Cover Crops and Weed Management

Melissa Bartels Author

10/29/2020 Added

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In this episode, Melissa Bartels and Chris Proctor talk about using cover crops to help control weeds. Can cover crops help with our most problematic weeds here in Nebraska? Can cover crops help with winter and spring annual weeds? Listen to find the answers to these questions and more.

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[00:00:00.444](gentle music)
[00:00:02.900]Welcome to CropWatch podcast,
[00:00:05.350]a production of Nebraska Extension.
[00:00:11.950]Welcome to the CropWatch podcast.
[00:00:14.000]I'm your host, Melissa Bartels,
[00:00:15.660]a cropping systems educator with Nebraska Extension.
[00:00:18.920]And today I'll be joined by Chris Proctor
[00:00:21.310]and we'll be talking about weed management
[00:00:23.220]using cover crops.
[00:00:24.410]Thank you for joining me today, Chris, how are you?
[00:00:26.740]Great, thanks for the invitation.
[00:00:28.820]It's good to be on the podcast and chat about stuff
[00:00:31.960]that I get excited about.
[00:00:32.873]So thanks. Great.
[00:00:34.170]Can you tell us more about your role in Extension?
[00:00:37.160]Yeah, so I've been with Nebraska Extension
[00:00:39.930]almost six years now,
[00:00:41.410]and my role is a campus-based Extension educator.
[00:00:44.760]So there's a handful of us.
[00:00:45.820]So I focus on managing weeds around the state,
[00:00:48.840]kind of my primary role.
[00:00:49.840]So anything related to weed management, I have interest in.
[00:00:53.490]All right. Harvest is full underway here in Nebraska.
[00:00:57.160]As we know, weeds are always a problem it seems.
[00:01:00.910]Since your focus is on weed management,
[00:01:03.070]are there things we can do now to help control
[00:01:05.380]some of our winter annual weeds?
[00:01:07.630]Yes, you usually get to the end of the year,
[00:01:09.550]harvest is done.
[00:01:10.810]You kind of wanna put the equipment away
[00:01:12.470]and not think about anything until next year,
[00:01:14.730]but there is, I think there's opportunities
[00:01:17.090]at this time of year where you can get ahead
[00:01:19.530]of some of our weed issues.
[00:01:22.510]And so with our winter annuals,
[00:01:24.120]we do know that we like mare's tail.
[00:01:26.580]We have the opportunity to manage that in the fall
[00:01:28.780]through herbicide that tends to be more effective
[00:01:31.210]than spring applications.
[00:01:32.690]Not everyone can do that.
[00:01:33.720]We do know that that's more effective, but you know,
[00:01:35.680]one of the other tools that is really of interest to me
[00:01:38.630]is using cover crops.
[00:01:40.110]And one of those windows of opportunity
[00:01:42.470]for effective cover cropping in Nebraska
[00:01:44.460]is following harvest, and so, you know,
[00:01:46.290]if we can get cover crops established after harvest
[00:01:49.560]and get those growing,
[00:01:50.890]it can make a pretty big difference
[00:01:52.200]in terms of managing weeds the next year.
[00:01:54.190]And so, again, all this is about tools in a toolbox.
[00:01:58.790]So, in today's world, really hard to control weeds,
[00:02:02.560]we need as much help as we can get.
[00:02:04.330]And we have really effective tools and herbicides,
[00:02:06.610]but with resistance, we start losing some of those tools.
[00:02:09.660]And so I think we need is,
[00:02:11.450]we need to think of ways we can broaden our toolbox out.
[00:02:14.870]And so that that's really been my interest in cover crops
[00:02:17.340]is that provides a way to do that
[00:02:19.064]as it's another mechanism to manage our weeds effectively.
[00:02:24.790]With a good portion of Nebraska being in a drought,
[00:02:27.900]do you have some recommendations for those farmers
[00:02:30.610]that may have limited moisture,
[00:02:32.260]but they are interested in getting those cover crops in
[00:02:35.760]to help with those weeds that are difficult to control?
[00:02:39.540]Moisture is certainly a concern.
