2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Deloris Pittman Author

02/28/2020 Added

47 Plays

Description

2020 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference presentation - Review of Cover Crop Demonstrations in Central Platte NRD - Dean Krull, Farmer/ UNL Research Technologist

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:24.360]With that, we'll switch over
[00:00:25.410]to our next speaker, Dean Krull,
[00:00:27.100]who I've worked with on several projects.
[00:00:29.472]He's gonna be presenting some information for us
[00:00:32.850]on cover crop demonstrations that he's done
[00:00:34.860]in the Central Platte NRD.
[00:00:37.250]And he's a UNL Research Technologist and a producer.
[00:00:40.140]Can you hear me now?
[00:00:42.180]All right, first of all,
[00:00:44.000]I'm very curious.
[00:00:45.270]I wanna see a show of hands
[00:00:48.060]of attendees that have never planted one acre of cover crop
[00:00:52.660]that are here today.
[00:00:54.680]I'm glad you're here.
[00:00:57.450]So, I'm sure tomorrow
[00:00:59.930]you'll be ordering your cover crop seed
[00:01:01.760]after you get done with today.
[00:01:04.180]But that's getting less and less all the time
[00:01:09.160]as we go through and demonstrate
[00:01:11.430]and do meetings like this over time.
[00:01:14.615]I think the cover crop stuff
[00:01:16.660]is the next step
[00:01:18.720]past no-till and things like that.
[00:01:22.720]That's the next step that people are really interested in.
[00:01:26.600]And so that's what,
[00:01:28.610]that's why basically
[00:01:31.432]that I run a project
[00:01:34.280]in Central Platte Natural Resources District,
[00:01:36.840]a demonstration education program
[00:01:39.660]that demonstrates stuff that farmers
[00:01:42.360]basically have questions about.
[00:01:44.810]So what I wanna do today is I wanna cover these four things.
[00:01:51.200]The environmental impact of cover crops,
[00:01:55.570]planting dates and the results of cover crops,
[00:01:59.810]seeding strategies and also moisture concerns.
[00:02:03.380]'Cause the majority of this
[00:02:05.970]is the number one question that producers have
[00:02:09.960]that have never done cover crops.
[00:02:11.590]And one of the biggest ones is that last one.
[00:02:16.740]Why would I plant a cover crop?
[00:02:19.340]Waste all that damn moisture out there for my cash crop.
[00:02:24.660]Why would I do that?
[00:02:26.620]So hopefully by the end of today
[00:02:29.810]and the end of my presentation
[00:02:31.410]we can answer some of those things.
[00:02:35.510]So, truthfully how I got into cover crops was
[00:02:39.880]I was on my way to a meeting right here
[00:02:44.810]for no-till...
[00:02:48.350]years ago.
[00:02:50.090]And in Central Platte Natural Resources District
[00:02:52.860]there is a lot of seed corn grown.
[00:02:57.540]Okay, those of you that don't raise seed corn
[00:02:59.780]if you wanna look at the most inefficient corn
[00:03:03.740]for nitrogen management, that's it.
[00:03:07.330]It will not use as much nitrogen as a commercial corn
[00:03:12.150]and stuff like that.
[00:03:12.983]So, if we look at the map of Central Platte,
[00:03:17.980]all those red areas is where the most density
[00:03:22.700]of seed corn production is.
[00:03:25.290]All right, I tried to work with companies
[00:03:29.560]and implement our nitrogen management algorithm
[00:03:34.620]and things like that
[00:03:36.440]and found out that there was no consistency
[00:03:41.170]in yield, by utilizing that nitrogen algorithm
[00:03:45.390]to figure out what that was.
[00:03:47.890]So I come to the conclusion,
[00:03:52.720]you know you start messing around
[00:03:54.830]with the seed corn growers' yield,
[00:03:59.138]you start screwing around with his pocketbook big time.
[00:04:03.960]So I thought okay, on my way here that day
[00:04:07.040]I thought why don't we instead of managing what he puts on,
[00:04:11.920]why don't we manage what's left over.
[00:04:15.480]So that is really how I got into looking at cover crops.
[00:04:22.890]So majority of the time when cover crops
[00:04:26.590]are planted in seed corn production
[00:04:29.580]is when they destroy the male rows
[00:04:33.110]with like a Herd spreader that is here right now,
[00:04:36.870]that is on this apparatus, this High-Boy.
[00:04:40.520]So they're destroying the male rows
[00:04:45.170]with these like rowing stalk choppers here
[00:04:48.360]and then spreading cover crops there.
[00:04:51.800]Ideal.
[00:04:54.380]I would say that any seed corn grower,
[00:04:56.720]if he isn't putting cover crops out there,
[00:04:58.950]he better be really considerate.
[00:05:00.750]Because it is a no-brainer
[00:05:03.500]as far as the success that your gonna get
[00:05:07.350]on emergence, growth and everything
[00:05:10.300]because of sunlight.
