on the cover crops, so we didn't focus on that,
[00:16:18.210]but the visuals are pretty striking.
[00:16:20.700]So we ran our inter-seeder.
[00:16:22.440]This is the same thing we ran at SHARE Farm.
[00:16:24.610]And actually had the seed to soil contact between rows.
[00:16:28.210]And then these farmers rigged up
[00:16:30.482]this box on the front of their Heggie,
[00:16:32.100]this hydrous unit, and it drops a seed down the front,
[00:16:35.000]and then this colter kind of works it in
[00:16:36.410]as a side dressing, so somewhat of a broadcast method,
[00:16:40.609]but they're getting a little bit of soil thrown
[00:16:42.010]over the top.
[00:16:43.780]And here's a comparison.
[00:16:45.010]There's our twin row that's actually seeded in the soil,
[00:16:47.550]and here it is where they broadcast.
[00:16:49.170]Same exact mix, same timing on seeding.
[00:16:51.550]So it makes a difference whether you seed it in the ground
[00:16:53.780]or broadcast it.
[00:16:55.350]This year we got nailed with crickets.
[00:16:57.410]And anything we broadcast,
[00:16:58.400]the crickets ate germ out of it,
[00:16:59.700]and it didn't establish.
[00:17:01.180]But anything we seeded established really nicely.
[00:17:03.590]So that seed to soil contact can be pretty important.
[00:17:08.330]This is from Rob Myers with SARE.
[00:17:10.730]He just had some other pictures of way that farmers
[00:17:13.340]are getting cover crop seeds out there in corn,
[00:17:15.530]so while harvesting, broadcasting.
[00:17:20.340]And then also running some vertical tillage,
[00:17:22.730]it looks like, and broadcasting cover crop seed
[00:17:26.110]at the same time.
[00:17:26.943]So there's lots of ways to do it,
[00:17:28.030]you just have to think about what you have,
[00:17:29.820]and the equipment you could pull,
[00:17:30.850]the things you could pull, the tree rows to modify
[00:17:32.790]and how you can get your equipment to work for you.
[00:17:35.529]And doing this.
[00:17:36.362]And if you could do two things at once,
[00:17:37.250]it's even better, right?
[00:17:38.083]If you could side dress and do the cover crop,
[00:17:39.690]then you're doing one pass for two things.
[00:17:45.130]Planting green with soybean.
[00:17:46.400]This is another thing that's been
[00:17:47.550]really, really good tool for us.
[00:17:48.790]If we're inter-seeding our corn,
[00:17:51.130]that rye will establish in the spring,
[00:17:52.660]and then we're planting our soybean right into the rye.
[00:17:55.570]And it's worked really well for us,
[00:17:56.830]because typically our springs are very wet.
[00:17:58.970]And so having that there to use moisture
[00:18:01.550]is really important.
[00:18:03.300]So this is actually, I wouldn't recommend this rate
[00:18:06.070]for starting out.
[00:18:06.903]This is about 90 pounds of rye
[00:18:08.770]that was seeded in the fall.
[00:18:10.300]So it's a pretty dense stand.
[00:18:14.060]But I think if you can find the right rates,
[00:18:15.980]and the right amount that you're gonna
[00:18:17.870]be comfortable seeding into,
[00:18:19.640]but this is an excellent tool for us.
[00:18:21.910]We like it because in a no-till system,
[00:18:24.870]if we're looking at the moisture content we are more,
[00:18:27.490]I just run around with this moisture probe
[00:18:28.910]and I stick it in the soils of different fields and
[00:18:32.900]we're saturated under our no-till.
[00:18:34.720]And we can't afford that,
[00:18:35.790]because we can't be any growth stages behind where I live.
[00:18:38.680]We've gotta be right up there in getting everything
[00:18:40.250]to finish out and be able to harvest.
[00:18:43.190]So by adding in a cover crop,
[00:18:44.280]we've cut that moisture in half.
[00:18:46.540]And that's a great tool for us.
[00:18:48.210]There's the cereal rye that we seeded,
[00:18:49.890]it's reducing the moisture between where we have the strips,
[00:18:52.470]where it's just no-till.
[00:18:53.880]And then here's where the cover crop is growing,
[00:18:56.510]and then anything that was not covered
[00:18:58.890]had zero moisture in it this one spring.
[00:19:00.850]There was nothing left.
[00:19:01.860]The seed was being exposed on the surface,
[00:19:03.650]the soil was blown away, it was very, very dry.
[00:19:06.120]I guarantee this didn't germinate very well or timely,
[00:19:08.890]and it was probably an entire growth stage behind.
[00:19:12.629]So for us, it's a great moisture management tool.
[00:19:15.280]And so if you're going into this winter
[00:19:16.600]with some saturated soils,
[00:19:17.640]maybe you have some rye out there,
[00:19:19.340]and you're gonna think about it next spring
[00:19:20.540]as to how you're gonna manage it,
[00:19:22.190]just think about when you're gonna terminate it,
[00:19:26.607]what you're gonna plant into and make it work for you.
[00:19:30.173]I feel like I've been blocking that side enough,
[00:19:31.500]so I'm gonna move over here.
[00:19:32.333]Yeah, question?
[00:19:33.775](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:19:36.850]That probe is probably 12 inches long,
[00:19:39.930]so not very deep.
[00:19:40.950]I'm mainly concerned, like when I poke around,
[00:19:42.670]I'm looking at the seed bed.
[00:19:44.400]And so I wanna make sure that, like for example,
[00:19:46.340]if we're using cereal rye,
[00:19:48.300]I wanna be out there terminating it before
[00:19:50.320]it uses too much moisture and dries out that seed bed.
[00:19:52.930]So I have farmers that will terminate it at 14,
[00:19:55.570]a dozen days in advance to make sure
[00:19:56.873]that they don't dry it out.
[00:19:58.100]Because they've been hurt by that before
[00:20:00.340]on their bean yields.
[00:20:02.440]So I think it's, whenever the field looks like
[00:20:05.070]it's gonna be suitable to plant,
[00:20:06.230]that's when we recommend that you just spray it out.
[00:20:08.190]And then you'll still get some of the benefits,
[00:20:09.680]because you'll have the roots in the soil
[00:20:11.160]and things like that that you're gonna drive on
[00:20:12.480]to help with trafficability.
[00:20:14.710]But watching these field, I tell a lot of growers
[00:20:17.390]that cover crops are not gonna fix all your compaction,
[00:20:20.240]and they're not gonna make things perfect in your field,
[00:20:22.750]and it's not gonna be rainbows and puppies,
[00:20:24.750]because it requires a lot of management.
[00:20:26.470]It still requires management in that field
[00:20:28.290]to make sure you're terminating at the right time,
[00:20:30.420]that you're using the right rates,
[00:20:31.740]that you're adjusting based on conditions,
[00:20:33.970]that you're adjusting your equipment to get it in
[00:20:35.870]and do a good job seeding in the residue.
[00:20:38.820]Yeah, question?
[00:20:39.979](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:20:52.172]So the question was, with the dryer soil
[00:20:54.410]that would warm up a little bit faster
[00:20:55.900]and are we still using seed treatments?
[00:20:58.820]I would say majority of the farmers are.
[00:21:01.730]They're still using the seed treatments.
[00:21:05.180]Which works for their systems.
[00:21:09.070]Any other question?
[00:21:10.340]Yeah, I'm glad we're asking questions.
[00:21:12.337](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:21:19.345]So the question was,
[00:21:20.178]do you see any allelopathic effects
[00:21:21.210]on the soybeans by planting into the growing rye?
[00:21:23.700]And where we see these allelopathic effects
[00:21:26.390]is on the corn, a grass into a grass,
[00:21:28.730]but broadly for the soybeans into a grass is not,
[00:21:31.670]not an issue for us.