[00:02:41.800]So in a rain-fed environment,
[00:02:43.930]I think there's an additional challenge
[00:02:46.320]is in that you don't control the moisture that you get.
[00:02:48.800]And so I think being aware of that is important.
[00:02:51.530]So knowing what is your moisture profile
[00:02:53.600]as you go into the fall?
[00:02:55.510]You know, in some ways there's an advantage for cover crops
[00:02:57.920]'cause you can capture some of that
[00:02:59.820]late fall, winter moisture that might otherwise go unused.
[00:03:04.630]But if you're not careful,
[00:03:05.640]you can start to draw down your soil profile
[00:03:08.360]and affect your spring crop.
[00:03:09.670]And so I think if you do establish a cover crop,
[00:03:12.670]paying attention to the timing of termination
[00:03:15.020]and really using your soil moisture as a guide
[00:03:17.520]for when you're gonna terminate,
[00:03:18.760]I think is one important thing
[00:03:20.790]if you're in a moisture limited environment.
[00:03:23.020]You know, most of the work we've done
[00:03:24.810]this hasn't been a major issue
[00:03:26.970]If you're east of Kearney or even North Platte,
[00:03:31.010]we haven't fought it too much as you move
[00:03:33.410]you know, west of those areas,
[00:03:35.040]moisture becomes even more limiting
[00:03:37.660]and so cover crops become a real challenge
[00:03:39.440]unless you have irrigation and so irrigation, you know,
[00:03:42.190]that kind of changes the dynamic.
[00:03:44.650]And so then you start asking the question,
[00:03:46.430]do I irrigate to manage my cover crop, right?
[00:03:49.220]Do I think about an additional irrigation pass
[00:03:51.850]to establish the cover crop or maybe to catch it up
[00:03:54.700]in the spring before I plant
[00:03:56.410]to make sure that those crops germinate timely?
[00:03:58.870]So, and not everybody thinks about
[00:04:00.860]managing their irrigation that way,
[00:04:02.040]but as you add complexity to your system with a cover crop,
[00:04:06.260]these are just considerations
[00:04:07.580]I think that need to be thought about.
[00:04:09.750]Yeah. Do you have different recommendations?
[00:04:12.660]You said east of Kearney,
[00:04:15.040]we don't tend to run into an issue of not having
[00:04:17.420]moisture in the soil,
[00:04:18.710]but you may have more of an issue the farther west you go.
[00:04:22.950]Have we had an average year, and we weren't in a drought,
[00:04:26.760]does that change maybe the mixes you would consider,
[00:04:29.990]do you have certain mixes you like to use
[00:04:32.960]depending on your weed pressure,
[00:04:35.390]what are your recommendations around that?
[00:04:38.560]Yeah.
[00:04:39.393]The conversation on cover crops always tends to come back
[00:04:42.350]to what are your goals with the cover crop?
[00:04:44.300]What are you after, right?
[00:04:45.133]'Cause there's a number of different reasons
[00:04:46.530]why a person might grow cover crop.
[00:04:48.520]And so depending on what the answer to that is
[00:04:51.350]often will determine what cover crops get planted.
[00:04:55.050]In my experience though,
[00:04:56.500]thinking about weed management or suppressing weeds,
[00:04:59.890]it's never been as much about the species of cover crops
[00:05:03.390]as it is about the biomass.
[00:05:04.830]And so accumulate biomass
[00:05:07.610]is what ultimately drives a weed suppression.
[00:05:10.470]So anything I can plant that's gonna
[00:05:11.894]produce more biomass, that's great.
[00:05:14.400]And really what that boils down to for most of Nebraska
[00:05:18.160]is, you know, the grass species
[00:05:20.940]tend to establish well in the fall,
[00:05:24.060]the cereal rye in particular,
[00:05:25.710]that's probably the most commonly grown
[00:05:27.690]cover crop in Nebraska.
[00:05:28.930]And really it's because it establishes well in the fall,
[00:05:31.730]it overwinters well, it's got good winter survival.
[00:05:35.030]And then it tends to come out of dormancy
[00:05:37.480]earlier than a lot of other crops in the spring.