[00:05:12.490]So I was giving a talk in Central City
[00:05:16.410]and one of the growers raises his hand
[00:05:19.000]and he goes,
[00:05:21.267]"Sure, what the hell happens to all that nitrogen?"
[00:05:24.980]what happens to it?
[00:05:26.400]Your going to uptake that with cover crop, it's gone.
[00:05:34.522]Here's a picture of
[00:05:37.200]the year that I started looking into this, in 2010.
[00:05:41.320]That's the cover crop that was out there.
[00:05:43.400]And here's the results of
[00:05:45.580]deep soil sampling to three foot,
[00:05:50.730]for nitrate nitrogen.
[00:05:52.840]And I started in September.
[00:05:56.480]Basically I started when that cover crop emerged.
[00:06:01.370]Now this is after male destruction,
[00:06:04.510]and then went ahead and did a series of soil sampling
[00:06:09.500]to three foot,
[00:06:10.333]all the way into the next growing season.
[00:06:14.580]And this may be a little bit different in what you're seeing
[00:06:17.120]is what surprised me,
[00:06:19.770]well it didn't surprise me but,
[00:06:22.340]as you can see, it didn't matter
[00:06:25.710]what mixture we had out there
[00:06:27.740]on any of these cover crops.
[00:06:31.400]It was better than not doing anything.
[00:06:37.070]Now, just to clarify.
[00:06:40.490]We're looking at turnips, radishes,
[00:06:42.550]rapeseed, spring barley and oats.
[00:06:46.170]Same and our substituted rye in that mixture.
[00:06:49.500]And then also threw in a treatment of turnips only.
[00:06:53.450]Because turnips only
[00:06:54.640]was a practice that these producers had been using
[00:06:59.210]for many years,
[00:07:00.240]just throwing turnips out there and that was it.
[00:07:03.020]And I think, I feel that a brassica will eat organic matter.
[00:07:08.900]You got a low organic matter crop out there for seed corn
[00:07:13.657]and you throw a brassica in there,
[00:07:15.260]and you're eating that up too.
[00:07:16.597]So that's why I'm trying to promote
[00:07:20.830]putting grasses and things like that in this.
[00:07:23.520]So year one, great results.
[00:07:26.640]So I thought, well is this a fluke?
[00:07:31.170]So I did it again in 2011.
[00:07:33.790]And as you can see,
[00:07:34.623]yes there's a little more scatter here
[00:07:36.970]than there was in 2010,
[00:07:39.410]but basically the same results.
[00:07:43.200]The cover crop took up that nitrogen during that off season
[00:07:48.980]and then released it again that next growing season.
[00:07:57.710]Another question is delay of planting.
[00:08:02.960]And what I mean delay of planting is,
[00:08:04.610]when do we plant our cover crops?
[00:08:06.860]How important is that in the whole scheme of things?
[00:08:12.040]So I set up a project with one of my cooperators
[00:08:14.840]out in Dawson County which, Lexington area.
[00:08:19.410]We took his drill, put individual little,
[00:08:23.760]these are actually made out of oil cans,
[00:08:26.740]over each one of the drill holes.
[00:08:31.360]That way we could change the species and stuff
[00:08:34.850]that we put out there.
[00:08:38.000]So...
[00:08:39.440]we did two plantings...
[00:08:42.500]July 6th,
[00:08:44.850]two weeks later, July 20th.
[00:08:48.750]All right, what about weed suppression?
[00:08:53.050]Pretty obvious here, right?
[00:08:54.950]I mean and this is just a demonstration plot
[00:08:57.310]next to his shop.
[00:08:59.280]Very obvious the weed suppression.
[00:09:04.020]Lots of difference.
[00:09:05.200]And then this picture was taken August 4th.
[00:09:11.800]Okay, and I won't go through these mixes,
[00:09:14.110]but those are what were in the mixes
[00:09:16.820]of each one of those treatments.
[00:09:18.840]But more importantly
[00:09:20.140]what I wanted to look at was root depth.
[00:09:26.300]We got plant height in the first column,
[00:09:29.740]root depth in the second.
[00:09:33.330]That surprise anybody,
[00:09:36.000]that those roots are gonna be that deep?
[00:09:40.550]Must not, but to many it is.
[00:09:44.000]It's very surprising that a plant that height above ground,
[00:09:51.805]it roots out to that depth.
[00:09:58.460]Here's what that plot looked like December 1st.
[00:10:02.350]It'd been killed by frost and things like that.
[00:10:05.200]You can see on the one on your left,
[00:10:09.390]the species that went ahead and froze out,
[00:10:12.640]winter killed and things like that.
[00:10:14.010]But there was still a lot of cover crops there
[00:10:18.430]even at December 1st.
[00:10:24.810]So my point is,
[00:10:28.480]is what you see above ground...