[00:21:33.230]The main issue is soybeans into rye
[00:21:34.770]is gonna be making sure it doesn't dry out.
[00:21:37.550]I have farmers that we don't advise it,
[00:21:40.270]but they do plant their corn into rye
[00:21:42.740]and they can run issues with the allelopathic effects,
[00:21:45.280]nitrogen tie up, moisture tie up, competition,
[00:21:47.810]disease transfer, pest transfer.
[00:21:49.730]And so when I see six things that are potential warnings
[00:21:52.010]that you gotta watch out for it,
[00:21:52.910]to me it's not a great idea for our systems.
[00:21:57.560]But from what I understand with going
[00:22:00.000]like something like corn into rye,
[00:22:01.610]even you're gonna,
[00:22:02.443]the nitrogen tie up could kill you on that.
[00:22:04.630]So you have to be really careful and side dress
[00:22:06.690]and things like that.
[00:22:07.523]But the broadleaf end of the rye works really well for us.
[00:22:10.620]As long as we make sure it does not dry the soil out.
[00:22:13.890]That it can't get going.
[00:22:16.220]Any other questions?
[00:22:17.053]This is more how I like, yeah.
[00:22:21.250]I got this at Forestry Suppliers,
[00:22:23.200]it's like 400 bucks or something for the probe.
[00:22:25.940]The other thing, the other tool that I really liked,
[00:22:27.910]so I have a moisture probe and we've got soil tissue.
[00:22:29.910]So I've got a salinity probe and,
[00:22:31.990]by far my best tool is a pickup,
[00:22:33.820]is the pickup and the shovel.
[00:22:35.130]So driving around looking at stuff,
[00:22:37.040]get the shovel out, digging around.
[00:22:39.660]For 55 bucks, I've got the spearhead spade that I love.
[00:22:43.230]It works really well.
[00:22:44.070]It's easy to get out and dig up soils,
[00:22:46.651]so that's going to be, you can tell a lot by moisture.
[00:22:48.343]You can tell a lot by the conditions in the soil too.
[00:22:51.240]But, yeah.
[00:22:52.330](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:23:04.500]So the question was
[00:23:05.333]are we trying other things like triticale
[00:23:07.440]in addition to the rye
[00:23:08.470]and then what's our spread pattern on it?
[00:23:10.956](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:23:14.006]Probably 70.
[00:23:15.510]Yeah.
[00:23:16.343]It doesn't go out as far as you think.
[00:23:17.970]But when I'm spreading,
[00:23:20.170]so when I'm broadcasting a cover crop,
[00:23:21.940]my expectations are just gonna be different, right?
[00:23:24.160]You know that you're not, you might get some streaks
[00:23:25.930]because you're not gonna get the pull width.
[00:23:28.210]It's not gonna look like it is.
[00:23:29.260]If it's seeded, you're gonna have some establishment
[00:23:31.050]in areas where it may be wetter and areas where it's dry
[00:23:34.620]or you're not gonna get establishment.
[00:23:36.290]So for example a farmer called,
[00:23:38.450]he had broadcast some cereal rye in the farm
[00:23:41.147]and he called me in the spring,
[00:23:42.160]he goes, "Abbey, this looks terrible."
[00:23:43.890]He's like, "I've got these patches here
[00:23:45.367]"and I've got this not growing there and I've,"
[00:23:47.420]he goes, "It's really inconsistent."
[00:23:49.891]And he was like, "But wait a minute."
[00:23:51.080]He's like, "I see that that rye
[00:23:52.427]"is establishing in those low parts
[00:23:54.517]"at the field where I needed to use moisture."
[00:23:56.350]He said, "It looks really good there.
[00:23:57.357]"It's established, or it's competing with these weeds
[00:23:59.527]"that I had."
[00:24:00.590]And then he goes,
[00:24:01.423]"Maybe I'm not so concerned that it doesn't establish
[00:24:03.287]"on the higher parts of the field
[00:24:05.057]"where I don't necessarily need it."
[00:24:07.680]So setting your expectations too, when you broadcast,
[00:24:09.930]it's going to be patchy the next spring.
[00:24:13.015]And it's not gonna look as uniform and consistent
[00:24:15.090]as something you may have seeded.
[00:24:16.820]But yeah, we run into a lot of that.
[00:24:18.190]Even with the airplane passes,
[00:24:19.660]if you fly on oats versus cereal rye,
[00:24:21.920]the spreading pattern is different.
[00:24:23.160]So the pilot needs to be aware of that
[00:24:24.500]to make sure they get good coverage.
[00:24:28.430]Any other questions on the corn and inter-seeding?
[00:24:30.070]Yeah.
[00:24:31.065](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:24:41.480]So the question is when are we terminating that rye
[00:24:43.270]that we're planting green into?
[00:24:44.970]And for us I let the farmers use their judgment on that.
[00:24:48.870]If the field is really wet
[00:24:50.250]and they feel like they need that growing there
[00:24:51.970]to help reduce,
[00:24:52.803]we have iron deficiency chlorosis in our area.
[00:24:55.550]So if it helps, having the moisture managed
[00:24:57.870]by the rye with the soybean actually is beneficial.
[00:25:01.640]So if they have parts of the field
[00:25:02.830]where they have that issue that I tell him to
[00:25:04.620]let it go for a little bit, but typically they're coming in
[00:25:07.930]and terminating within a day or two
[00:25:09.420]and some of them then roll it down as well,
[00:25:11.410]so they roll it and get better weed coverage
[00:25:13.330]throughout the year.
[00:25:15.050]And so that's been really beneficial.
[00:25:16.370]And one of the things that we're kind of playing with
[00:25:18.270]while we're talking about this with rye up where we are,
[00:25:21.610]is variety of rye.
[00:25:23.030]So I mean, when you buy rye it's usually be on us, right?
[00:25:26.480]And our Carrington Research Extension Center,
[00:25:28.130]Steve Zwinger is there
[00:25:29.000]and he's developing different varieties of rye
[00:25:31.230]that are protected varieties,
[00:25:32.850]but he's developing them to grow faster in the spring
[00:25:35.470]to compete with weeds better.
[00:25:36.560]We have a lot of resistant kochia,
[00:25:38.210]so competing with weeds at that time,
[00:25:39.880]and then you roll it down and it'll be a shorter,
[00:25:43.250]shorter stature plant
[00:25:44.250]you can roll it and get
[00:25:45.920]some decent weed control throughout the year.
[00:25:48.560]But we focus a lot on that as how are we gonna,
[00:25:51.110]what's the best tool we're going to have
[00:25:53.580]to achieve these goals.
[00:25:54.450]And for a lot of us, it's the resistant weeds,
[00:25:56.537]and getting it growing early and then laying it down
[00:25:58.480]to manage weeds.
[00:26:01.746]Any other questions?
[00:26:02.588](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:26:07.830]Yeah, that's a good question Lauren.
[00:26:10.520]He asked me to clarify
[00:26:11.353]between the annual ryegrass, cereal rye,
[00:26:13.610]perennial rye, what we're using,
[00:26:14.700]we are using winter rye, cereal rye,
[00:26:16.730]so it's called winter rye, it's called cereal rye.
[00:26:19.180]That's what we're using.
[00:26:21.090]It's a winter annual.
[00:26:22.830]I don't recommend using annual ryegrass where I am.
[00:26:26.080]Because number one, it doesn't achieve the goals
[00:26:28.020]we want it to achieve.
[00:26:29.520]We want something over winter and our North Dakota climate,
[00:26:32.130]so cereal rye or winter rye is the only one
[00:26:34.747]that's going over winter for us,
[00:26:36.850]but in other places they're using annual ryegrass.