[00:05:40.130]And so it kind of fits that niche that we like,
[00:05:43.530]that off-season window of time.
[00:05:45.470]It tends to grow pretty well in that window
[00:05:47.730]and so it probably gets grown more than anything else
[00:05:50.280]for that reason.
[00:05:51.600]If your goal is broader than just accumulating biomass,
[00:05:54.380]if you're interested in capturing some nitrogen
[00:05:57.090]or you're looking for to create diversity
[00:05:59.770]in hoping to affect kind of
[00:06:00.860]the biological diversity in the soil,
[00:06:03.250]some of those different goals,
[00:06:04.670]which are good goals to pursue in a system,
[00:06:07.260]then you might start thinking about when you're,
[00:06:08.930]what are other species to include,
[00:06:10.310]but in terms of just strict weed suppression,
[00:06:13.162]we do pretty well with cereal rye.
[00:06:14.690]It's really all about biomass ultimately.
[00:06:17.070]Mm-hmm, and so let's take this year, for example,
[00:06:20.030]we wanna do cereal rye,
[00:06:21.820]let's say you have a high weed pressure.
[00:06:23.470]Do you recommend flying those on early before you harvest
[00:06:27.650]or drilling them in after harvest?
[00:06:30.410]Is there a big difference in our biomass,
[00:06:32.280]depending on which method we use?
[00:06:35.270]I'll use the, the annoying science line that,
[00:06:38.240]it depends, right?
[00:06:39.503]Drive everybody crazy because
[00:06:41.345]you can't pin a scientist down on anything.
[00:06:44.130]In this case, there's just a number of factors
[00:06:46.220]that go into it. Mm-hmm.
[00:06:47.820]We have seen that if you broadcast interseed early,
[00:06:51.520]so let's say R5 in corn,
[00:06:53.730]right as the leaves start to yellow in soybean,
[00:06:56.140]you know, that's a great opportunity
[00:06:57.560]to try to establish cover crops
[00:06:59.040]just a little bit earlier in the season.
[00:07:00.830]But the challenge is you're landing the seed
[00:07:02.420]right on the soil surface
[00:07:03.600]so you don't have great seed-to-soil contact.
[00:07:06.270]Usually you need a higher seeding rate
[00:07:07.960]to kind of get the equivalent level of establishment.
[00:07:10.800]The driving factor of all of that
[00:07:12.890]is whether or not you get a rain or an irrigation
[00:07:16.590]within a short amount of time of application.
[00:07:18.810]And if you do,
[00:07:19.660]you can have an amazing cover crop stand.
[00:07:21.940]But if you miss it, right, and it just stays dry,
[00:07:24.450]you can almost get nothing.
[00:07:26.070]Whereas drilling, if you wait until post-harvest,
[00:07:28.350]you might delay the timing of establishment
[00:07:31.080]by two, three weeks or more some years,
[00:07:33.810]but drill is gonna put that seed down in the soil.
[00:07:36.150]It's gonna make sure it's in contact with moisture.
[00:07:38.830]You get really consistent germination
[00:07:41.710]and establishment with drilling,
[00:07:43.780]but you're working with a shorter window.
[00:07:45.320]And so there's those trade-off.
[00:07:46.760]But if you have irrigation and you broadcast
[00:07:48.880]and you're willing to run that pivot,
[00:07:50.520]you can really get ahead of the curve with that.
[00:07:53.010]If you're relying on rainfall
[00:07:54.720]and you just don't know what you're gonna get that year,
[00:07:57.160]I think drilling is a really consistent method,
[00:07:59.610]knowing that you're just gonna have a little bit
[00:08:01.310]shorter time for that cover crop to get up in the fall.
[00:08:04.140]And so it just depends on your operation
[00:08:06.450]and what you're trying to accomplish
[00:08:07.800]and what opportunities you have.
[00:08:09.830]Mm-hmm, what are some of the challenges
[00:08:12.020]a farmer might face when interseeding,
[00:08:14.070]they wanna get that cover crop in
[00:08:16.270]as soon as possible so they can get more biomass,
[00:08:19.680]get more growth.
