2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Deloris Pittman Author

02/28/2020 Added

60 Plays

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2020 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference presentation – Thoughts from a 1st Year Inter-Seeder and Why You Should Give it a Try! - Jay Goertzen, Henderson, NE Farmer and Jennifer Rees, Nebraska Extension Educator

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[00:00:21.110]Good afternoon, everyone.
[00:00:23.510]I'm Jenny Rees.
[00:00:24.640]I'm a Nebraska Extension Educator
[00:00:27.270]based out of York and Seward Counties.
[00:00:30.670]And some common themes that we've heard today
[00:00:36.380]include trying things out on your own farms,
[00:00:39.840]learning from what you're experiencing,
[00:00:43.900]and then sharing that information with others.
[00:00:46.840]And that's really what this is about.
[00:00:49.270]And that's ultimately what On-Farm Research is about, too.
[00:00:53.610]It's about trying new things.
[00:00:55.690]It's about learning from your experiences,
[00:00:58.350]and it's about sharing with other people, as well.
[00:01:01.620]And, if you're not familiar with On-Farm Research,
[00:01:06.620]Erin just shared a little bit,
[00:01:08.000]Noah just shared a little bit about it.
[00:01:10.810]But, every year, I hear some growers say,
[00:01:14.387]"Well I'm trying things on my farm,
[00:01:17.160]but I'm not sure if it's really making a difference or not.
[00:01:21.320]I'm splitting a field in half,
[00:01:23.880]but I don't know if there's really a difference or not
[00:01:28.280]between the treatment and the check."
[00:01:30.190]And that's where On-Farm Research can help you out,
[00:01:33.440]with replicating and randomizing new strips
[00:01:36.240]throughout the field.
[00:01:37.580]And so, this can look a little daunting.
[00:01:41.230]And a lot of times we hear that from growers,
[00:01:43.370]that looks like it's too difficult to do.
[00:01:46.360]And so, one of our cooperators, Jay Goertzen,
[00:01:51.210]he did this for the first time this past year.
[00:01:53.530]It was at this meeting last year
[00:01:55.770]that a group of us were talking about
[00:01:57.190]cover crops and interseeding.
[00:01:59.220]And so, Jay chose to do an interseeding project
[00:02:02.160]with us last year.
[00:02:03.350]So I'm gonna turn this over to Jay,
[00:02:05.490]and he's gonna talk about his projects.
[00:02:10.960]Can everybody hear me?
[00:02:13.202]All right.
[00:02:17.710]All right.
[00:02:18.760]This is a little bit more daunting
[00:02:20.170]than high school speech class,
[00:02:21.960]but as long as you guys
[00:02:22.970]aren't all sittin' back there with stopwatches,
[00:02:25.280]I'll try to get through this okay.
[00:02:26.523](audience chuckles)
[00:02:28.820]So this is where I'm located,
[00:02:31.050]right between Henderson and Bradshaw,
[00:02:32.510]just north of I-80.
[00:02:34.270]That's where I farm.
[00:02:35.112]That's my house and the test strip that Jenny just showed.
[00:02:39.472]Had to put a picture of my family up here
[00:02:41.430]because they're ultimately why the,
[00:02:43.730]the pushing force behind
[00:02:45.860]the why I'm trying different things.
[00:02:48.640]I want to leave soil better than the way I got it,
[00:02:52.230]which I think was pretty good shape.
[00:02:54.020]But I also wanna be able to provide an environment
[00:02:57.960]for them as well as for myself to be healthy.
[00:03:01.040]Hopefully through some of these
[00:03:02.120]interseeding cover crop things
[00:03:03.380]I can reduce fertilizer use as well as chemicals
[00:03:07.910]and some of these things that you've heard
[00:03:08.980]some of the other guys and ladies talk about this morning.
[00:03:12.970]So, as I left for this this morning,
[00:03:15.500]I had to tell my seven-year-old twins
[00:03:17.090]that I was going to school today,
[00:03:19.590]and I also had to be a teacher for part of it.
[00:03:21.210]But I'll say, rather than being a teacher,
[00:03:24.110]I'll just share rather than teach, so.
[00:03:27.382]Is it gonna work?
[00:03:28.514](audience members murmur)
[00:03:32.507]Oh, it's not the Google slides.