[00:26:39.920]I also have a weed specialist that will,
[00:26:42.090]that will literally disowned me
[00:26:43.830]if I ever recommend annual ryegrass in our area
[00:26:46.390]because of the potential to become a weed.
[00:26:49.410]So we don't use it for the goal of reasons,
[00:26:51.340]but then also the potential to be a weed.
[00:26:53.050]And then perennial, we're not using much perennial rye
[00:26:55.620]in our area.
[00:26:59.100]I think because of the cost.
[00:27:03.350]So if you're talking Italian ryegrass and annual ryegrass,
[00:27:05.830]those are similar things.
[00:27:07.170]One's a forage and one's a crop,
[00:27:09.290]but, well we stay away from the Italian ryegrass
[00:27:11.630]and the annual ryegrass
[00:27:12.720]and focus on cereal rye and winter rye.
[00:27:16.170]Any other questions on that?
[00:27:19.210]This is great, I love questions.
[00:27:20.470]So, yeah.
[00:27:21.740]So you develop (speaks faintly),
[00:27:25.506]I think that's something I will walk down there.
[00:27:28.340]I'm not sure, so we've developed the dillon rye
[00:27:30.576]and now we have the gardener rye coming out.
[00:27:33.690]And they worked really well in our climate.
[00:27:36.560]You pay more for it, right?
[00:27:37.920]'Cause it's protected variety.
[00:27:39.030]And I'm not sure if it would work better down here or not,
[00:27:42.500]but that could be something,
[00:27:44.140]sure we could send you some seed and throw it in some plots
[00:27:46.730]and see what it does.
[00:27:48.790]But I like the idea, Oh, it's gonna go on your farm.
[00:27:51.352](chuckles)
[00:27:52.500]I like the idea of using protective varieties too
[00:27:56.060]in a lot of ways because then you know what you're getting.
[00:27:59.420]So as far as even contamination for weed seeds
[00:28:02.920]or winter hardiness for us,
[00:28:04.540]winter hardiness is really important.
[00:28:06.200]And if we're getting a cereal rye
[00:28:08.060]or winter rye grown down in the Southeast,
[00:28:09.830]it's not gonna survive in North Dakota.
[00:28:11.260]I mean, it won't survive.
[00:28:13.610]We need something that's like grown there,
[00:28:15.090]that's gonna be regional.
[00:28:16.170]And also too, I like the idea of having something grown
[00:28:18.640]in our region that if,
[00:28:20.950]I mean there shouldn't be any weed seed in it,
[00:28:22.320]but if there ever is, then you know what the weeds are.
[00:28:24.950]You've already been managing them.
[00:28:26.080]And so if you're getting something from the Southeast
[00:28:27.720]or wherever else you can get some issues
[00:28:30.770]with weeds coming in, especially like millets
[00:28:32.560]are really bad for weed contamination.
[00:28:38.082](mumbles) questions as we go through this.
[00:28:40.720]I really appreciate those.
[00:28:42.643]These are just some,
[00:28:43.476]we did some measurements when we planted
[00:28:44.880]our soybean green under rye.
[00:28:46.920]Just as far as the plant heights and the populations.
[00:28:49.920]And so we were getting taller plants in the rye.
[00:28:51.907]And maybe that's the competition making it stretch out.
[00:28:55.520]One of the farmers really liked that
[00:28:56.790]because then he felt like the pods are gonna be higher up
[00:28:58.700]and you can get a better cleaner harvest.
[00:29:01.510]I don't know if that's consistent,
[00:29:03.130]but that's what we're seeing on a couple of replicates
[00:29:05.350]in one field.
[00:29:08.360]And then here's the weed biomass.
[00:29:10.290]I love cereal rye for weed control
[00:29:12.460]and it's just one more mode of action that's not a chemical,
[00:29:16.490]it's timing is different.
[00:29:18.290]It's just a really, really good tool.
[00:29:20.050]So here we had strips where we measured weed count
[00:29:23.130]plus biomass and we were 10 times lower in weed biomass
[00:29:26.860]where we had cereal rye.
[00:29:27.770]So it's holding it back
[00:29:29.330]and in some cases like you've got fields
[00:29:31.830]that you just need a little more time to get to.
[00:29:33.410]If you put rye on those fields
[00:29:34.700]to help you control weeds in the spring
[00:29:36.590]and give you, just buy you a little bit more time
[00:29:37.703]to get there and to terminate the weeds.
[00:29:40.800]That's gonna be a really beneficial approach too.
[00:29:44.370]And I have a lot of farmers that do that.
[00:29:45.680]They just say this is gonna be my last field
[00:29:47.857]I'm gonna get to.
[00:29:48.690]So I'm gonna make sure that there's rye on it
[00:29:50.060]so that I know by the time I get there
[00:29:51.390]I can control the weeds 'cause there'll be smaller
[00:29:53.090]and I'll get a better kill.
[00:29:56.100]And then these are the strips side by side in the field,
[00:29:58.570]almost looks like two pictures next to each other.
[00:30:00.010]But those are replicated strips.
[00:30:02.320]And so here you can see yields did not,
[00:30:05.670]was not hit by using rye.
[00:30:09.240]And so there again, those are the kinds of yields
[00:30:11.030]that were average yields for us.
[00:30:14.440]Now this can change if the rye does dry out the soil
[00:30:17.490]too much in the spring and it drys out that seed bed,
[00:30:19.940]you could be, I mean for us we get a growth stage behind
[00:30:22.990]on our soybean, which means we put on less pods,
[00:30:25.390]which means we take a yield hit.
[00:30:26.660]So, yeah, a question.
[00:30:28.699](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:30:29.780]What's our annual rainfall?
[00:30:31.280]In the Eastern part of the State,
[00:30:32.380]we're probably 18 to 22 inches.
[00:30:35.500]And then in the Western part of the State we're arid.
[00:30:39.270]So semi-arid.
[00:30:41.370]Yeah.
[00:30:42.631](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:30:58.640]Yeah, the question is what are we,
[00:31:00.150]so we're looking at yields and things like that,
[00:31:01.610]but what are we measuring for soil health
[00:31:03.150]and what metrics are we using there?
[00:31:06.150]We have at that SHARE farm, we collected,
[00:31:08.340]I think it was 80 some points across that field,
[00:31:09.937]but the tillage and no till.
[00:31:11.350]And we did, I don't know,
[00:31:12.750]probably $50,000 worth of testing on it.
[00:31:14.590]We did all the soil health tests you could possibly do.
[00:31:17.260]And then we added in some of our own
[00:31:19.360]like nitrogen mineralization, residue bags, things like that
[00:31:22.440]to figure out what the best possible approach was for us
[00:31:26.520]on that soil health testing.
[00:31:28.230]And the researcher that did all that,
[00:31:30.510]she came to me later and she goes, "You know what?"
[00:31:32.937]She goes, "Abbey, if you just calibrated farmers
[00:31:34.847]"on a shovel, you'd probably get better results."
[00:31:39.420]We were just having a really hard time calibrating
[00:31:40.950]those tests to our region
[00:31:41.850]because they're so based on organic matter of percentages
[00:31:45.260]that we already have really high organic matter percentages
[00:31:47.390]in North Dakota.
[00:31:48.223]So it was offsetting everything
[00:31:49.450]and saying all our soils were really healthy.
[00:31:54.210]So we're not kind of,
[00:31:56.970]we don't do a lot of that examination anymore.
[00:32:00.060]We are working with the soil testing lab in our area
[00:32:02.740]and we're developing the tests that could be appropriate
[00:32:04.860]in this package.
[00:32:05.693]So for us, like aggregation
[00:32:07.510]would be the one of the most important ones
[00:32:09.030]because it's the quickest to change.