[00:10:32.650]Is there a hidden value to what you see above ground?
[00:10:34.950]Or is there something deeper than that?
[00:10:39.960]Is it important what's going on below ground
[00:10:42.360]as much as it is above ground?
[00:10:46.060]My answer is yes, there is.
[00:10:54.010]Jaspers...
[00:10:56.120]or Perkins I mean,
[00:10:56.970]Don Perkins in Jasper.
[00:11:00.656]They did a series of 13 fields
[00:11:03.980]where they went and they did multiple different methods
[00:11:09.890]of planting the covers in the different crops
[00:11:13.690]and this and that,
[00:11:14.523]and then they went around and dug soil pits
[00:11:17.110]at each one of these locations.
[00:11:19.560]I researched this out because I was looking for something
[00:11:23.330]that would prove my point here as far as root.
[00:11:28.740]I'm not gonna read this.
[00:11:29.720]Go ahead an glance through that.
[00:11:31.270]And all this is in my printout,
[00:11:35.394]but the point is
[00:11:36.477]and the main scheme of this whole thing is
[00:11:40.200]is what I've been referring to
[00:11:42.370]the biomass above ground
[00:11:44.840]doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste of time.
[00:11:49.890]And I mean waste of time as planting that cover crop.
[00:11:55.650]There's a lot of stuff going on below ground
[00:11:59.640]that we can't see with our naked eye.
[00:12:04.150]And at every one of these we've got awfully good root depth.
[00:12:12.980]Any questions so far?
[00:12:21.350]Pencil turnip, a pencil radish right there
[00:12:24.310]roots to 12 inches.
[00:12:27.980]Annual rye grass, 30 inches.
[00:12:31.840]Thirty-two inches.
[00:12:34.140]So I'm researching all this stuff
[00:12:36.050]and I'm looking at all this thinking
[00:12:38.220]yeah, okay, I'm a doubting Thomas until I really see it.
[00:12:43.900]So three inch rye.
[00:12:46.650]This is at Chapman, Nebraska.
[00:12:48.160]One of the families that I've done
[00:12:50.310]numerous cover crop study with,
[00:12:54.824]three inch rye,
[00:12:59.030]rooting 30 inches deep.
[00:13:04.690]And this is in March,
[00:13:07.800]next month basically.
[00:13:12.500]That's a sandy soil.
[00:13:15.804](crowd member makes a statement without microphone)
[00:13:20.370]That's right.
[00:13:21.340]That's right, there's not a restriction layer there.
[00:13:24.430]But the point here is this is loosening up.
[00:13:28.450]I don't care, everybody thinks
[00:13:30.000]sand will be loose all the time.
[00:13:31.970]That's not true.
[00:13:33.860]It's also working on compaction and stuff like that
[00:13:36.160]'cause this actually was in a seed field
[00:13:38.650]so you know there could be possibilities of compaction
[00:13:43.310]and things like that.
[00:13:44.306](crowd member makes a statement without microphone)
[00:13:48.730]That's right.
[00:13:50.270]Sorry, Dan's comment
[00:13:51.420]was there's some differences in rooting depth
[00:13:53.860]associated with soil texture in some cases.
[00:13:56.000]Right. So, yeah.
[00:13:57.747]And this doesn't mean in the tables before that,
[00:14:02.460]that wasn't sandy soil,
[00:14:03.730]that's in heavier soil,
[00:14:05.450]so the effects still are there
[00:14:08.260]no matter what that soil type is.
[00:14:14.200]Planting strategies for commercial corn.
[00:14:18.670]There's so many ideas and things like that.
[00:14:23.890]And I really wanted to look into interseeding.
[00:14:27.925]And the only reason why I wanted to look into it was
[00:14:30.860]broaden that window for these producers
[00:14:34.890]that are interested in planting cover crops.
[00:14:37.350]Broaden that window out
[00:14:38.610]so maybe instead of waiting 'til after harvest or whatever
[00:14:43.130]to see if we can get a jump on that
[00:14:44.990]benefit of those cover crops.
[00:14:47.030]So in 2014 started looking at that,
[00:14:51.580]and we used the male destroyer
[00:14:57.661]with the Herd spreader.
[00:14:59.700]Basically a high-clearance vehicle
[00:15:01.900]going over commercial corn.
[00:15:03.590]It was probably V8, V9 somewhere in there.
[00:15:09.630]Well, if you look at the pictures of that stand,
[00:15:14.260]man we thought we had this whipped.
[00:15:16.007]We got this baby figured out.
[00:15:19.010]Look at that.
[00:15:19.843]But, there's a but.
[00:15:23.710]When we started weighing up what put out there,
[00:15:26.960]we're looking at 70 pounds per acre.
[00:15:29.670]Now I don't know about in your area,
[00:15:33.500]or east of here.