[00:08:21.630]Yeah, so when we think broadcast interseeding
[00:08:23.930]towards the end of the year,
[00:08:25.230]usually you'd need some kind of specialized equipment.
[00:08:27.980]So you either needed a high clearance machine.
[00:08:31.090]That would be like a sprayer that's been modified
[00:08:33.810]to drop the seed down below the canopy.
[00:08:36.350]You know, you have to have that piece of equipment
[00:08:38.290]that you've modified,
[00:08:39.123]or you gotta be able to get a custom operation
[00:08:41.370]to come through and seed for you,
[00:08:42.980]or you have to fly it on.
[00:08:45.130]Either way, you're hiring somebody to do that.
[00:08:47.260]So that piece there that to consider with it.
[00:08:50.150]And then it's the time, you know,
[00:08:51.320]just the environmental conditions
[00:08:52.700]that we'd already kind of mentioned.
[00:08:53.840]So those are the challenges I see with interseeding.
[00:08:57.430]I think the opportunity is great.
[00:08:58.777]When I've seen it work well, you know,
[00:09:00.830]by the time he come through and harvest,
[00:09:02.210]you already got that nice screen cover crop
[00:09:04.050]coming up underneath and so you can get some
[00:09:06.030]really nice growth going even with the fall,
[00:09:08.860]puts you ahead of the curve in terms of
[00:09:10.460]suppressing those winter annuals
[00:09:12.400]and then nice biomass in the spring as well.
[00:09:15.372]Have you seen cover crops work well
[00:09:17.885]in helping control all of the weeds,
[00:09:20.840]or do we have some weeds still try to fight that biomass,
[00:09:25.570]or do we usually get pretty good control with cover crops
[00:09:29.220]if we can get that biomass in there?
[00:09:32.430]We did a study in 2017, 2018,
[00:09:35.690]and we related weed biomass to cover crop biomass.
[00:09:39.270]And it was pretty interesting.
[00:09:41.140]When cover crop biomass was below 1,000 pounds an acre,
[00:09:45.270]so about half a ton,
[00:09:46.890]we didn't really see a very strong relationship
[00:09:49.050]between cover crop biomass and weed biomass.
[00:09:50.457]It was kind of all over the place.
[00:09:52.910]You know, some sites and some locations
[00:09:54.680]did reduce the number of kind of the weed biomass,
[00:09:56.470]other sites it seemed to have no effect at all.
[00:09:58.430]But once we hit that 1,000 pound cover crop biomass mark
[00:10:02.890]and went up from there,
[00:10:04.420]we saw a really strong relationship,
[00:10:07.060]the higher the biomass, the lower the weed biomass.
[00:10:11.050]When we had no cover crop at all,
[00:10:12.360]we were getting weed biomasses
[00:10:14.493]of 2,000 to 2,500 pounds per acre
[00:10:17.387]and so we had really heavy weed pressure.
[00:10:19.310]Whereas, you know, once that cover crop biomass
[00:10:21.660]was up over a ton and higher,
[00:10:24.180]the weed biomass was 500 pounds or less per acre.
[00:10:28.610]And so it was a pretty strong reduction.
[00:10:30.300]You know, you're looking at
[00:10:31.370]60, 70% reduction in weed biomass
[00:10:34.270]because of the cover crop when we were over a ton.
[00:10:36.440]So, we see that pretty strong relationship
[00:10:39.270]and we know that it works well on winter annuals.
[00:10:41.650]So like mare's tail, kosha, right?
[00:10:43.560]We see pretty strong effect of the weed suppression there.
[00:10:46.620]And really when we talk weed suppression with cover crops,
[00:10:49.360]we're talking kind of two pieces.
[00:10:51.400]One is a reduction in weed biomass.
[00:10:54.430]I see it as like the size of the weeds,
[00:10:56.030]so the weed size is smaller, which is a good thing.
[00:10:59.500]We may not eliminate the weeds, but we have smaller weeds.
[00:11:03.260]When you come through now with your herbicide program,
[00:11:05.830]the likelihood that you're gonna have good control goes up
[00:11:08.610]because we know that smaller weeds are easier to control.