[00:32:10.660]So especially if you've got any clay in your soil,
[00:32:12.420]it's gonna aggregate.
[00:32:14.330]Basically the sand soil and clay particles
[00:32:15.950]are gonna be packed into like a larger particle
[00:32:18.170]with roots and fungal hyphae and bacterial glues
[00:32:20.880]and things like that.
[00:32:23.008]And and so we measure that
[00:32:24.830]along with organic matter percentage
[00:32:26.580]'cause that's kind of what everybody wants to see.
[00:32:30.505]But you have to be careful on
[00:32:31.338]how you sample for that as well,
[00:32:34.760]Yeah, it's really, it's hard to measure,
[00:32:36.580]but on these fields like
[00:32:38.790]sometimes I don't need the measurement.
[00:32:40.050]I just need the phone call from the farmer saying,
[00:32:41.647]"Hey, I'm still planting, it's working, it's raining,
[00:32:44.677]"I'm getting everything in the ground."
[00:32:46.790]Sometimes that's, I feel like the best, the best response.
[00:32:49.970]Yeah a question.
[00:32:52.095](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:32:56.370]Okay, so the rye is that rolled
[00:32:57.780]or chemical burn down.
[00:33:00.052](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:33:02.000]Oh, that was a chemical burn down.
[00:33:04.080]So just full rates of herbicide on that
[00:33:06.170]to make sure you've got a good kill
[00:33:07.600]and they don't roll because they don't have any rocks.
[00:33:10.360]So they just leave it like that.
[00:33:12.950]So yeah, it's important.
[00:33:16.070]It's important to get a good kill on the rye.
[00:33:17.510]That's the other thing I noticed
[00:33:18.590]is that if you're planting green and you skimp on
[00:33:20.880]the herbicide rage or whatever it is,
[00:33:22.650]and you don't get a good kill,
[00:33:23.640]then you're gonna have a bad experience.
[00:33:24.910]So it's important to make sure
[00:33:26.780]that you're doing a good job spraying it out too.
[00:33:33.470]Okay, so then this is,
[00:33:34.720]we did the same thing at that SHARE farm project.
[00:33:36.550]We planted green.
[00:33:38.140]This is our stuff that was interceded in corn.
[00:33:39.870]That's how the rye look the next spring.
[00:33:41.800]And then we flew on oats into our soybean.
[00:33:44.690]And I chose oats because
[00:33:47.530]I wasn't sure if I was gonna go to wheat the next year,
[00:33:49.420]or if I was gonna go to corn.
[00:33:51.060]And so if I have oats,
[00:33:52.410]I know I can kill the any volunteer oats
[00:33:54.730]with a wild low herbicide and wheat.
[00:33:57.750]And I know that it's gonna winter kill before corn.
[00:34:00.873]So I wanted nothing there except for something growing
[00:34:04.150]underneath the canopy to help
[00:34:05.210]with the combining of it.
[00:34:07.100]As you can see we used a really good residue cover.
[00:34:08.870]We've got the corn stocks, we have some,
[00:34:11.679]if you can kind of see a green hue on it,
[00:34:13.560]but it was enough that when he was combining it didn't push
[00:34:15.460]and he felt really good about how clean it was
[00:34:17.440]and how well it worked.
[00:34:19.550]So it doesn't look like a great stand,
[00:34:20.880]but it kind of held all that residue in place
[00:34:22.600]over winter and kept it from blowing around.
[00:34:24.810]But I like choosing something like cereal rye
[00:34:28.378]if you have an area where you need high moisture
[00:34:29.707]and you need something over winter,
[00:34:31.450]but then oats are also a great option.
[00:34:32.900]If you want it to grow the winter kill
[00:34:34.910]and say you got to wheat or you go to corn
[00:34:36.620]and you don't want to terminate it before you go to corn.
[00:34:39.040]That's how you kind of tweak those cover crops.
[00:34:41.630]You can also do a mix of rye and oats.
[00:34:43.330]So you only want 10 pounds of rye
[00:34:44.934]and then you pay 140 pounds of oats.
[00:34:46.850]Well it's something in the winter kill,
[00:34:47.730]but you want a little bit of a safety net there
[00:34:49.290]to plant into.
[00:34:50.123]So lots of variations you can do.
[00:34:52.300]And I think that's the fun part of it
[00:34:53.500]is that you can really figure how to customize
[00:34:56.150]some of these things.
[00:34:58.430]Flying on cover crops into soybean.
[00:35:00.390]We're doing that pretty successfully.
[00:35:03.350]And I think a lot of that's because of our high clay soils,
[00:35:06.140]to be honest with you.
[00:35:07.920]Because the whole moisture,
[00:35:09.020]and we have the moisture there at the time
[00:35:10.490]we were flying it on right before a leaf drop.
[00:35:13.520]So if you don't have that moisture there,
[00:35:14.930]just set your expectations that,
[00:35:16.940]if you're flying it on before leaf drop,
[00:35:18.250]there's no moisture or nothing's gonna grow.
[00:35:20.320]So you just have to keep that in mind.
[00:35:21.450]But we're getting some pretty decent luck.
[00:35:23.520]How would that in our area,
[00:35:24.490]this is how the field looks at harvest.
[00:35:26.370]This was actually cereal rye.
[00:35:27.580]This farmer tells me he sprays it out
[00:35:29.850]before he plants corn into it.
[00:35:31.080]I don't know if he just tells me that to keep me happy
[00:35:33.360]or if it's that he actually does that,
[00:35:35.970]but he gets the rye out there.
[00:35:37.160]This is a high clay soil.
[00:35:38.240]Again, loves combining over this
[00:35:41.010]'cause it's just easy to do.
[00:35:42.970]Everything stays low to the ground.
[00:35:44.910]And does a nice job for them.
[00:35:48.040]They've also stripped tilled into it before sunflowers.
[00:35:50.310]Or you could do this before corn,
[00:35:51.450]but getting those strips in with your fertility,
[00:35:53.330]but having the rye in there
[00:35:55.490]between is really beneficial too.
[00:35:58.510]So that's kind of a nice system.
[00:35:59.630]And then there's, I work with farmers who,
[00:36:01.690]everybody's got bad parts in their field, right?
[00:36:03.530]There's parts that don't grow anything
[00:36:04.720]or that are waterlogged or that are just a pain in the butt.
[00:36:07.580]This one, he plants his soybean
[00:36:10.280]where he knows he can get the good yields
[00:36:11.670]and then he comes in with his broadcasts
[00:36:14.380]and just throws out some cereal rye or it could be barley
[00:36:16.920]or it could be oats or whatever is, this is a saline area.
[00:36:20.470]But going back into those areas
[00:36:22.560]where nothing establishes,
[00:36:23.710]focusing your efforts on planting your cash crop,
[00:36:25.680]where it's gonna grow and it's gonna do really well.
[00:36:27.930]And then taking some of those more problematic areas
[00:36:29.850]and coming in and just getting coverage
[00:36:31.280]so you don't get the weed pressures.
[00:36:33.000]It could be a really great tool as well.
[00:36:37.353]So I wanted to put some of the watch outs on here.
[00:36:39.560]Things that we've made mistakes on.
[00:36:40.960]And as a university we like to make the mistakes
[00:36:44.600]so that you guys learn from it
[00:36:45.800]and you don't have to make the mistakes on a large scale.
[00:36:48.260]So here we broadcast cover crops way too early.
[00:36:50.647]You can see that that's gonna be a problem for harvesting.
[00:36:53.750]Fortunately, this guy has livestock
[00:36:55.130]so it wasn't a huge deal.
[00:36:57.790]But we thought we came in at the right time,
[00:36:59.330]but for some reason everything grew
[00:37:00.490]by the time we were there to harvest
[00:37:01.540]it was quite a bit of growth.