[00:15:35.460]You start talking about planting cover crops
[00:15:39.510]in the $40, $50, $60 an acre range
[00:15:44.810]they're gonna run me out of the country.
[00:15:49.104]A lot of people are doin' this stuff and it's cost.
[00:15:53.840]It's cost, but we thought,
[00:15:57.430]you know, we had it whipped.
[00:15:59.430]But necessarily when we started figuring up
[00:16:02.000]what it cost per acre
[00:16:03.127]we knew that we couldn't sell this in central Nebraska.
[00:16:07.460]So we come up with this redneck idea
[00:16:12.200]of utilizing John Deere insecticide boxes,
[00:16:19.640]hydraulically driven.
[00:16:22.950]And then behind it,
[00:16:23.960]those of you that aren't familiar,
[00:16:26.470]this is a rolling Hiniker shield for a cultivator
[00:16:29.920]to incorporate that seed a little bit better.
[00:16:37.070]There was only one problem.
[00:16:38.800]Ken and I spend three days in the shop
[00:16:41.840]calibrating each one of these boxes on an eight row.
[00:16:46.100]We go out to the field.
[00:16:49.538]That all went out the window.
[00:16:51.360]So realistically, you did not know
[00:16:54.690]what you were putting on each one of those individual rows.
[00:16:59.360]Well, dollar-wise you can't do that.
[00:17:04.370]What kind of seed
[00:17:05.203]were you trying to run through it?
[00:17:06.750]A mixture of multi.
[00:17:09.990]The question was what kind of seed.
[00:17:12.150]No, we're looking at multi-size seeds, okay?
[00:17:17.820]And actually we had to hone out the bottom
[00:17:21.180]to make it more
[00:17:24.210]bigger for those larger seeds.
[00:17:26.598](crowd member makes a statement without microphone)
[00:17:29.020]It might, but I don't know if I would say that
[00:17:34.640]that's gonna work even for that.
[00:17:37.540]I mean, we spent,
[00:17:38.373]we thought man we got this whipped, but no.
[00:17:40.260]When we got out to the field it didn't work.
[00:17:45.850]But our results,
[00:17:48.230]here's some pictures of the results
[00:17:49.700]that we had that year in 2016
[00:17:52.650]and you got the species there on the left,
[00:17:55.790]what we had in each one of these mixes.
[00:18:04.530]How we determined this,
[00:18:05.850]we sat down with Keith Berns from Green Cover Seed
[00:18:09.820]and kind of figured out
[00:18:12.070]what we might wanna put in each one of these.
[00:18:15.960]Penn State mix, all right.
[00:18:19.188]A lot of the long-term research come from Penn State,
[00:18:26.140]and these entries right here
[00:18:29.020]was the mixtures that they were using
[00:18:30.750]in a lot of their research.
[00:18:31.850]So I thought, well if they're successful
[00:18:35.120]why can't we be successful at this in Nebraska.
[00:18:37.860]So that was why one of these was the Penn State entry.
[00:18:43.570]Elbon rye,
[00:18:46.340]rapeseed, buckwheat.
[00:18:49.160]So it looks pretty good,
[00:18:52.295]but in 2017 the family decided we're tired of this.
[00:18:57.250]We're gonna go ahead and invest in a implement
[00:18:59.630]that's gonna do what we want to,
[00:19:02.570]and they purchased this Hiniker inter-row seeder.
[00:19:07.180]Two things that I can say about this.
[00:19:10.880]Seed to soil contact is important.
[00:19:13.840]And second of all,
[00:19:15.060]when metering was an issue,
[00:19:18.010]prior to what in our experiences,
[00:19:21.220]you can calibrate this machine and be right on.
[00:19:25.330]If you say it's gonna be 20 pounds, it'll be 20 pounds.
[00:19:34.080]Here's pictures,
[00:19:34.913]and we've seen some pictures like this earlier today
[00:19:37.850]of the success of inter-row seeding.
[00:19:45.550]At harvest-time we seen some.
[00:19:48.320]You got a question, sir?
[00:19:50.015](crowd member makes a statement without microphone)
[00:19:56.230]No, we're looking probably at an inch or whatever.
[00:20:01.630]It's not gonna go down the full depth of the disc.
[00:20:06.920]These are on eight inch spacing,
[00:20:08.380]so in a 30 inch row you're probably what, a foot away,
[00:20:13.063]something like that.
[00:20:13.980]As far as root pruning, that isn't even an issue.
[00:20:17.636]And with this implement we can go 10, 11, 12 mph.
[00:20:28.050]Another question that Keith and I,
[00:20:30.490]Keith Berns and I talked about was
[00:20:33.430]what about solar energy.
[00:20:36.320]'Cause one of the drawbacks maybe in commercial corn
[00:20:39.590]is sunlight, heat and stuff like that.