[00:03:33.950]Something goofy? (audience member murmurs)
[00:03:35.760]That work? Yes.
[00:03:36.593]Oh perfect.
[00:03:37.426]Okay, gotcha.
[00:03:38.259]Okay, thank you.
[00:03:39.155]Sorry about that guys.
[00:03:41.260]Okay, so why I'm interested in interseeding
[00:03:45.081]is because, I've been spending a lot of time
[00:03:48.550]reading, learning, going to Field Days
[00:03:50.470]over these last couple of years,
[00:03:52.470]and one of the themes
[00:03:53.570]that just kept coming back up in everything I read,
[00:03:55.750]no matter whether it was about pests, or about soil health,
[00:04:00.950]or about weeds, everything came back to diversity.
[00:04:04.910]And, I thought, well, I'm walking out here in my fields,
[00:04:07.700]and I'll show you some slides later
[00:04:09.790]on what I used to think was really nice looking
[00:04:11.880]but I don't have anything out here.
[00:04:13.430]I just have corn and trying to kill every single thing else.
[00:04:19.610]So I wanted diversity, so that's one of the reasons
[00:04:23.090]I wanted to go with interseeding.
[00:04:24.659]Try to get my cover crops growing with the corn
[00:04:27.410]so I'm no longer doing a mono crop.
[00:04:29.190]I'm doing more than one thing at a time.
[00:04:32.240]I wanna lower my seed to end ratio,
[00:04:34.670]carbon to nitrogen ratio,
[00:04:35.780]because that will increase my nutrient cycling.
[00:04:37.750]And this is corn on corn that I'm talking about here,
[00:04:41.530]so we're, okay, back up a little bit.
[00:04:45.060]I'm wide row, 36 inch row,
[00:04:46.900]so I'm a little bit odd.
[00:04:48.131]But this is corn on corn,
[00:04:51.180]average 230, 240 bushel field average.
[00:04:54.490]So, got a lot of residue out there
[00:04:56.360]when we're corn on corn
[00:04:57.440]and having a hard time working with that residue,
[00:05:00.010]we always thought we need to be rich till
[00:05:01.780]because we gotta put that trash somewhere.
[00:05:04.050]That's what Dad always said,
[00:05:04.883]"We gotta put that trash somewhere
[00:05:05.840]so we can plant it."
[00:05:07.260]And I'm trying to call it residue now,
[00:05:09.060]not trash.
[00:05:09.893]But, I wanna lower that seed to end ratio
[00:05:13.530]so I can get those nutrients that are in that residue
[00:05:17.400]to start breaking down and getting back into my system.
[00:05:20.730]Adding living roots to the soil
[00:05:22.210]so that I can stimulate biology.
[00:05:25.580]Most of you guys probably know this already.
[00:05:27.540]You've heard a lot smarter people than me
[00:05:29.000]explain to you photosynthesis.
[00:05:31.410]But what happens in photosynthesis
[00:05:33.080]is you're capturing sunlight,
[00:05:34.870]you're creating sugars,
[00:05:36.080]those sugars are going down through the roots,
[00:05:38.170]being excudated into the ground and feeding biology.
[00:05:42.428]The more roots I have out there,
[00:05:43.330]the more biology I can feed.
[00:05:44.780]So, I'm trying to capture more sunlight
[00:05:47.310]in between in all that wasted space
[00:05:49.030]that was between my corn rows.
[00:05:51.060]I wanna break up compaction and increase infiltration
[00:05:54.290]and a bunch of you guys have hit on that already today.
[00:05:58.520]So, how did I do it?
[00:06:01.340]Spent a lot of time surfing the internet
[00:06:03.410]trying to figure out what and how I wanted to try it.
[00:06:07.770]And this is what I came up with.
[00:06:11.510]To start out with, I'll explain that
[00:06:12.863]these parts were not technically all mine
[00:06:15.690]but I'm gonna refer to them all as mine
[00:06:17.150]because it's gonna make stuff simpler.
[00:06:19.060]The box is actually a neighbor's.
[00:06:20.680]I had one exactly like it, but it was smaller,
[00:06:22.600]and I wanted to use a bigger one.
[00:06:23.930]We were gonna go in on this together,
[00:06:25.360]so I put his thing on there.