[00:37:03.670]Corn into cereal rye.
[00:37:04.710]This is what we don't like to see.
[00:37:07.030]And then our region
[00:37:08.070]where we have such a tight growing season,
[00:37:11.110]corn into rye can be really detrimental.
[00:37:13.230]And cause yield reductions.
[00:37:17.310]But maybe you put in strips, you do strip till
[00:37:19.697]and you get that rye away from the corn.
[00:37:21.610]So you give it a chance to grow.
[00:37:23.700]If you have strip till you can do that
[00:37:25.450]or if you don't, you can seed it
[00:37:27.750]on roast basting and they come in between with your corn.
[00:37:29.890]So you need to have that rye there.
[00:37:31.690]You're too nervous
[00:37:32.760]to do this on a field without it or whatever.
[00:37:35.610]You can either create the strips
[00:37:37.760]or you can leave gaps to plant your corn
[00:37:39.630]or plant your crops.
[00:37:40.463]So even if you're going to soybean into this,
[00:37:41.800]some farmers do love leaving that gap because they want,
[00:37:44.390]that's what they're more familiar with is planting into that
[00:37:47.080]and they'd rather have their rye growing in between.
[00:37:48.960]You're still getting great erosion control,
[00:37:50.480]you're still getting great moisture usage just using strips.
[00:37:54.660]This is another thing that we do in North Dakota is,
[00:37:56.940]and on our wheat ground we do bio strips.
[00:37:59.020]So we focus all our cover crops on our 30 inch row spacing
[00:38:01.640]where we're gonna plant our cash crop.
[00:38:03.030]So it helps us reduce seed costs.
[00:38:05.700]It also helps us just move,
[00:38:07.800]get some residue managers out there if we want them
[00:38:09.906]so that we don't have to worry too much
[00:38:10.960]about planting into something.
[00:38:11.950]So this is setting up for corn
[00:38:15.029]and it works works pretty well for us.
[00:38:16.430]So we got decent growth on this.
[00:38:18.300]We had flax in there.
[00:38:19.190]We had faba bean and radish.
[00:38:21.700]And this is how the strips look.
[00:38:23.710]In the fall when the faba bean frost kill
[00:38:26.780]they turn black and it's a really nice dark residue.
[00:38:29.520]So you could use peas in this case
[00:38:31.770]which you'd probably want the peas off of the corn rows
[00:38:35.940]because they'll tangle up around your equipment,
[00:38:37.410]but faba beans, you want them in the row
[00:38:39.480]and you could end up producing a nice dark residue.
[00:38:42.270]Kind of an expensive seed,
[00:38:43.780]but that's why we cut it back and just did it in the strips.
[00:38:50.710]Relying on catch and release,
[00:38:52.220]I think, and your system may be different here,
[00:38:54.910]but for us in North Dakota,
[00:38:56.690]we're trying to figure out when that nitrogen
[00:38:59.560]and the nutrients tied up by the cover crops
[00:39:01.180]is actually released for the next year's crop.
[00:39:03.650]And we ever take a credit,
[00:39:05.849]how do we do this so that we don't get hurt on yield
[00:39:07.840]because we're relying on something that cover crop
[00:39:09.560]may or may not give.
[00:39:11.900]So we have these plots in two different areas.
[00:39:14.850]One of the plots is on a 40 year no till site
[00:39:17.080]with 20 years use of cover crops.
[00:39:19.730]And then the other site is on a recently transitioned
[00:39:21.760]to no-till site with no history of cover crops.
[00:39:25.000]And so we've got kind of both ends of the spectrum
[00:39:27.820]and where there's a replicated froze closet,
[00:39:30.050]Dave Franzen is working on.
[00:39:32.210]And so he comes out here and,
[00:39:35.480]basically sprays out where the cover crop is.
[00:39:37.290]We're doing this after weed going to corn
[00:39:39.480]but we also have interceded corn going to soybean
[00:39:41.640]and soybean with oats in it, going back to wheat.
[00:39:44.260]And so he comes in and sprays it out
[00:39:45.800]and then we just do business as usual.
[00:39:47.460]And then he comes in with different fertilizer rates
[00:39:49.930]to see how the corn responds to the fertilizer applications.
[00:39:53.070]And one of the things that he's finding
[00:39:55.640]where we have, this line here is the yield with cover crop.
[00:39:58.790]And here's the yield without the cover crop.
[00:40:01.120]So it's not all rainbows and puppies, right,
[00:40:03.230]where we're seeing a yield reduction
[00:40:04.900]as a result of having the cover crops,
[00:40:07.520]but it's really there's 100 pound nitrogen lag.
[00:40:11.380]So we just need to make sure
[00:40:12.240]that we're still applying decent amount of nitrogen here
[00:40:15.450]to get a yield when we're using a cover crop.
[00:40:17.150]So his recommendation is if you're gonna go in
[00:40:21.610]and you wanna see whether you get
[00:40:23.510]that nitrogen release from a cover crop for your corn crop,
[00:40:26.830]just fertilize whatever percentage of the total
[00:40:31.360]that you want to on the field.
[00:40:32.250]But do a check strip where you do the full amount
[00:40:35.160]and then watch it.
[00:40:35.993]And if it's something that you feel like,
[00:40:37.707]"Okay, boy I really am not getting any release
[00:40:39.357]"from that cover crop.
[00:40:40.190]"I should add additional nitrogen,"
[00:40:41.740]go back in and side dress.
[00:40:43.960]But it's this catch and release idea.
[00:40:46.210]It's not simple.
[00:40:47.043]We're not seeing that net nitrogen released in year one.
[00:40:49.070]We're not seeing it in year two.
[00:40:49.960]We're not seeing it in year three.
[00:40:50.920]So when does that nitrogen come back
[00:40:53.444]to our cash crop?
[00:40:55.580]It's not very simple and that's for us,
[00:40:57.380]and maybe it's different here,
[00:40:58.241]I don't know if the work has been done here in Nebraska,
[00:41:01.276]but we're seeing that Wisconsin's kind of a similar thing
[00:41:03.230]where it's not just catch and release.
[00:41:05.680]North Dakota is certainly that way.
[00:41:07.760]But just something to be aware of that,
[00:41:09.870]that when you're fertilizing and you have cover crops
[00:41:12.900]in the system, don't necessarily just take your credit
[00:41:14.500]because you're using a cover crop.
[00:41:16.270]Make sure that you're still managing responsibly
[00:41:20.444]with your with your fertilizers.
[00:41:23.632]Yup.
[00:41:24.532](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:41:40.232]Well this is actually, sorry, this is the same field.
[00:41:41.860]This is a plot where zero nitrogen was added
[00:41:44.420]on this side and then this is where 80 pounds was added.
[00:41:47.350]And these are both cover crop plots.
[00:41:49.161](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:41:49.994]Nope, this is from actually the recently converted
[00:41:53.010]and we see the same exact thing on the 40 year no-till,
[00:41:55.330]which you think that guy has got six
[00:41:57.110]or seven percentage organic matter.
[00:41:58.640]He's got great structure.
[00:42:00.280]He's got cycling nutrients,
[00:42:01.990]but he's been really hurt in the past
[00:42:03.360]by not applying enough nitrogen
[00:42:04.580]because he was relying on his is biological component
[00:42:07.240]of his soil to work in a good year.
[00:42:10.397]And if you don't get the right moisture at the right time
[00:42:12.120]for that mineralization of the organic matter
[00:42:13.890]for the nitrogen release, nothing can help you.
[00:42:16.590]So at the end of the day,
[00:42:18.210]the microbes still rely on moisture to function
[00:42:21.020]and if you have a dry year and you don't get it,
[00:42:23.040]then you're still not gonna get the nitrogen
[00:42:24.910]release or availability.