[00:11:11.050]The other thing that we see
[00:11:12.380]just by having cover crops out there,
[00:11:14.852]is we tend to reduce the number of weeds.
[00:11:16.730]So there's a lower population of weeds.
[00:11:18.940]There's fewer weeds present, which is a good thing.
[00:11:22.077]That's just fewer weeds that you have to control now
[00:11:24.290]with your other control mechanisms,
[00:11:25.860]with herbicides or whatever else you're using.
[00:11:27.630]So, there's really those two things that happen, I think,
[00:11:30.470]by using cover crops.
[00:11:31.660]So winter annuals, for sure.
[00:11:33.470]There's a study that came out of Kansas,
[00:11:35.240]looking at palmer amaranth in cover crops,
[00:11:37.880]which I think is really interesting.
[00:11:39.500]I think it would translate pretty nicely
[00:11:41.470]to Nebraska as well.
[00:11:42.720]They saw really the same thing down there with palmer.
[00:11:45.430]So a summer annual weed that,
[00:11:47.890]as cover crop biomass went up
[00:11:50.020]palmer biomass, or the size of the palmer plants decreased
[00:11:53.910]and the number of palmer plants decreased as well.
[00:11:57.120]And then the third thing that they saw,
[00:11:58.400]and this is another piece of how cover crops manage weeds
[00:12:02.423]that was really interesting to me,
[00:12:04.330]is by having a cover crop in the system
[00:12:08.080]they delayed palmer emergence time about a month.
[00:12:12.590]So no cover crop, they were emerging down there,
[00:12:15.380]I think half the palmer plants were emerged by May 15,
[00:12:19.151]but when they had the cover crop growing
[00:12:22.200]they delayed half the emergence of the palmer
[00:12:24.360]until June 15th.
[00:12:25.450]And so there was almost a one month shift
[00:12:28.850]in the timing of emergence.
[00:12:30.010]So that makes a huge difference in your ability
[00:12:32.220]to get into the field and manage those palmer plants,
[00:12:35.880]just because of that shift in emergence timing.
[00:12:38.530]Those are some interesting things that I've seen
[00:12:40.700]in cover crop research and weed suppression.
[00:12:43.620]Mm-hmm, how much can a palmer plant grow in a month?
[00:12:46.590]About how big do you think it would be
[00:12:48.240]in 30 days from emergence?
[00:12:51.220]So as a weed scientist, palmer,
[00:12:53.600]I think it's an amazing plant. (chuckles)
[00:12:56.440]My perspective is a little bit skewed, I understand,
[00:12:58.670]but to me, it's an amazing plant.
[00:13:00.330]If I'm farming, a terrible plant.
[00:13:02.920]Yes. If a palmer plant is happy
[00:13:05.270]and everything is going well for it,
[00:13:08.090]there's data that would show, you know,
[00:13:09.650]it can go from emergence to a foot tall in about two weeks.
[00:13:14.620]It can grow like gangbusters.
[00:13:17.280]The trouble with palmer is by the time you find it,
[00:13:20.240]you've almost missed the window to control it.
[00:13:23.070]You really need things like a cover crop,
[00:13:26.930]like a residual herbicide, narrow row spacing in soybeans,
[00:13:31.460]anything out there to get ahead of it.
[00:13:34.160]As soon as you get behind the curve with palmer
[00:13:36.530]you never catch up again.
[00:13:38.440]That's the trouble is that it grows so fast
[00:13:40.730]from the time it emerges until
[00:13:42.260]you get out there in the field to do something about it.
[00:13:45.820]You know, if we say, well,
[00:13:46.770]four to six inches is kind of that cutoff
[00:13:49.290]for our ability to really effectively control it.
[00:13:52.150]You see it at two inches,
[00:13:53.940]you pull the tractor into the field with the sprayer,
[00:13:56.730]a week later, and it's already eight, 10 inches tall, right?
[00:13:59.760]You missed it.
[00:14:00.760]That window of opportunity is so short.
[00:14:02.310]So anything we can do to slow it down
[00:14:05.560]makes a world of difference.