[00:20:43.740]And so I purchased some of these little loggers
[00:20:48.050]and put one out in the alleyway out in the direct sunlight,
[00:20:52.720]versus in the row,
[00:20:54.880]and collected data with this all season long.
[00:21:00.300]This is a pretty busy graph,
[00:21:04.190]but the point here is on temperature.
[00:21:09.540]Granted, whoops, wrong one.
[00:21:17.666]It got cooler, which makes sense, in that canopy.
[00:21:22.280]And look how hot it was out here.
[00:21:24.130]This is temperature.
[00:21:25.930]And I don't know, the top one,
[00:21:29.010]the highest, it got up to 140 degrees,
[00:21:34.350]three, four inches off the ground
[00:21:37.250]inside that corn canopy.
[00:21:43.490]Intensity, you can tell as the corn crop grew in row,
[00:21:50.770]the intensity went down,
[00:21:52.800]which makes sense.
[00:21:55.900]But there was enough there to go ahead and mature
[00:22:01.010]or keep that corn crop growing.
[00:22:04.380]Okay, I'm looking at all kinds of different ideas,
[00:22:10.120]planting strategies that producers can do
[00:22:14.050]to get that cover crop in there.
[00:22:15.870]Dormant seeding, we did some of that with
[00:22:19.800]wheat, barley, triticale, cereal rye, vetch,
[00:22:22.640]so on and so forth.
[00:22:25.040]We planted like on November 15th
[00:22:28.550]and these pictures are from the next August.
[00:22:32.020]Pretty successful.
[00:22:33.790]You didn't see a lot during the winter,
[00:22:36.580]but it didn't matter.
[00:22:38.690]You got good cover April 15th.
[00:22:45.160]This is an interesting one.
[00:22:47.720]Got a producer at Lexington
[00:22:50.157]that cuts all of his corn for silage.
[00:22:53.900]Opportune time to go in, drill rye.
[00:22:58.760]After that, let it grow, graze it.
[00:23:03.650]So what he does here is he grazes it, takes them off,
[00:23:08.280]let's it recoup, grazes it again,
[00:23:12.010]takes them off, and then goes in with the strip-till machine
[00:23:17.610]and strip-tills it and ends up planting his corn
[00:23:22.400]and then goes ahead and kills it.
[00:23:24.847]And this is kinda what it looks like
[00:23:28.990]after he chemically kills it.
[00:23:33.330]Now Lauren, what you're working on,
[00:23:35.470]in those inter-row rollers,
[00:23:37.800]he's had this idea for quite a few years.
[00:23:40.710]That is his goal here,
[00:23:43.510]is to have a mechanism to roll down that cover
[00:23:48.430]in between those corn rows.
[00:23:49.527]And that's exactly what you're working on.
[00:23:54.450]His goal is to completely eliminate any herbicide, totally.
[00:23:59.690]And use the roller to go ahead and do his weed management.
[00:24:06.430]I like this a lot,
[00:24:08.380]but it's not good for everyone.
[00:24:12.970]But in certain situations it's right on spot.
[00:24:18.560]All right, I get a newsletter
[00:24:23.190]from "Grassland Oregon,"
[00:24:25.880]and they were talking about frosty seeding,
[00:24:28.980]frosty clover that you go ahead
[00:24:31.640]and you go out and frost seed it.
[00:24:34.790]So I talked to the family that I work with,
[00:24:38.617]"Let's try this."
[00:24:39.760]So we did.
[00:24:40.593]Went out March 11, 2019
[00:24:45.870]and planted this on top the snow.
[00:24:49.470]We took their inter-row seeder
[00:24:50.690]and just held it off the ground
[00:24:51.930]and went through and planted this mixture.
[00:24:54.620]Oats...
[00:24:56.900]clover...
[00:24:59.220]oats alone, clover alone...
[00:25:02.980]those four treatments.
[00:25:06.660]Honestly what we seen was,
[00:25:08.330]we didn't see for some reason
[00:25:10.140]a lot of benefit out of the clover.
[00:25:13.570]It did not,
[00:25:14.740]we didn't see much emergence of that, whatever.
[00:25:19.870]But the oats.
[00:25:23.220]This is something I talked to you about earlier, Abby.
[00:25:28.240]We tried oats at three different rates,
[00:25:31.600]40 pound, 70 pound and 120.
[00:25:34.840]Look at the cover.
[00:25:38.560]They've already got stuff planted in this.
[00:25:41.710]But look at the cover.
[00:25:43.730]Look at the weed suppression from that oats.
[00:25:52.560]Bad hail storm
[00:25:55.920]on a half section of seed.
[00:25:58.720]I think this happened in 2017 or 2016.
[00:26:05.690]So they decided to just go ahead
[00:26:08.270]and plant the whole thing to cover crops.
[00:26:11.440]Collect their insurance,
[00:26:12.950]plant that whole half section to cover crops
[00:26:15.050]because they have a friend that brings cattle in
[00:26:17.930]after harvest and things like that.