[00:42:26.600](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:42:43.253]You keep it in the loop.
[00:42:44.086]And so he's asking about the scavenging of nitrogen
[00:42:46.590]by those cover crops.
[00:42:47.510]And so they definitely, there's a lot of biomass of it
[00:42:50.771]'cause we had rye, we had radish, we had turnips,
[00:42:52.810]we had flax, we had all kinds of things in the mix
[00:42:55.390]and they're capturing that nitrogen and holding it.
[00:42:58.090]You could certainly see that in the soil test results.
[00:43:00.800]But it's just, yeah, it's in the system.
[00:43:02.520]We just don't know when it's gonna be released.
[00:43:04.890]So it's beneficial, right?
[00:43:06.070]I mean, you're holding onto your nitrogen
[00:43:08.050]and you're keeping it there.
[00:43:08.990]It's just don't bank on it the next year
[00:43:11.010]because it may not be released, at least in our system.
[00:43:14.680]And here it may be totally different depending
[00:43:16.120]on moisture conditions, temperature,
[00:43:18.200]all those kinds of things.
[00:43:19.120]But just something to be aware of
[00:43:20.420]and make sure you don't hurt yourself in yield.
[00:43:22.720]Yup.
[00:43:23.703](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:43:58.240]Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:43:59.530]And I wish David Franzen, and we're here to answer it
[00:44:02.830]'cause he's our soil specialist,
[00:44:04.150]but when Dave does his curves,
[00:44:07.040]so he applies 40, 80, 120, 160, 200 pounds of nitrogen
[00:44:10.860]on these plots.
[00:44:12.100]And so Dave is always looking for this point
[00:44:14.670]where you're not gonna get any more yield
[00:44:16.530]for what you apply.
[00:44:17.480]And so there's some of that in here
[00:44:18.357]and not maybe as specific
[00:44:20.586]as you're wanting, but his fertilizer rates are dependent
[00:44:24.080]on where this kind of peters out
[00:44:26.100]and you don't get any benefit towards the yield.
[00:44:28.460]So it'd be the same for both lines as to where,
[00:44:31.340]so maybe this one is a little bit
[00:44:34.360]closer, I had to say.
[00:44:37.420]And I wonder if he's put that.
[00:44:40.160]I'll post it on, a lot of the stuff
[00:44:41.770]we have on our NDSU Soil Health webpage too.
[00:44:44.440]So anything that I'm showing that you wanna follow up on
[00:44:46.590]or have questions about, a lot of it's on our webpage
[00:44:49.660]and I'll make sure that I put this article that David,
[00:44:52.010]for the crop and soils magazine on there when I get back.
[00:44:55.438](clearing throat)
[00:44:57.720]But I think the main thing is that learning happens faster
[00:45:00.940]with the network and with partners.
[00:45:03.290]There is no way that we can know all these things
[00:45:05.873]and for our system, if we didn't have great farmer partners,
[00:45:08.500]if we weren't, didn't work with trusted advisors
[00:45:10.300]and we didn't work with researchers
[00:45:11.650]and other extension specialists,
[00:45:12.770]there's Franzen applying his fertilizers.
[00:45:15.690]But we learned so much
[00:45:17.060]by working on all this stuff together.
[00:45:18.570]So one of the great things about being here today
[00:45:20.870]is that you're all,
[00:45:22.720]a lot of, you have been here multiple times,
[00:45:24.150]so you're forming this network, right?
[00:45:25.890]People that you see that you talk about social health with
[00:45:27.980]or maybe that you've got their numbers in your phones
[00:45:31.190]to call them when you've got questions.
[00:45:33.650]But this network is really, really important
[00:45:35.650]and this is kind of what we were building in North Dakota.
[00:45:39.110]So like here's an example from one of our programs,
[00:45:41.020]this cafe talk program.
[00:45:42.080]These are all the different locations in the royal blue.
[00:45:44.740]And then if you look at here, the green are NDSU people,
[00:45:47.830]the blue are farmers, the red are consultants,
[00:45:50.890]the yellow are industry, I think the white are NRCS
[00:45:54.480]and other government organizations.
[00:45:57.630]So when you look at this,
[00:45:59.440]we've got all these people talking, right?
[00:46:00.890]All these lines mean that these people are associating
[00:46:02.917]and they're coming in contact with each other.
[00:46:05.010]And if you're on the inside of this,
[00:46:06.720]it means that you're showing up to a lot of events, right?
[00:46:08.600]So your dot is getting bigger, you're more of an influencer.
[00:46:11.300]You're maybe somebody that talks more often.
[00:46:14.120]These are all farmers that are in here interacting
[00:46:17.200]with extension and with research and with consultants
[00:46:19.790]on a regular basis.
[00:46:21.400]And then there's this whole group of people
[00:46:22.233]that are just getting interested in this.
[00:46:24.050]And then our goal is to bring them to the inside
[00:46:26.040]and they can keep growing out.
[00:46:27.660]And so don't ever underestimate the power of a network
[00:46:30.110]or connecting with other people.
[00:46:31.530]And it may seem weird to ask another person
[00:46:34.300]for their phone number or something like that,
[00:46:35.700]but to have that number on your phone to use it,
[00:46:38.460]if you're planting green and you're like,
[00:46:39.907]"Ah, this is not going very well.
[00:46:41.327]"I'm not sure if I'm getting the right seed depth"
[00:46:43.050]or whatever, to have somebody that's done it before,
[00:46:44.610]in your phone and call them and say,
[00:46:46.257]"Listen, this is what's going on."
[00:46:47.580]And they can say, "Well, did you try this?
[00:46:48.807]"Did you try that?
[00:46:49.640]"Adjust this maybe."
[00:46:51.530]Have that number in your phone
[00:46:52.480]because that's really critical
[00:46:53.700]and this network is really critical
[00:46:55.090]to making these practices work
[00:46:56.740]and to make them, help you advance faster
[00:46:59.680]in all these things.
[00:47:00.513]It's one thing to go to a meeting,
[00:47:01.346]it's another thing to be talking to somebody
[00:47:02.680]when you're in the field and get some ideas.
[00:47:05.250]And Twitter is also a great resource for that.
[00:47:08.790]So this is a Twitter network that's built after
[00:47:10.900]one of our meetings where people are talking.
[00:47:13.020]You can see the interactions that are occurring
[00:47:14.550]well beyond the walls of the facility.
[00:47:17.380]Yeah.
[00:47:18.434](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:47:23.350]Yeah.
[00:47:24.183]The question is about, does NDSC ever work with them?
[00:47:25.890]No, confirm it if you're in, like Burleigh County.
[00:47:28.950]And we actually, we meet a couple times per year.
[00:47:32.330]So we bring in all the researchers
[00:47:33.900]and extension people working on soil health from NDSU
[00:47:36.650]and then the same with the NRCS.
[00:47:37.807]And the same with Burleigh County
[00:47:40.300]and Menoken and actually Dakota Lakes.
[00:47:42.940]Dwayne Beck usually comes up
[00:47:44.080]and we get together and we try to create,
[00:47:47.690]we try to make sure we're giving a consistent message armor.
[00:47:51.050]I mean, if you're hearing one thing from the university
[00:47:52.610]and you're hearing another thing from NRCS,
[00:47:53.920]then you hear another thing from this and then that,
[00:47:56.076]and we bring farmers into that group too,
[00:47:57.680]people that are talking about these things.
[00:48:00.850]And we try to make it so it's cohesive.
[00:48:05.380]That we all know where everybody's trying.
[00:48:07.070]Everybody's working to make sure we get good coverage.