[00:14:08.210]For people listening,
[00:14:09.270]who may not currently do cover crops,
[00:14:12.700]or may be on the fence about doing cover crops,
[00:14:16.020]given the amount of resistance
[00:14:18.090]that we're seeing in some of our weeds
[00:14:20.570]it is really important to try to put
[00:14:23.170]more tools in our toolbox because
[00:14:25.670]the more we rely on these certain modes of actions,
[00:14:29.230]we're actually forcing these weeds
[00:14:31.850]to become resistant a little bit faster.
[00:14:35.030]But if the majority of producers keep relying on
[00:14:39.040]modes of actions, it may not work anymore.
[00:14:42.630]Yeah, that's exactly it, Melissa.
[00:14:44.290]We have such great tools
[00:14:46.430]in terms of the herbicides we have available,
[00:14:48.940]and new technology comes out all the time.
[00:14:50.560]So we think all the new seed technologies we have in soybean
[00:14:54.000]and the opportunities that that's given us
[00:14:55.770]for managing these really hard to control weeds,
[00:14:58.020]even like palmer,
[00:14:59.420]but then you get reports out of Kansas, you know,
[00:15:01.573]that we have Dicamba-Resistant palmer
[00:15:04.150]that's showing up down there.
[00:15:05.210]And so you have this new tool,
[00:15:07.190]the ability to spray Dicamba and soybeans
[00:15:09.830]is a great tool to have.
[00:15:11.660]You know, you already see evidence,
[00:15:13.340]you might be losing that tool
[00:15:14.610]to resistance in certain areas.
[00:15:16.260]And so just like any of these tools,
[00:15:19.180]I think we need to make sure that
[00:15:21.550]we're spreading the workload.
[00:15:22.700]So the way I've started to think about it is
[00:15:25.860]if we ask our herbicides to do all the heavy lifting
[00:15:29.150]in terms of weed control,
[00:15:31.930]either we're more quickly selecting for resistance
[00:15:34.540]and so we're gonna lose that tool,
[00:15:36.580]or if something happens that that herbicide
[00:15:40.250]just isn't effective that year
[00:15:41.840]due to environmental conditions or a bad application
[00:15:44.660]or something that just may be outside of our control,
[00:15:47.840]we go from control to failure in a hurry
[00:15:49.860]'cause we've put all of our effort,
[00:15:51.690]everything on that herbicide.
[00:15:53.460]Where if we can spread the workload out
[00:15:55.350]so, cover crops carry 30% of the effort,
[00:15:59.620]herbicides carry another 30%,
[00:16:01.570]maybe going to a narrow row spacing carries it.
[00:16:05.030]If we can spread the workload out in terms of weed control
[00:16:07.760]I think our likelihood of success
[00:16:10.480]in all kinds of different conditions go way up.
[00:16:12.780]And if any one of those things fails,
[00:16:16.220]it doesn't turn into a complete failure that year.
[00:16:18.500]And so, I like to think about developing
[00:16:21.190]a weed management plan that thinks about
[00:16:24.020]kind of that distribution of workload.
[00:16:25.900]The more we can do that,
[00:16:27.180]the more successful we can be in our farming operations.
[00:16:30.920]So it's like what we talk about
[00:16:33.130]when we do our pesticide trainings,
[00:16:35.600]really having a good integrative pest management plan?
[00:16:39.753]Absolutely, yeah. So using all those tools,
[00:16:42.200]like you said, we're not just depending on one.
[00:16:45.224]Yeah, yep.
[00:16:46.640]Somebody was interested in starting cover crops,
[00:16:49.580]is there a particular field
[00:16:52.010]or would you suggest they go for one of their fields
[00:16:55.810]that has a lot of weed pressure
[00:16:57.530]and maybe start with cereal rye?
[00:16:59.430]If a producer came to you and said,
[00:17:00.997]"I'm really interested in starting cover crops,
[00:17:03.010]but I wanna start small."
[00:17:05.170]Yeah. What would your
[00:17:06.003]recommendation to them be?
[00:17:08.190]One, I'd say you're on the right track.
[00:17:10.400]I wouldn't go seed a whole section to cover crops
[00:17:12.830]if you've never done it before, right?
[00:17:14.480]Kind of pick a small area
[00:17:16.900]because you're adding a whole new
[00:17:18.700]component to your operation
[00:17:20.170]and there's a timing piece to it
[00:17:21.797]and all these things that need to be.
[00:17:24.100]When are you gonna get it in after harvest,
[00:17:26.250]before you harvest?
[00:17:27.490]You gotta think about terminating it,
[00:17:28.987]you know, before you get out there and plant.
[00:17:31.600]And so you're adding complexity
[00:17:33.590]and so you kind of need to start small
[00:17:36.960]and work out some of those kinks
[00:17:38.520]before you push it on your whole operation.
[00:17:40.620]And I think picking areas that you can
[00:17:43.210]kind of target, you know?
[00:17:44.260]Where am I gonna see maybe the most benefit,
[00:17:46.210]or where am I most interested
[00:17:47.410]in kind of seeing benefits from using this?
[00:17:49.710]Is there a section of a field or a particular field
[00:17:53.860]that I'm interested in?
[00:17:55.720]If weed suppression is what you're after
[00:17:58.330]I would caution starting in your worst field
[00:18:01.530]because you know, cover crops aren't that silver bullet.
[00:18:04.110]If you go into your worst field,
[00:18:05.490]sometimes you can just get overrun by weeds
[00:18:08.160]with a cover crop in there,
[00:18:09.640]which can make it a challenge.
[00:18:11.210]The more you integrate cover crops into your system,
[00:18:13.830]you know, the more the cover crops overlap with your crop,
[00:18:17.430]then you start having to worry about
[00:18:19.180]what herbicides can I use
[00:18:20.610]that are compatible with my cover crop, right?
[00:18:22.470]So the complexity only goes up.
[00:18:24.250]So, I think waiting until you, after you harvest,
[00:18:27.300]and then planting your cover crop
[00:18:28.650]and then terminating well before you
[00:18:30.560]establish the next, like.
[00:18:32.090]That's really the easiest way to start.
[00:18:33.700]So that's probably would be my first recommendation
[00:18:35.560]if you've never done it before,
[00:18:36.850]and then you can slowly ramp it up from there
[00:18:38.710]and start interseeding or start delaying termination
[00:18:41.940]a little bit longer and start working with mixes
[00:18:45.150]versus just single species.
[00:18:47.540]I think I would start small.
[00:18:50.530]I would start in ways where you can kind of
[00:18:52.160]quantify success, you know, is this working?
[00:18:55.420]Why is this working?
[00:18:56.460]What do I need to change?
[00:18:58.180]Those types of things where we can kind of have
[00:19:00.260]part of a field that has cover crops
[00:19:01.800]and parts that doesn't
[00:19:02.633]so you can have a little bit of a comparison,
[00:19:05.200]so you can see what's working, what's not working.
[00:19:07.440]So those are some things I'd think about.
[00:19:09.369]And if there are producers interested
[00:19:11.720]visit your local Extension office
[00:19:13.610]and connect with your cropping system educator,
[00:19:16.440]and we're more than happy to get you resources.
[00:19:19.290]There's programs out there that can help you get started.
[00:19:22.750]Do you have any programs or articles coming out soon
[00:19:25.620]that relate to this topic
[00:19:26.930]that you want our listeners to know about?
[00:19:29.890]Yeah, no.
[00:19:30.723]I think we do have a number of articles
[00:19:33.050]that come out in CropWatch
[00:19:34.270]related to cover cropping and weed control.
[00:19:36.870]And so I think paying attention to CropWatch is great.
[00:19:40.220]We're kind of heading into the winter meeting series
[00:19:43.230]and so we'll be discussing some of these topics
[00:19:45.700]at our crop production clinics for example,
[00:19:47.820]over the winter time.
[00:19:49.050]I'd be looking for that as well.
[00:19:50.940]Great.
[00:19:51.773]Well thank you for joining me today
[00:19:53.310]and I hope everybody has a safe harvest.
[00:19:55.950]Certainly. Thanks Melissa.
[00:19:56.950](gentle music)

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Cover Crops and Weed Management

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