[00:06:27.440]The row units are off of a drill that I own with my cousin,
[00:06:29.840]so again, kind of half mine.
[00:06:32.870]The whole point of saying that
[00:06:34.100]was I didn't spend any money to build this
[00:06:36.500]except for that one piece of two by three steel
[00:06:40.830]we had to buy on there so I could mount the row units on.
[00:06:44.070]Everything else was free.
[00:06:45.520]Took me about a day and half,
[00:06:47.570]two days to put it all together.
[00:06:50.410]But guys, you guys have stuff sitting around the farm.
[00:06:53.570]It was an old ridger bar we hadn't used in many, many years,
[00:06:57.221]the seed box was laying around from the old days
[00:07:00.210]when we use to put BT on at ridging time
[00:07:02.510]to combat corn boar.
[00:07:05.590]Hoses were all laying around with BT units.
[00:07:07.890]So I mean it's just, everything I had.
[00:07:09.930]It was just a matter of time, thinking and planning out,
[00:07:13.350]okay, how can we fit this all together
[00:07:15.270]and make this into something else.
[00:07:18.050]You guys all have similar things
[00:07:20.020]and maybe there's different ideas.
[00:07:21.960]A couple of guys have hit on this.
[00:07:22.970]I really like that last slide.
[00:07:24.810]That was a really cool one.
[00:07:25.760]I wish I would have found that slide,
[00:07:27.290]that homemade unit that you guys made.
[00:07:28.680]But a lot of guys have done it
[00:07:31.220]with like a rotary hoe type unit.
[00:07:33.300]Or, I actually almost went the way
[00:07:36.750]of that first slide there,
[00:07:38.100]with a vertical tilt colter unit
[00:07:40.690]that they put on an anhydrous rig
[00:07:42.360]and then they just blow seed in there
[00:07:43.660]and that's creating enough disturbance to get that in there.
[00:07:46.320]I talked to the guy who built that
[00:07:48.230]and he thought it worked pretty good.
[00:07:50.410]I mean, he was pretty happy with the way it worked.
[00:07:52.710]But I ended up, because my drill unit's actually
[00:07:55.970]were pretty easy to move,
[00:07:57.120]I just took 'em off my drill to do it.
[00:07:59.010]But like I said, I just wanna encourage guys that,
[00:08:01.813]this is my first year.
[00:08:03.181]I don't have any expertise.
[00:08:05.301]But I'm a farmer.
[00:08:06.850]Most of you guys in here are farmers.
[00:08:09.150]We know how to put junk together
[00:08:10.540]and at least try something.
[00:08:15.160]What I did with the herbicide,
[00:08:18.770]I have been ridge till for many years,
[00:08:20.210]so our planter's set up to band.
[00:08:22.410]So what I actually did
[00:08:23.243]was band two and a half ounces of Corvus
[00:08:26.060]down with the planter.
[00:08:27.780]And then I sprayed a full raid of Liberty
[00:08:29.810]the day before I interseeded
[00:08:32.430]and to be honest, I did not have 100% weed control.
[00:08:36.640]I mean, I guess Liberty is supposed to be sprayed
[00:08:39.510]when it's sunny and hot and whatever, it wasn't.
[00:08:42.770]But the weeds never got big.
[00:08:45.364]I would say weeds got this big.
[00:08:47.724]I had a water hemp, red and pig weed, stuff like that.
[00:08:52.900]This is as big as it got.
[00:08:54.320]I mean, I know in fields where I've had skips,
[00:08:56.470]you know, that stuff will get this tall.
[00:08:58.070]It gets big.
[00:08:58.903]But in the interseeded stuff,
[00:09:00.160]just, it got about as tall as the interseed,
[00:09:02.220]and it just sat there.
[00:09:04.480]I've heard guys say that before
[00:09:05.427]and I never really believe 'em.
[00:09:07.240]That's actually what happened.
[00:09:08.918](audience member coughs)
[00:09:10.700]So what my test was,
[00:09:12.620]I had a two strip, or, let's see,
[00:09:16.760]four replicated trials of three strips.
[00:09:18.980]There was a check and there were two mixes.
[00:09:21.260]And my main goal,
[00:09:22.690]I told Jenny I'm not gonna get complicated here.