[00:48:10.078]So yeah, we're pretty fortunate in that way that we do.
[00:48:11.850]We do collaborate quite a bit.
[00:48:15.650]So here's all kinds of information.
[00:48:17.890]You guys have postcards for the soil center podcast.
[00:48:20.090]There are 16 episodes on there from farmers,
[00:48:22.910]extension researchers, consultants.
[00:48:25.410]If you wanna listen to them, they're only 30 minutes long.
[00:48:27.880]But they're a great way to kind of get an idea
[00:48:30.210]of what farmers are trying in our area and what we're doing.
[00:48:33.970]Pretty active on Twitter.
[00:48:35.310]I like that network and platform.
[00:48:37.820]Here's our webpage ndsu.edu/soilhealth.
[00:48:42.040]And then this is a large regional workshop
[00:48:44.550]that we're doing now that we just had the first year
[00:48:46.190]this past December and we have it again in December
[00:48:48.730]of this year.
[00:48:50.770]But yeah, all my contact information,
[00:48:53.010]if you leave here with some kind of thoughts or ideas,
[00:48:55.050]or things you wanna kick around a little bit more,
[00:48:57.200]I have a lot of windshield time typically.
[00:48:58.760]So it gives me a great time,
[00:48:59.890]great opportunity to talk with people
[00:49:01.130]on ideas they have and I'm always learning
[00:49:03.970]and enjoying that process too of learning.
[00:49:07.242]So any more questions
[00:49:08.640]on kind of what we're doing
[00:49:10.090]or how this could be applied here?
[00:49:11.930]Yeah, I'll run the mic around there
[00:49:13.340]if you've any questions.
[00:49:15.280]We have time for questions so you might as well ask.
[00:49:25.660]You've talked a lot
[00:49:26.493]about using cereal rye going into soybeans.
[00:49:29.860]So what do you use in soybeans going into corn?
[00:49:34.004]In soybeans going into corn, we are using oats.
[00:49:37.890]So for us, we can fly that on before leaf drop
[00:49:40.570]and soybean get a little bit of growth
[00:49:42.700]and now that we don't have to terminate it
[00:49:44.500]the next year before we plant corn.
[00:49:46.960]'Cause for us that's a big deal.
[00:49:48.020]I mean we pretty much go from snow cover to like,
[00:49:50.370]let's get rolling and plant.
[00:49:51.620]And so there's often not times
[00:49:53.650]to go out and spray something and to terminate it.
[00:49:56.210]So some farmers that I work with are using cereal rye
[00:49:59.320]and they're flying it into their soybean.
[00:50:01.510]They're either putting in strip,
[00:50:02.870]they're doing strip till later
[00:50:04.730]or they go in after harvest and they actually seed it
[00:50:07.980]with spacing for their corn in between.
[00:50:10.030]If they're on a really high clay waterlogged soil,
[00:50:11.830]that's what they're doing.
[00:50:15.503](audience member speaks faintly)
[00:50:22.441]So the question was,
[00:50:23.274]are we seeing an increase in organic matter using the rye?
[00:50:27.310]So organic matter is a tricky test.
[00:50:30.581]And here's why we use it but,
[00:50:35.440]we don't rely on it for evaluating change.
[00:50:38.770]So anytime you change your system, say it's,
[00:50:40.410]you're going to reduce tillage
[00:50:41.540]or you're incorporating cover crops or something like that.
[00:50:44.080]If you're out there and you're not kicking away
[00:50:46.060]whatever residue is on the surface
[00:50:47.450]before you collect a sample,
[00:50:49.320]you're gonna artificially inflate
[00:50:50.440]your organic matter numbers.
[00:50:51.450]And I think that's a lot of, sometimes what happens with,
[00:50:54.120]but some of these numbers where you see
[00:50:55.030]these rapid increases
[00:50:56.090]in organic matter percentages
[00:50:57.920]as a result of a change in practice,
[00:51:00.350]then it may be some residue that's caught in there,
[00:51:02.070]that some reflected in the test.
[00:51:04.470]And that seems to be our biggest issue with some of those.
[00:51:06.730]So unless, and I've even seen a samples I've collected
[00:51:09.190]where I been down on the ground pushing
[00:51:10.980]the residue aside to make sure
[00:51:12.170]that I just get that soil sample
[00:51:14.230]or I work with a colleague that actually removes
[00:51:16.470]all the roots from the sample before he runs it
[00:51:18.980]for organic matter as he's looking out root tweezers.
[00:51:23.460]But he removes the roots
[00:51:24.400]because he hasn't kind of consider
[00:51:25.590]that part of the organic matter.
[00:51:26.840]It's still too new and it's still too active.
[00:51:28.570]So if you're adding more roots to your system,
[00:51:30.400]you're adding more residue.
[00:51:32.380]Those numbers can be really tricky to track.
[00:51:35.140]But from what I know about organic matter,
[00:51:36.690]it's 20 years for you to see major changes
[00:51:41.690]in organic matter.
[00:51:43.730]So we're looking at things like the active fraction,
[00:51:45.960]so organic matter has pools.
[00:51:47.180]It's got active and slow and passive,
[00:51:49.320]and so you can separate those out
[00:51:51.200]with chemical tests in the lab.
[00:51:52.630]And so we're kind of looking at that as maybe
[00:51:56.266]a better measure.
[00:51:57.750]Abbey, what's the native organic matter
[00:51:59.900]levels that you work with?
[00:52:02.780]Really, really high.
[00:52:03.730]I mean we've got a lot of our Valley soils.
[00:52:07.690]Probably we're around 7%, 8% organic matter.
[00:52:12.780]Yeah, we've got a lot of organic matter,
[00:52:14.100]which is why the soil health test don't work for us
[00:52:15.800]'cause everything's weighted on organic matter
[00:52:17.580]for those tests.
[00:52:18.690]So we have a lot of organic matter.
[00:52:19.840]Our soils are very, very dark.
[00:52:21.690]We have successfully reduced that organic matter percentage
[00:52:24.410]to half a percent or one by beating our soils up
[00:52:27.540]and reducing our rotations.
[00:52:30.800]So we have depleted that by quite a bit
[00:52:32.580]actually in a lot of our soils are.
[00:52:34.460]Our average range for a sample sent in to the testing lab
[00:52:37.370]could be 0.5 up to five.
[00:52:42.450]Are you using any residual herbicides
[00:52:44.680]when you're interceding?
[00:52:49.540]What I recommend with herbicides
[00:52:50.930]is that you pick your herbicide program first
[00:52:53.150]and then you fit the cover crops
[00:52:54.390]into that herbicide program.
[00:52:56.030]I mean, the last thing you wanna do is leave gaps
[00:52:57.720]in your system that are gonna lead to weed pressures.
[00:53:00.230]And if you have weeds and then you see cover crops
[00:53:02.410]under weeds, you'll still have weeds in your cover crops.
[00:53:05.870]So I think what we recommend is that you pick
[00:53:08.160]your herbicide program first
[00:53:09.250]and then you fit the cover crops in there.
[00:53:10.590]And the good thing about oats and cereal rye for us
[00:53:13.220]are that they're pretty tough.
[00:53:16.430]So you can get them to kind of grow
[00:53:18.540]through some of those residuals as well.
[00:53:23.240]But I've walked into fields
[00:53:24.260]where they've done the reverse
[00:53:25.620]and they've tried to fit their herbicides
[00:53:26.980]into their cover crop program and it's just a mess
[00:53:29.670]to be honest.
[00:53:31.540]Does this interfere with
[00:53:32.720]the crop insurance?
[00:53:36.750]So does this interfere with crop insurance?
[00:53:40.960]It gets a little sticky and that's where I want to make sure
[00:53:43.210]that all the farmers are talking
[00:53:44.390]with their insurance provider.