[00:26:22.610]This is what we planted in there.
[00:26:27.680]A real good mixture for grazing.
[00:26:32.354]All right, this is all fine and dandy.
[00:26:34.360]But what does it do for that producer?
[00:26:37.190]What does it do for that producer that owns those cows?
[00:26:41.490]What kinda benefit is he gonna get out of this?
[00:26:45.984]So here's the results of that year.
[00:26:51.314]Four hundred twenty head,
[00:26:54.050]195 cow/calf pairs,
[00:26:57.950]fifty days on that half section.
[00:27:00.490]And then he had one quarter
[00:27:01.860]that did not get hailed, seed corn,
[00:27:06.430]another 20 days there.
[00:27:07.890]So we're looking at 70 days of grazing total.
[00:27:14.473]Here's the gains.
[00:27:19.270]2.27 pounds/day,
[00:27:22.270]basically 158.9 pounds per head.
[00:27:30.200]If he'd've had to feed them for 70 days,
[00:27:34.100]the bill would've been a lot more expensive
[00:27:36.490]than what it cost them to put in that cover crop.
[00:27:45.150]All right, here I referred to this earlier.
[00:27:49.040]Darn cover crop
[00:27:51.570]uses way too much moisture.
[00:27:53.680]Why would I think about doing this?
[00:27:56.570]Why would I, okay?
[00:28:02.180]We all know him.
[00:28:03.060]We all know Jimmy
[00:28:03.900]that's been to conferences and stuff like that.
[00:28:07.500]And Jimmy lives in western Oklahoma.
[00:28:10.690]Rainfall, I don't even know.
[00:28:12.060]It's not much right, Lauren?
[00:28:13.750]I mean it's next to nothing.
[00:28:17.960]Big wheat farmer and stuff like that.
[00:28:20.570]So Jimmy put out an experiment.
[00:28:24.310]The green that you see there is cover crop.
[00:28:27.200]The bare stuff is where he skipped over this.
[00:28:33.970]Here's a picture of the wheat that year.
[00:28:36.590]And you can definitely see that bare square there.
[00:28:41.460]Now does this make sense?
[00:28:43.820]He had cover crop there, using moisture.
[00:28:48.200]But wouldn't you think
[00:28:49.240]if it used more moisture than the bare
[00:28:53.370]the wheat wouldn't be that high.
[00:28:54.660]Wouldn't be that tall, right? Wrong.
[00:29:01.100]They took soil moisture samples.
[00:29:05.280]They took temperature samples.
[00:29:06.790]And in both cases on the cover crop side
[00:29:11.050]it was a benefit...
[00:29:13.990]a benefit.
[00:29:16.530]So Jimmy got two back-to-back rains,
[00:29:24.750]that totaled five inches,
[00:29:28.090]which is a lot for out there.
[00:29:32.440]Here's the results of the cover
[00:29:36.110]versus no cover.
[00:29:38.327]They took a soil probe out there and probed it.
[00:29:42.760]On the bare,
[00:29:47.040]penetration is 16 inches of moisture.
[00:29:50.270]On the cover...
[00:29:53.080]33...
[00:29:55.890]twice as much.
[00:29:59.090]If you wanna look at the numbers,
[00:30:01.280]here's the numbers from those rains.
[00:30:03.660]On the bare, 4.6 inches in that profile.
[00:30:07.360]On where the cover was, 7.52 inches.
[00:30:12.700]Not quite twice,
[00:30:14.460]but at least 1 3/4 more moisture in that soil.
[00:30:20.890]So in my great wisdom,
[00:30:22.910]I thought you know,
[00:30:23.743]Dean Krull's gonna mimic this in Nebraska.
[00:30:27.160]So I had a friend that had rye already planted.
[00:30:32.590]Well how am I gonna set this?
[00:30:33.423]Well, I gotta kill that rye for no cover.
[00:30:39.080]On the flat, and also he did it on the slopes.
[00:30:43.720]And these graphs that you see on the bottom
[00:30:46.339]are from capacitance probes
[00:30:48.690]that we tracked the moisture the whole season.
[00:30:54.370]There's the slope.
[00:30:57.939]So I picked out a date, September 25th.
[00:31:01.597]And I wanted to look at the results of these probes.
[00:31:09.490]And here's what I seen.
[00:31:13.920]What we got here is
[00:31:15.150]each one of those lines is a sensor that's four inches.
[00:31:19.180]So we're looking four, eight, 12, 16.
[00:31:23.797](coughs) Pardon me.
[00:31:26.160]All right, look at this real close.
[00:31:28.540]What do you see?
[00:31:30.030]Dave, I'm gonna pick on you.
[00:31:31.860]Or Dan I mean, I'm gonna pick on you.
[00:31:33.150]What do you see here?
[00:31:37.630]Down at the bottom.
[00:31:39.957]This is with cover.