[00:09:24.590]I just want to see if anything will survive.
[00:09:26.550]'Cause I just didn't think,
[00:09:27.450]surely this can't happen in Nebraska,
[00:09:29.830]in fully irrigated corn, you know,
[00:09:32.160]240 bushel like, yeah it may work
[00:09:34.070]in 150 bushel dry land or something like that,
[00:09:36.600]but it won't work here.
[00:09:38.190]So, I just tried to put as many different things together.
[00:09:41.600]I talked to Keith Burns over at Green Covers,
[00:09:43.800]some other guys I guess have talked to him, too.
[00:09:45.470]And got an idea of what other people are trying.
[00:09:47.850]And, so I just kind of threw a mix together.
[00:09:50.760]And you guys can look at the exact amounts of that
[00:09:52.980]and stuff on your handout.
[00:09:54.470]But this was the first mix.
[00:09:57.370]They were kind of expensive
[00:09:58.450]because again, this was just a plot.
[00:10:00.560]So I was just trying to get numbers
[00:10:03.470]of different things out there.
[00:10:05.120]Second mix, called it a nitrogen mix.
[00:10:07.440]I did a little bit more heavy on the clover side.
[00:10:10.840]Three different kinds of clovers in there,
[00:10:12.980]collards, rapeseed and again, annual ryegrass.
[00:10:15.720]I did the annual ryegrass because I was under the impression
[00:10:19.680]that nothing else would grow in the shade.
[00:10:21.620]I'm curious after hearing Abby talk,
[00:10:23.790]I think I'm gonna try
[00:10:24.623]to throw some cereal rye out there this year
[00:10:26.050]just to see what happens.
[00:10:28.230]And also, just gonna get a couple pictures
[00:10:30.080]so you guys can see kinda what it looks like out there.
[00:10:35.910]I wanna point out population.
[00:10:39.560]This was not done on purpose.
[00:10:41.330]This is actually the field next to my strip.
[00:10:43.580]I went ahead and planted 80 acres more than my strip
[00:10:46.810]of an interseeded mix
[00:10:48.140]and this was just annual ryegrass, rapeseed and clover.
[00:10:54.533]This was my first planted stuff
[00:10:56.220]and we always get out there too early.
[00:10:57.980]So it's cold and you always have problems
[00:10:59.521]those first days of planting.
[00:11:01.040]But this field had some emergence issues.
[00:11:04.410]So I had places where I was down to 24000 in population
[00:11:07.620]in this particular spot when I went out and counted
[00:11:09.420]and when I took the picture.
[00:11:10.800]And you can see the difference
[00:11:11.730]between 24000 and 30000 population.
[00:11:15.180]So it's just something I notice,
[00:11:17.220]something I wanna point out,
[00:11:18.740]it makes a difference.
[00:11:19.680]If you guys are out here on 30 inch rows,
[00:11:21.780]planting 36000 population,
[00:11:24.200]that may not be a good place to try it
[00:11:25.900]if you're curious if it'll work.
[00:11:27.160]'Cause it might not in that environment.
[00:11:29.190]I don't know,
[00:11:30.100]but it makes a big difference.
[00:11:31.850]And because of these skips and stuff
[00:11:33.480]I was able to see,
[00:11:34.920]there were places where you would walk,
[00:11:36.450]and there'd be maybe one or two plants
[00:11:38.030]skipped between each other,
[00:11:39.090]and there, the stuff would be a foot taller,
[00:11:42.150]the cover crop would be a foot taller there
[00:11:43.690]than anywhere else.
[00:11:44.530]So just that little extra light infiltration
[00:11:46.300]really adds a lot to the growth.
[00:11:53.450]So, again, I just wanted to keep my study simple.
[00:11:55.610]So I just said, "What survived and what didn't?"
[00:11:58.740]So I went through and tried to look
[00:12:00.350]and in July, I was out there, I mean, every week.
[00:12:03.580]But, tried to keep track of what was surviving.
[00:12:05.991]Annual ryegrass survived everywhere.
[00:12:09.010]All the collard, or all the brassicas did,
[00:12:11.570]the rapeseed, turnips and collards that I tried.
[00:12:14.680]Yellow sweet clover and red clover
[00:12:16.540]I both found for sure.
[00:12:18.240]The sweet clover had nodules by the 25th of July.
[00:12:21.250]And I know Jenny found some more
[00:12:23.350]when she did biomass samples in September.
[00:12:26.130]Neither of us ever found any nodules on the red clover.
[00:12:30.900]There was also chicory that we found
[00:12:32.660]and flax seemed to survive
[00:12:34.950]until the end of July, early August,
[00:12:37.000]and then I think it probably either shaded out
[00:12:39.430]or got too hot for it.
[00:12:40.830]But it did get six to eight inches tall.
[00:12:43.690]I never found hubam clover, crimson clover or versilia.
[00:12:47.490]I won't say that it wasn't out there
[00:12:48.990]but I didn't find it.
[00:12:49.950]And I'll tell you,
[00:12:50.783]if you guys are trying to figure out what grows,
[00:12:53.920]don't plant four types of clover in the same strip.
[00:12:57.241](audience laughs) 'Cause you can't
[00:12:58.074]tell the difference.
[00:12:59.743]And if you go to Google,
[00:13:00.580]there all just, oh here's a nice pretty field of red clover
[00:13:03.340]but I never saw any flowers, so.
[00:13:07.960]So here's a couple pictures after harvest.
[00:13:10.880]Their not real good pictures.
[00:13:12.263]The picture here with the posts
[00:13:15.400]is the actual test strip.
[00:13:17.260]The one on that side is the rest of the field
[00:13:20.360]that I also had that interseed mix on,
[00:13:22.780]I just took it
[00:13:23.613]'cause the perspective was a little bit better.
[00:13:27.612]So I harvested on the 11th,
[00:13:29.170]photos were taken about two weeks later.
[00:13:31.800]The stuff did not take off like I expected it to.
[00:13:34.310]I really thought it would just go crazy,
[00:13:36.650]you know, after we got the stuff combined off.
[00:13:38.370]But what I do want to point out
[00:13:40.460]is we have a shredding head,
[00:13:41.980]and I left the shredders on.
[00:13:43.350]And I don't, while I don't necessarily think
[00:13:45.040]that took the top of the cover crop off,
[00:13:47.520]it really creates a mat.
[00:13:48.640]And if you guys have a shredder head
[00:13:49.860]or been in a field that does,
[00:13:50.930]it creates a very dense mat of residue.
[00:13:53.790]Covered everything up,
[00:13:55.370]and I think that probably kept it from taking off more.
[00:13:59.910]The other thing that I will say for that though
[00:14:01.840]is it definitely made everything survive the first frost.
[00:14:04.610]'Cause when our first hard killing freeze,
[00:14:06.720]everything else died,
[00:14:07.620]but whereas under that residue, stuff still survived.
[00:14:10.366](audio failure silences speaker)
[00:14:12.000]Came through and survived for quite a bit longer yet.
[00:14:22.610]Okay, so Jenny pulled some biomass samples for me
[00:14:27.150]in, let's see, it was in early September.
[00:14:32.320]I don't know a lot about biomass.
[00:14:35.630]I don't have cattle,
[00:14:36.620]so I've never paid a whole lot of attention to it.
[00:14:38.930]What I do know is that the samples were quite variable.
[00:14:42.360]There was a lot of variance.
[00:14:43.960]There were spots where I know she pulled samples
[00:14:45.740]and there was basically nothing growing
[00:14:47.090]'cause that's, you know, where she landed
[00:14:50.010]when she was taking her tests, so.
[00:14:52.310]But, we saw, I mean here's the numbers,
[00:14:54.120]you guys who that means something to,
[00:14:55.960]that'll mean something to you.
[00:14:57.040]But there wasn't a lot.
[00:14:59.610]If you look back at my seeding rates,
[00:15:01.640]I was putting down 13 and a half to 16 pounds per acre.
[00:15:06.100]Everything was small seeded stuff,
[00:15:09.220]so there were a lot of seeds out there.
[00:15:11.230]But I was not using very heavy rates.
[00:15:14.090]Part of that was because of the seed box I had
[00:15:15.860]was small and I didn't want to stop.
[00:15:18.636]So, yeah. (audience murmurs)
[00:15:20.450]Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:21.906]So going forward.
[00:15:27.070]To me after seeing stuff actually grow
[00:15:29.006]that was a success.
[00:15:30.280]I didn't really care what the bushels were gonna show me
[00:15:32.150]at the end of the year.
[00:15:32.983]I had already told myself before we harvested
[00:15:34.880]that it was a success and I was gonna go forward with it.
[00:15:37.360]That being said,
[00:15:39.570]when the results are printed in the book or whatever,
[00:15:42.190]you'll see 'em.
[00:15:43.023]The one strip, I think the diversity strip
[00:15:47.380]did half a bushel worse than the check,
[00:15:49.420]and the other one did one and a half better.
[00:15:51.360]So there was basically no difference.
[00:15:53.530]If you figure in the seed costs,
[00:15:54.740]obviously I lost money on it.
[00:15:56.320]But something was growing out there.
[00:15:58.740]And to me I think that's a win.
[00:16:00.620]I think I'm probably gonna see more results this coming year
[00:16:03.020]than I did in the actual year this stuff was planted in.
[00:16:06.760]So, what am I gonna change going forward?
[00:16:09.260]What would I advise to you guys
[00:16:11.640]who are interested in trying it?
[00:16:12.710]Just things to think about.
[00:16:14.610]I'm gonna adjust the mixes.
[00:16:15.820]If you're gonna do this full scale,
[00:16:17.580]25 acres is too much, probably.
[00:16:20.639]Unless you're able to see that back,
[00:16:22.380]I don't know.
[00:16:23.213]But I'm gonna try to figure out
[00:16:24.270]how to get those numbers down even more.
[00:16:27.540]And as, I think Noah just pointed out,
[00:16:30.130]a lot of the rates and mixes,
[00:16:32.240]they don't have to be that complicated
[00:16:33.690]to be, I think, seeing some of the results
[00:16:36.370]that we're (audio malfunction silences speaker).
[00:16:40.220]I am in the process of putting together a new interseeder.
[00:16:42.600]I just snapped a picture the other day
[00:16:44.630]to kinda show that I believe in this
[00:16:47.700]and I'm actually committed to it.
[00:16:48.760]So, I drove to Indiana to get used row units
[00:16:51.950]and my uncle happened to have a air seeder just like mine
[00:16:56.930]sitting in his tree row.
[00:16:57.960]So I got his and I'm mating it together with mine.
[00:17:00.500]So I have enough outlets that I've made a box
[00:17:02.703]that was about five times bigger
[00:17:04.360]and hopefully we can lift it all and get it in the field.
[00:17:09.880]I got bigger meter rollers
[00:17:11.410]because I was originally afraid that
[00:17:14.410]the small, that since the BT was just a granular product,
[00:17:19.890]I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get anything
[00:17:22.060]like cowpeas or anything like that through those rollers.
[00:17:24.740]So I bought some different meters
[00:17:26.450]and hopefully, I can try stuff like cowpeas,
[00:17:29.270]sun hemp and, some of the other legumes with bigger seeds.
[00:17:32.420]Because I think that there's some
[00:17:33.487]very promising things being done with those varieties.
[00:17:38.570]I got started here about V5 to V6.
[00:17:43.040]I'd like to get started at V3,
[00:17:45.200]maybe even try a round or two at V2.
[00:17:48.344]Just because I think that window gets real short
[00:17:52.570]that time of year, with rains and everything like that.
[00:17:55.330]And everything just grows so fast.
[00:17:57.580]And while it looks small and the corn's only this big
[00:18:00.040]and you're out there planting,
[00:18:01.130]you gotta realize, that stuff when it comes up
[00:18:03.100]is only this big.
[00:18:04.170]So a corn plant this big
[00:18:05.410]is gonna be this big and then that, you know,
[00:18:06.970]it keeps growing.
[00:18:09.507]I'm not really that worried about the competition.
[00:18:11.520]Though I probably should be.
[00:18:13.140]So take that with a grain of salt.
[00:18:16.470]I wanna do soil tests this year.
[00:18:17.840]I didn't do any this year.
[00:18:19.464]It didn't, it just never happened.
[00:18:22.780]But I just wanna document what I'm doing
[00:18:25.650]so that I can see if I'm actually making progress forward.
[00:18:30.910]And then watch better for biology
[00:18:32.480]above and below ground,
[00:18:33.570]and document what I'm finding.
[00:18:37.030]A lot of you guys probably
[00:18:38.130]have done test strips for yourself
[00:18:40.370]or had good intentions to do test strips.
[00:18:42.860]And you go out there in the summer
[00:18:44.120]and you see something,
[00:18:45.150]you pull out our phone and you snap a picture,
[00:18:46.580]and you say, "I'll know what that is."
[00:18:48.180]And two weeks later,
[00:18:49.167]"Why the heck did I take a picture of that corn plant?
[00:18:51.010]I don't know."
[00:18:52.130]So, write down, I'm gonna write down what I did,
[00:18:55.920]when I did it,
[00:18:56.753]and when I see problems,
[00:18:57.586]try to write that stuff down
[00:18:58.740]so that I can tweak my system going forward
[00:19:01.240]because that's the only way.
[00:19:02.560]Ultimately, we all gotta,
[00:19:04.650]I think Lauren alluded to this and Abby did too.
[00:19:08.100]We're not, you guys can't just take everything you hear
[00:19:11.200]and adopt it.
[00:19:12.250]We gotta adapt it.
[00:19:13.180]So we're all trying to figure out
[00:19:14.550]how to fit this into our system.
[00:19:16.110]So ultimately we're the best researchers for ourselves
[00:19:18.678]in finding those little tweaks.
[00:19:20.880]The way we'll remember that stuff is if we document it.
[00:19:24.750]And then, finally, I'm choosing corn varieties,
[00:19:29.620]that I wanna interseed, that are like a full flex hybrid
[00:19:32.350]so that I can drop my population.
[00:19:34.440]And also looking at the leaf structure and plant height.
[00:19:38.520]Now it's hard to get all three of those things to match
[00:19:41.120]in the same variety and the same hybrid.
[00:19:43.400]But looking at those things to
[00:19:45.324]try to match that with the interseed
[00:19:47.290]so at least I'm giving myself a fair chance
[00:19:49.475]with the interseed.
[00:19:50.347]And that's something else I would tell you guys.
[00:19:52.070]If you're just, "Hey, I'm gonna slap something together
[00:19:53.970]and try it."
[00:19:54.940]Maybe don't put it on the ground
[00:19:56.900]that has a determinant year
[00:19:58.730]that you're gonna be pushing the 40000 population
[00:20:01.100]because that might not be the best time to try this out.
[00:20:10.970]So, used to be, when I would go out in my field,
[00:20:14.860]up until the last couple years,
[00:20:17.500]that first picture there
[00:20:18.520]is what I wanted to see at harvest time.
[00:20:20.970]Not a single weed.
[00:20:22.920]Looks pretty good.
[00:20:24.646](audio failure silences speaker)
[00:20:26.126]And that always made me pretty happy.
[00:20:29.500]But as my learning and education
[00:20:31.320]and just the research I've been doing
[00:20:33.870]has been leading me down a different path.
[00:20:37.030]And now I think these other two pictures
[00:20:38.700]look a whole lot better.
[00:20:41.020]Because the corn has stopped
[00:20:43.300]photosynthesizing in these pictures.
[00:20:46.050]It is dead.
[00:20:47.340]It is just sitting there waiting to be harvested.
[00:20:50.070]The green out there is continuing to photosynthesize.
[00:20:52.410]It is continuing to put sugars and root exudates
[00:20:55.100]into the soil and it's continuing to feed the system.
[00:20:58.960]And that's what I'm going for.
[00:21:00.230]That's what I'm trying to do.
[00:21:01.760]So any time I can have green out there
[00:21:04.140]for a longer period of time,
[00:21:06.385]I just feel like this is a good mix.
[00:21:08.580]And I've done other cover crops too.
[00:21:10.680]But this allows us to get it in there earlier
[00:21:13.400]and fill in some gaps where otherwise
[00:21:16.390]we wouldn't have anything growing.
[00:21:20.980]And with that, that's all I have for now.
[00:21:23.620]There's my contact info
[00:21:25.605]and I don't know if there's time for questions or not.
[00:21:27.995]We'll hold them for the panel.
[00:21:30.470]But great job.
[00:21:31.406]Jay and Jenni, thank you for your presentation.
[00:21:33.385](audience claps)

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2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

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