[00:53:47.200]They're not worried for us.
[00:53:48.370]They're not worried about interceding corn.
[00:53:49.880]That's not a huge deal.
[00:53:51.130]They're more worried about the soybean going into the rye.
[00:53:54.500]But there's also,
[00:53:56.660]I don't know we have these weird guidelines in North Dakota
[00:53:58.500]where like just because North Dakota
[00:54:00.390]is bordering with Minnesota,
[00:54:01.530]Minnesota has different requirements
[00:54:03.470]than we have in North Dakota,
[00:54:04.440]but our systems are very similar.
[00:54:06.870]So for the most part I'm not seeing
[00:54:09.760]like a huge pushback on that.
[00:54:11.930]But I think it is something you want to have a conversation
[00:54:13.800]just to make sure you're protected.
[00:54:17.760]So I've got a two part question.
[00:54:20.050]First one refers to,
[00:54:20.883]you talked about the nutrient recycling
[00:54:23.230]and it takes two to three years in your area
[00:54:25.520]for the breakdown to get back in the soil.
[00:54:27.570]As you move further South,
[00:54:28.770]We have lower organic matters.
[00:54:30.440]Is it feasible to say that it breaks down
[00:54:33.020]maybe two times faster the actual figure,
[00:54:35.200]as you go further South?
[00:54:37.400]I don't even know, I might rely on Nathan
[00:54:39.000]to answer that one or Keith.
[00:54:40.790]Ask your second question.
[00:54:42.030]Okay, the second question is,
[00:54:44.048](laughs)
[00:54:44.881]you were referring to pick the cover crop
[00:54:46.990]that fits your chemical program,
[00:54:49.550]but a lot of these chemical programs
[00:54:50.780]have residuals that don't work well
[00:54:52.930]with a lot of cover crops.
[00:54:54.580]Is there a chart that kind of bases
[00:54:57.600]what cover crops could be planted
[00:54:59.750]in a certain amount of time after a chemical program?
[00:55:02.670]Yeah, that's a good question.
[00:55:03.590]So we have some stuff from our webpage.
[00:55:06.390]So I think Lee Bruce was here a couple of years.
[00:55:09.340]Last year.
[00:55:10.920]And he (speaks faintly).
[00:55:13.400]That came for, lets say you're managing
[00:55:16.340]and then also some of the cover crops
[00:55:17.297]so you could kind of cross check it
[00:55:18.900]with like a weed guide.
[00:55:20.640]So we have, in North Dakota wheat guide that we use
[00:55:23.717]and so you can kind of cross check it with,
[00:55:25.010]okay, well if it's gonna control this
[00:55:26.450]and it's also gonna hurt this cover crop.
[00:55:29.490]So you could do that.
[00:55:30.323]But then NDSU has started putting in,
[00:55:33.210]they've started doing some work at one of our RECs,
[00:55:35.790]research extension centers on herbicide residual
[00:55:38.040]on cover crops.
[00:55:38.873]And so we have a little chart in there.
[00:55:40.293]It's not much, but it's something that says, okay,
[00:55:42.570]it could be moderately impacted or heavily impacted.
[00:55:45.020]And maybe that's of some use
[00:55:46.840]from the North Dakota lead guide.
[00:55:48.040]But there could be something very similar for Nebraska.
[00:55:51.450]So to answer
[00:55:53.362]the nitrogen question real quick,
[00:55:55.050]I'm going further South.
[00:55:57.120]I did my PhD in Kansas.
[00:55:59.170]We looked at heavy stands of winter annual weeds,
[00:56:02.000]which were 1000, 2000 pounds of winter annual weeds
[00:56:05.150]as a kind of, I think as a proxy for cover crops.
[00:56:08.120]They took up 20 to 30 pounds of nitrogen
[00:56:10.610]when we followed that through the corn growing season.
[00:56:12.800]It was released towards the end of the season,
[00:56:14.510]but by tasseling time it still wasn't there.
[00:56:16.660]So we still saw a yield drag with that system.
[00:56:19.610]And that was no till conditions
[00:56:21.090]in Northeast, Southeast and central Kansas.
[00:56:23.680]So there is a temperature moisture interaction
[00:56:25.960]and so it gets complicated to say it right
[00:56:28.470]'cause it's gonna depend each year, almost.
[00:56:33.350]I sewed rye last fall after beans
[00:56:36.250]and it was late in the season
[00:56:38.200]so I didn't get much growth.
[00:56:39.180]But then comes spring.
[00:56:40.210]How soon do I kill that rye before I plant corn?
[00:56:44.830]Well, I'm gonna again defer to your local experts
[00:56:46.950]'cause that's a pretty specific question.
[00:56:50.880]My answer would be 10 days to two weeks
[00:56:53.140]if you want to be safe.
[00:56:58.250]I've seen it done planting green corn
[00:57:02.120]and didn't seem to be a problem.
[00:57:04.960]Was there adequate nitrogen?
[00:57:06.870]Is there allelopathic effects?
[00:57:09.530]I think weather plays a big role.
[00:57:11.080]Soil moisture.
[00:57:13.020]Paul Hey or Paul Yasha,
[00:57:14.960]what's your comment on that?
[00:57:18.310]Let me get you the mic here.
[00:57:23.040]When it comes to allelopathic effect
[00:57:25.200]the best way I describe it, non technical terms,
[00:57:27.920]the decaying green ooze from the dying rye
[00:57:31.770]is the stuff that does yearn.
[00:57:34.530]And so the worst time to spray out cereal rye fields,
[00:57:36.883]this is five days before planting.
[00:57:38.610]The decaying green ooze is right there.
[00:57:40.820]If I'm planting shallow or on an open seed V,
[00:57:43.430]you really screw up the germination on corn.
[00:57:47.280]Soybeans, no.
[00:57:48.410]And again, it's the grass on the grass.
[00:57:50.950]If I'm planting deeper, that minimizes that.
[00:57:53.610]If I kill, Keith said 10 days to two weeks.
[00:57:57.720]I prefer two to three weeks.
[00:58:00.370]So I make sure that decaying green ooze has gone,
[00:58:02.560]but I'll also doing it cause I'm a dry lander
[00:58:04.660]and I want to conserve soil moisture.
[00:58:06.960]The other side of the coin is
[00:58:08.150]if you're plating green
[00:58:10.380]and this corn seed germinates
[00:58:11.940]before the decaying green ooze comes in
[00:58:14.480]because you sprayed
[00:58:15.313]the stuff out, say five days after planting,
[00:58:19.550]then you won't have any little allelopathic effect either,
[00:58:22.500]but you'll have much more of a nitrogen tie up effect,
[00:58:25.560]especially if you surface applied your nitrogen
[00:58:28.060]because that microbes to break down that residue needs
[00:58:31.820]nitrogen as food.
[00:58:33.400]It's catch and release or release it later,
[00:58:35.760]but if you're starving your corn when it's down here,
[00:58:38.320]to five, six inches tall, you're hurting your yield.
[00:58:41.350]That's where we increase our starter band and nitrogen.
[00:58:43.840]Can you see some demonstration parts out here
[00:58:45.530]where they put it about two to four inches
[00:58:46.363]to the side of the row?
[00:58:48.200]You don't see any nitrogen effect
[00:58:50.600]as far as tie up
[00:58:51.890]because that's right there next to the plant.
[00:58:55.250]Thanks for the presentation Paul.
[00:58:58.232](laughing) No I'm just kidding.
[00:59:00.140]You did a good job as well as.
[00:59:02.580]Keith and I think we got,
[00:59:04.147]We are to stay on schedule on.
[00:59:05.700]We give Abbey a round of applause.
[00:59:07.510]Thank you.

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2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

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