[00:31:41.340]This is without cover.
[00:31:44.556]I'm gonna pick on you.
[00:31:47.150]See anything, any difference?
[00:31:51.038](Dan replies without using a microphone)
[00:31:52.410]Okay, I'll answer your question.
[00:31:58.020]Where there was no cover, there's more moisture in the soil.
[00:32:02.030]Now that don't make any sense.
[00:32:03.611]That's the exact opposite of what we want.
[00:32:07.210]But, how did I set the...
[00:32:10.540]after a while I got to thinking about this.
[00:32:12.454]How could this be possible?
[00:32:14.900]Well, how did I set up this experiment?
[00:32:19.640]I killed a cover crop, right?
[00:32:23.710]To get the bare.
[00:32:25.760]What happens when you kill cover crop?
[00:32:29.190]What happens to the roots?
[00:32:31.620]They die.
[00:32:33.890]Gives you a funnel...
[00:32:37.750]into the soil.
[00:32:40.760]Direct proof right here.
[00:32:44.120]Higher penetration on where we had no cover,
[00:32:48.100]which really originally had cover.
[00:32:51.830]And we're looking at
[00:32:54.250]April, May, June,
[00:32:55.280]July, August, September
[00:32:57.300]for all those roots to die
[00:32:59.150]and for that stuff to penetrate,
[00:33:00.910]the moisture to penetrate.
[00:33:06.440]I'm gonna continue looking at stuff.
[00:33:09.662](coughing) Excuse me.
[00:33:12.830]A lot of things that I do
[00:33:15.130]actually come from questions
[00:33:16.940]that producers have in our area or wherever
[00:33:20.240]and I go ahead and try and set up experiments
[00:33:25.130]to answer those questions.
[00:33:28.222]So, with that, any questions?
[00:33:33.981][Announcer] Questions? [Dean] Okay.
[00:33:36.320](crowd member makes a statement without microphone)
[00:33:52.051]If you killed that pennycress
[00:33:55.640]as early as we do a cover crop, for example,
[00:34:00.390]you could get the same results as far as dying roots.
[00:34:04.480]But my point is, do you wanna put up with
[00:34:08.110]adding to that seed bed
[00:34:10.550]utilizing that cover crop,
[00:34:12.330]or that weed for a cover crop?
[00:34:14.550]I know, I had a guy say,
[00:34:16.107]"Well, you know what?
[00:34:16.940]"Weeds are cover."
[00:34:18.533]Yes, they are.
[00:34:19.750]They are a cover.
[00:34:20.583]But why, why are there weeds coming there?
[00:34:23.700]Because there's nothing else there.
[00:34:25.830]And there's been a lot of reference today to cover crops
[00:34:30.007]and the effects on weed suppression.
[00:34:34.340]And we've noticed on the family I work with,
[00:34:38.730]it doesn't take a lot of cover to suppress weeds.
[00:34:42.670]And I'm talking about the density of that cover.
[00:34:46.210]I don't know if I answered your question.
[00:34:49.685]I would rather have a-- There's some water there.
[00:34:51.715]Thank you.
[00:34:56.560]I remember as a kid
[00:34:58.790]the nightmare that it would be,
[00:35:01.350]as a kid,
[00:35:02.183]the nightmare that it would be
[00:35:03.550]if we didn't get out in the field early
[00:35:06.230]to get that henbit when it was somewhat susceptible
[00:35:09.210]or we perceived that it was susceptible.
[00:35:11.720]Yeah, yeah and I farm too.
[00:35:14.900]And you wanted to kill that when it was in the rosette form.
[00:35:18.370]Yeah, you wanted to kill it last fall
[00:35:20.150]is what you wanted to--
[00:35:20.983]Yes, that's right. Kill it, but--
[00:35:22.125]On henbit, yes you wanna kill it.
[00:35:23.927]But the stands behind that
[00:35:26.180]were always atrocious if we didn't till it up.
[00:35:29.140]And I have seen the benefits of the rye,
[00:35:31.670]but I don't understand the difference
[00:35:33.550]as to why I can plant my beans into a standing rye
[00:35:38.020]and get a good stand,
[00:35:40.525]but 20 years ago I couldn't plant,
[00:35:42.610]or Dad couldn't plant beans in a standing henbit
[00:35:45.980]and get nothing.
[00:35:47.840]I know what you're saying,
[00:35:50.080]and I think everybody else does here too.
[00:35:52.080]But my observation has been that henbit
[00:35:54.660]is very shallow-rooted,
[00:35:56.740]very dense-rooted,
[00:35:58.460]and it just sucks every drop of moisture
[00:36:01.610]out of its root depth, which is shallow.
[00:36:03.920]And compared to rye, it's not as dense of a root.
[00:36:08.450]The density of the plants out there aren't as great
[00:36:11.300]and it's growing deeper.
[00:36:12.880]I don't know if that's--
[00:36:14.120]I would have-- A right--
[00:36:15.700]I have density data on henbit.
[00:36:17.440]It's incredible how many plants are in a square foot.
[00:36:21.530]Second, when are annual weeds?
[00:36:24.610]Just like cover crops will
[00:36:25.870]suppress summer annual weeds themselves,
[00:36:27.930]'cause I have that data.
[00:36:29.110]A fixed stand of henbit, if you don't terminate it,
[00:36:32.150]does reduce the amount of water hemp that comes up
[00:36:34.370]and the density of water hemp too.
[00:36:35.740]So there is interactions between not killing weeds,
[00:36:39.160]suppressing the next summer annual weeds.
[00:36:41.870]So it gets complicated.
[00:36:42.770]Part of that goes back to
[00:36:43.920]the companion planting charts that I showed you
[00:36:46.400]with the plants that are happy with each other.
[00:36:49.330]It all goes back to your exudates and allelopathy effect.
[00:36:53.200]Every plant has some level of allelopathy effect
[00:36:56.410]towards other plants.
[00:36:57.750]Just, some are happy, some are not happy.
[00:37:03.210]What inter-seed mixes
[00:37:04.280]do you find works in your area?
[00:37:08.250]Okay, one of my goals,
[00:37:11.240]a lot of these plots is to really find out
[00:37:14.806]what species work the best
[00:37:19.460]for inter-seeding in Nebraska
[00:37:22.060]where we have anywhere from
[00:37:24.280]probably 109 to 116 day corn,
[00:37:29.580]a lot of canopy.
[00:37:31.270]And right now,
[00:37:32.450]I could probably put my finger on a couple things.
[00:37:36.580]First of all, and this was mentioned earlier today,
[00:37:39.580]annual rye grass will survive shade
[00:37:43.730]much, much better than cereal rye.
[00:37:46.210]And cereal rye is the king,
[00:37:48.490]if you wanna call it the king,
[00:37:50.690]of what most people do around here.
[00:37:53.500]Annual rye grass,
[00:37:54.580]and as far as the clovers
[00:37:56.020]we've had the best luck with red clover.
[00:38:05.880]More questions?
[00:38:08.810]One more question.
[00:38:09.750]Okay.
[00:38:10.850]So, I was planning to this next fall,
[00:38:14.400]you know like August,
[00:38:17.270]aerial apply some rye with maybe some radish in there,
[00:38:22.270]goal of reduced erosion
[00:38:24.780]and also maybe helping with some compaction issues.
[00:38:28.430]But I've heard enough things today.
[00:38:31.570]Should I be doing that?
[00:38:33.240]Like V4, V6 earlier on instead?
[00:38:37.410]And then I've also heard people saying about benefits
[00:38:41.750]of planting soybeans right into that in the next spring,
[00:38:46.220]before you terminate it.
[00:38:47.053]And I don't fully understand that either.
[00:38:49.954]Okay, not to knock what you think
[00:38:52.620]you might wanna do,
[00:38:53.453]but it's pretty difficult to get
[00:38:58.193]aerial application done
[00:39:01.520]at V4-V6 in the fact that
[00:39:04.843]the majority of these spray companies
[00:39:08.020]are involved in fungicide spraying and stuff like that.
[00:39:12.100]Now you may hear different from one of the speakers
[00:39:15.180]that we're gonna have later on today,
[00:39:17.472]but that would be my gut.
[00:39:18.560]I know that I could not get my aerial guy to come
[00:39:24.150]and do that at that time.
[00:39:27.180]They're firing up for the fungicide.
[00:39:30.410]Now, second of all,
[00:39:32.270]yes, you probably would not have
[00:39:36.670]the canopy to worry about
[00:39:39.990]if you did it that early.
[00:39:42.675]But in my experiences,
[00:39:44.140]and I'm gonna compare aerial seeding
[00:39:46.520]to just broadcast seeding with a ground rig,
[00:39:51.530]you're always better off
[00:39:52.810]if you can get seed to soil contact.
[00:39:56.350]And a producer asked me that question one time
[00:40:01.060]when I was talking about cover crops and broadcasting.
[00:40:03.720]He goes, "Do you broadcast your corn?"
[00:40:09.870]So I would strongly suggest
[00:40:13.660]if you have the equipment or the opportunity,
[00:40:17.770]to either inter-seed it with an inter-seeder or whatever
[00:40:21.750]over broadcasting.
[00:40:24.990]And I've done 'em all.
[00:40:28.453]We had good luck in '14 where we broadcasted,
[00:40:32.420]but we're looking at 70 pounds to the acre,
[00:40:35.110]and that's probably twice as much as we would even consider.
[00:40:42.893]Okay, why don't we give Dean
[00:40:43.990]a round of applause.
[00:40:44.823]Thanks, Dean.
[00:40:45.738](applause)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments