Interseeding Cover Crops into Corn and Soybeans: What We’ve Learned

JENNY REES Author

03/07/2023 Added

34 Plays

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Nebraska Extension Educator, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

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[00:00:00.810]The following presentation
[00:00:02.250]is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series
[00:00:05.820]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:00:08.430]Okay, welcome everyone, both in the room and online.
[00:00:13.320]My name's Dan Uden, and I'm glad to welcome you all
[00:00:16.500]to this afternoon's session of the Spring 2023
[00:00:21.330]Department of Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series.
[00:00:24.630]This afternoon it's my pleasure
[00:00:27.840]to introduce a great speaker in Jenny Rees,
[00:00:33.120]who's a Nebraska Extension educator.
[00:00:35.970]Jenny's based out of York, Nebraska, just down the road.
[00:00:40.620]But you cover York County, Seward County, Thayer, Nuckolls,
[00:00:45.300]and many, we'll just say Nebraska.
[00:00:49.950]But yeah, Jenny does a lot of important work with farmers.
[00:00:55.500]And she didn't ask me to mention this,
[00:00:57.120]but I couldn't help but notice online
[00:00:58.590]that you received earlier this year in York,
[00:01:01.680]the Hometown Hero Award in York for your work with farmers,
[00:01:07.320]which I think is just incredible,
[00:01:09.180]and something that I think we all would say we aspire to do,
[00:01:13.560]our work at the university;
[00:01:15.450]to receive an award like that in the community
[00:01:17.970]is just really impressive.
[00:01:19.410]And I think we're gonna hear
[00:01:21.960]about some of that great work today,
[00:01:24.690]specifically related to interseeding with cover crops today.
[00:01:27.450]So with that, I will turn it over to you, Jenny.
[00:01:30.240]I will note for those of you online,
[00:01:32.640]please enter your questions in the question and answer box,
[00:01:37.320]and we'll address those at the end.
[00:01:39.600]Those of you in the room,
[00:01:40.860]we'll pass this microphone around to you,
[00:01:44.250]if you don't mind posing your questions
[00:01:46.680]so that those online can hear it.
[00:01:48.810]So with that, Jenny, the floor is yours.
[00:01:53.877]All right, thank you so much
[00:01:55.710]for inviting me to be here today.
[00:01:57.930]It's really an honor to be here.
[00:02:00.540]and I'm a very boots on the ground Extension educator,
[00:02:05.340]where I'm so blessed to every day
[00:02:07.470]get to walk alongside of the farmers that I work with,
[00:02:11.280]and egg industry professionals as well.
[00:02:14.310]And one thing that I've been blessed to be involved with
[00:02:18.510]since the beginning, since my very first day on the job
[00:02:21.510]is on farm research.
[00:02:23.460]And that's how we define on-farm research within Extension,
[00:02:28.320]is the farmers have questions,
[00:02:31.320]they wanna test this in their own fields.
[00:02:33.300]And so we do field scale,
[00:02:35.760]randomized replicated studies in their own fields
[00:02:39.540]to answer these questions for them.
[00:02:41.760]So one of these questions
[00:02:43.020]was around interseeding cover crops into corn and soybeans.
[00:02:47.370]And what does interseeding mean?
[00:02:50.610]It means that we are planting cover crops
[00:02:53.430]into a standing corn or soybean stand.
[00:02:57.750]And that can be be done anytime during the growing season.
[00:03:01.680]But for our research,
[00:03:02.703]what we were focusing on is V3 to V4 corn,
[00:03:07.410]so 3- to 4-leaf corn.
[00:03:09.420]And then soybeans, what we'd recommend now
[00:03:12.150]is dormant seeding through emergence in soybean.
[00:03:16.080]So my goal with this today,
[00:03:18.210]I'm gonna share a lot of details,
[00:03:21.240]maybe less on the actual results,
[00:03:23.430]and then share where we're headed.
[00:03:25.140]And my goal with this is just to share
[00:03:27.690]all the successes and failures we had,
[00:03:29.640]'cause I failed a lot in the process.
[00:03:32.460]My farmers are very gracious with me,
[00:03:34.530]but to me I'm willing to take the risks,
[00:03:36.570]and that's that's how I learn.
[00:03:39.660]And so hopefully this helps others
[00:03:41.940]if any of you are interested
[00:03:43.170]in this kind of research in the future,
[00:03:45.450]if there's any farmers or crop advisors
[00:03:48.510]that are also interested in trying this.
[00:03:50.880]Hopefully we worked out some of the kinks on this.
[00:03:55.590]So why interseed cover crops?
[00:03:59.130]Well, that window is really difficult
[00:04:00.960]after corn and soybean harvest
[00:04:02.820]to get a cover crop in the ground.
[00:04:04.710]And as Trey just shared in his defense,
[00:04:08.190]his master's defense,
[00:04:11.490]cereal rye is the most common planted
[00:04:14.460]after corn and soybean harvest,
[00:04:16.410]just because it can germinate down to 34 degrees
[00:04:21.000]on the soil temperature.
[00:04:22.500]We've got some farmers that are planting it
[00:04:24.390]every single winter month.
[00:04:26.520]But for those who are looking for perhaps more diversity
[00:04:32.610]of what they're planting in the cover crops,
[00:04:34.770]maybe some other things regarding reducing inputs;
[00:04:39.300]as for the goals I guess is what I'm trying to say
[00:04:41.640]is reducing inputs.
[00:04:43.230]So can we interseed cover crops
[00:04:46.650]to reduce the amount of nitrogen we're applying
[00:04:50.280]or reduce the amount of other chemicals?
[00:04:53.010]Can we improve diversity within our system?
[00:04:55.920]We've got some producers who are continuous corn
[00:04:59.040]for specific reasons in their operation.
[00:05:01.620]And they're looking at this
[00:05:02.730]to specifically increase diversity.
[00:05:05.460]Another thing is grazing after harvest
[00:05:08.160]and then erosion control.
[00:05:10.650]My dream, and I'm just gonna say mine,
[00:05:12.990]I know several of the farmers would echo this,
[00:05:15.360]but to always have something living between the rows.
[00:05:18.450]And that's a very different thought
[00:05:20.130]than what we're often taught.
[00:05:21.450]That's a very different thought
[00:05:22.710]than what I grew up with on my farm,
[00:05:24.660]on our family farm back home.
[00:05:26.880]But it's something that we've got more farmers
[00:05:29.400]interested in looking at.
[00:05:32.730]So this all started back in 2019.
[00:05:35.310]And what you see here is on the left-hand side,
[00:05:38.790]this producer built his own interseeder.
[00:05:42.120]And he did this with just pieces of equipment
[00:05:47.010]from the shelterbelt and from neighbors
[00:05:50.013]and other family members just to give this a try.
[00:05:54.360]He had around 200 pounds of biomass
[00:05:56.790]at September before harvest.
[00:05:58.590]And when we took it to yield,
[00:06:00.180]there was no yield difference.
[00:06:01.380]So he was pretty excited about this,
[00:06:03.870]and he ended up planting around 300 acres of this in 2020.
[00:06:08.910]We had another producer and on the right-hand side.
[00:06:11.820]In that case, the producer went through with his cultivator
[00:06:15.480]and was applying this sidedress nitrogen.
[00:06:19.500]And right behind him,
[00:06:20.820]his buddy was coming through with a Hagie.
[00:06:22.230]So this is broadcast interseeding,
[00:06:25.110]and he used red clover and buckwheat in this case.
[00:06:29.100]Both cases they had emergence of the cover crops.
[00:06:32.280]What happened in the second situation, as you can see,
[00:06:35.250]he used Callisto,
[00:06:36.510]so that's a Group 27 HPPD inhibitor herbicide.
[00:06:41.280]And so if you think about 2019, very wet,
[00:06:45.180]and it reactivated the herbicide and the cover crop died.
[00:06:49.380]And so it's something that we learned about.
[00:06:52.590]But neither one experienced any yield loss.
[00:06:55.050]And so both wanted to continue trying this in the future.
[00:06:59.820]And this is-
[00:07:00.707](faintly speaking) row crop.
[00:07:04.050]Right, so I when I'm talking yield loss,
[00:07:06.360]thank you, Bruce.
[00:07:07.530]The question was when I'm talking yield loss,
[00:07:09.450]I'm talking about the row crop that was planted.
[00:07:11.100]'Cause ultimately, that's what we're taking.
[00:07:12.840]We're taking these row crops,
[00:07:14.790]in this case, corn, to yield.
[00:07:16.680]So we compared the check with no interseeded cover crop
[00:07:19.680]versus the corn with the interseeded cover crop.
[00:07:25.860]And then our farmers are very innovative.
[00:07:28.560]So the farmer that I told you
[00:07:32.070]who built his own interseeder,
[00:07:33.510]you can see that was the first interseeder
[00:07:35.670]on the upper left-hand side.
[00:07:38.430]And then towards the right,
[00:07:39.690]that's what he rebuilt going into the 2020 season.
[00:07:43.770]He also just built this: this is an interrow
[00:07:46.620]with the thought of interrow roller crimping
[00:07:49.530]and just banding his herbicide in between.
[00:07:51.630]So a lot of these farmers
[00:07:53.940]and a lot more of the farmers I'm working with,
[00:07:57.030]they're just seeing the writing on the wall,
[00:08:00.060]to the point where they'll either be regulated,
[00:08:02.550]or consumers are gonna demand less chemicals and fertilizer.
[00:08:07.710]Or it's gonna be just too hard
[00:08:09.390]to get ahold of chemicals and fertilizer
[00:08:11.490]like it's been the past few years.
[00:08:13.100]So these are some other reasons
[00:08:14.430]why we're looking at these things.
[00:08:17.670]2020 through 2022,
[00:08:19.980]the Nature Conservancy received money from Kellogg's.
[00:08:24.330]And Kellogg's purchased this interseeder
[00:08:26.520]in this upper left-hand corner from Penn State.
[00:08:30.150]And we were using this in 11 farmer cooperators fields.
[00:08:36.030]It was a partnership between the Nature Conservancy,
[00:08:38.280]Upper Big Blue NRD, Nebraska Extension, Kellogg's,
[00:08:41.700]and our farmer cooperators.
[00:08:43.680]And I have all these pictures here
[00:08:45.000]because it takes a lot of people
[00:08:46.530]to take all the data that we did.
[00:08:48.300]even though this is on-farm research,
[00:08:50.010]we were trying to answer the so what;
[00:08:52.624]did this make any difference?
[00:08:54.450]And so really grateful
[00:08:56.670]for all my current and former colleagues who helped
[00:09:03.083]and all of the people involved with this.
[00:09:05.970]What I'm also grateful for is our Extension administration,
[00:09:09.810]because we started this project in the midst of COVID.
[00:09:13.920]And they allowed us to continue doing our job
[00:09:17.250]serving farmers wisely and carefully.
[00:09:20.250]But I'm just so grateful for that,
[00:09:22.470]that they allowed us to keep serving our people.
[00:09:26.460]So as I go through this,
[00:09:27.630]I'm gonna give you what we did for herbicides.
[00:09:29.610]Because when you think about using cover crops,
[00:09:32.910]you really gotta think about a whole system.
[00:09:35.550]And when you change one piece of that system,
[00:09:37.890]it impacts everything else.
[00:09:40.080]And I was the agronomist on the team meeting with everyone,
[00:09:43.770]trying to talk through: "Okay, what is the herbicide plan?
[00:09:46.410]What is this plan?"
[00:09:48.270]We had a plan A, B, usually.
[00:09:50.940]Sometimes a C for all these farmers.
[00:09:53.730]This is what we found worked.
[00:09:56.220]We were always able to use a full PRE-:
[00:09:58.890]so a pre-herbicide, full pre-herbicide with residual.
[00:10:02.700]Usually the residual would wear off
[00:10:04.410]in about three to four weeks or so.
[00:10:07.050]And then when it came to the interseeding,
[00:10:09.828]a day before, a day after, or the day of,
[00:10:13.260]most of our farmers were using either Liberty,
[00:10:15.930]Glyphosate, Dicamba, or some combination of them.
[00:10:20.100]Plan B, if I would add another bullet point here,
[00:10:24.000]every farmer had the option
[00:10:26.310]of then using a Group 15 herbicide.
[00:10:29.190]Those are your long chain fatty acid inhibitors
[00:10:31.650]like your Dual, Warrant, Outlook, Zidua products,
[00:10:35.760]once that cover crop was up at least an inch.
[00:10:39.000]Now, none of these herbicides are necessarily labeled
[00:10:41.460]to do any of this stuff.
[00:10:42.720]So when you're working with cover crops,
[00:10:44.130]you really think outside the box
[00:10:46.350]and try and make these herbicide programs
[00:10:48.900]work for what you're doing.
[00:10:50.700]We also had a producer who split applied Lexar
[00:10:54.930]versus putting it all up front.
[00:10:57.570]And so he wanted to see the impact of that HPPD inhibitor
[00:11:01.950]on the cover crop germination and establishment.
[00:11:05.340]And what he found is if we waited at least 7 to 10 days
[00:11:11.634]before interseeding, we were able to have enough,
[00:11:15.690]the cover crop biomass still came through.
[00:11:17.490]It just wasn't as great as if it was all put on upfront.
[00:11:23.490]So this just gives you an example
[00:11:25.590]of some of the different mixes that we used.
[00:11:28.290]I'm not gonna go through all the mixes,
[00:11:30.030]but we had large seeds, as you can see on the left,
[00:11:33.480]and small seeds on the right-hand side.
[00:11:35.640]Large seeds contained cowpeas, buckwheat, hairy vetch.
[00:11:40.200]In this first one, it also contained pumpkins,
[00:11:44.070]just a variety of things.
[00:11:45.990]Small seeds contained sweet yellow, sweet clover,
[00:11:50.340]red clover, various brassicas, things like that.
[00:11:56.070]This is what we've actually gone to at this point.
[00:11:58.500]So this is our diversity mix in 2022.
[00:12:02.490]And this is after a lot of trial and error
[00:12:05.280]that we found with different cover crops.
[00:12:06.960]So this is what we've come down to.
[00:12:09.690]We've tried to keep those cover crop costs
[00:12:13.290]in that $20 range,
[00:12:14.970]because we're trying to also be practical.
[00:12:17.160]If that farmer doesn't get a payment for doing this,
[00:12:21.390]what would be that amount
[00:12:23.190]that he or she would be willing to pay?
[00:12:26.370]Okay, what I'm wanted to do is just show you
[00:12:28.230]what does this look like when we're interseeding cover crops
[00:12:32.759]into the system.
[00:12:34.620]So what we have here is V4 corn.
[00:12:40.770]I'm gonna stop it there.
[00:12:41.640]We did a lot of changes on this drill over time.
[00:12:44.850]So we would say it's kind of become
[00:12:48.120]our version of this drill,
[00:12:50.040]because it really had to be retrofitted
[00:12:52.050]for Nebraska conditions.
[00:12:53.820]And one of those things that, I say we,
[00:12:56.280]it's the guys on the team who were more mechanically minded.
[00:13:00.120]This drill came with the wavy coulter right here.
[00:13:04.470]And most of our producers who were in the study
[00:13:07.830]are no-till or ridge till.
[00:13:09.390]And so with the wavy coulter,
[00:13:11.490]it was picking up too much dirt,
[00:13:13.440]stirring up the weed seeds.
[00:13:15.210]And so we changed that out to the smooth coulter.
[00:13:18.500]We also took off an extra unit on the end.
[00:13:22.080]I'll just show you.
[00:13:24.930]And see then, it's not much disturbance there.
[00:13:28.620]Oops.
[00:13:33.480]Not much disturbance.
[00:13:34.440]And you can see how we've got three drill units right here
[00:13:39.960]going between those corn rows, okay?
[00:13:45.780]This is what it looked like after interseeding.
[00:13:48.357]So 2020, you can see how much soil disturbance we had.
[00:13:51.720]And you can see that
[00:13:52.553]compared to what we just showed you in the video.
[00:13:55.260]The first things that emerged are buckwheat and cowpeas.
[00:13:58.890]And that's important
[00:14:00.240]because they're large-leafed forbs and they shade.
[00:14:03.840]Exactly Bruce, they shade.
[00:14:05.550]And so when you have no residual herbicide on there,
[00:14:08.160]you want something to help you
[00:14:09.600]with keeping the weeds down within your canopy.
[00:14:13.110]So I found them to be critical.
[00:14:15.390]On the right-hand side, that gives you an idea
[00:14:17.160]of what this looks like within that crop canopy.
[00:14:20.983](attendee faintly speaking)
[00:14:25.770]Okay, good question.
[00:14:26.640]So the question is did the buckwheat and the cowpeas
[00:14:32.370]keep the other pieces from establishing.
[00:14:35.130]I'm gonna go one more slide. I'm gonna show you this.
[00:14:38.460]Left-hand picture, what you see,
[00:14:40.410]this tall guy, I'm gonna use the mouse,
[00:14:43.830]this tall guy right here, that's a buckwheat.
[00:14:46.320]So it just really gets up and growing quick.
[00:14:49.680]This is one of our cowpeas. It's gonna start growing.
[00:14:52.980]You can see the brassicas in the understory.
[00:14:55.305]So depending on the year,
[00:14:57.630]we had radishes, turnips, and forage collards.
[00:15:00.600]So in this case we've got some turnips.
[00:15:02.760]We've got some radishes here.
[00:15:05.010]We had flax.
[00:15:06.060]This one right here, this is a forage soybean.
[00:15:09.210]So to answer your question, no, it didn't.
[00:15:12.450]We saw every single thing that we planted in the mix,
[00:15:15.720]we actually saw within that interseeded.
[00:15:19.860]It's just a matter of maybe when we saw them in comparison.
[00:15:24.270]But that's a great question.
[00:15:25.800]And then on the right-hand side,
[00:15:28.080]the check treatment had the exact same herbicide program
[00:15:30.960]as the interseeded cover crop.
[00:15:33.600]So most of the fields did not look as clean
[00:15:37.260]as what that one did.
[00:15:38.250]But this one is the Clay County field
[00:15:40.680]where for three years it looked really good like that.
[00:15:43.200]Most of them had a little bit of waterhemp or Palmer
[00:15:45.720]and some grass, usually foxtails in it.
[00:15:52.170]So challenges.
[00:15:55.500]July 9th, 2020.
[00:15:59.340]So that's what this is.
[00:16:01.020]That was a windstorm that occurred in our area of the state.
[00:16:05.580]And what you're looking at
[00:16:06.780]is how cover crop biomass and weed biomass,
[00:16:11.550]where there wasn't a cover crop,
[00:16:12.870]will take off when you get that canopy opened up.
[00:16:16.560]In pretty much all of our plots in all of our fields,
[00:16:20.430]we had anywhere from 20 to 45% greensnap or willowing.
[00:16:25.624]And there were places in the field
[00:16:27.390]where there was up to four tons of cover crop biomass
[00:16:30.780]competing with that corn crop.
[00:16:33.180]And that summer I was just so sick
[00:16:35.970]walking into all these fields.
[00:16:37.860]I felt so bad for the farmers,
[00:16:39.840]that this is what it looked like.
[00:16:42.630]And you couldn't really walk through this.
[00:16:44.310]So what you're seeing right here, this viny thing,
[00:16:47.010]that's red ripper cowpeas.
[00:16:49.380]We removed them from the mix after this year
[00:16:51.990]because they just really took off.
[00:16:54.150]This is a great one if you're looking for forage production,
[00:16:57.540]but we switched it to iron and clay cowpeas
[00:17:00.000]because they're not gonna go to seed;
[00:17:01.560]they're not gonna be quite as aggressive
[00:17:03.660]when you're trying to grow a corn crop.
[00:17:10.140]But the other part of this though
[00:17:14.070]is it taught us that this is still an option
[00:17:18.870]for everyone who gets in other cases hailed out.
[00:17:23.370]So the comment that keeps being presented
[00:17:26.430]as I share this data and I share this slide is:
[00:17:29.107]"Well, would you rather have a cover crop growing there,
[00:17:31.410]or would you rather have it full of Palmer and waterhemp?"
[00:17:34.380]And to the line, I mean,
[00:17:35.520]you'd have Palmer and waterhemp there instead.
[00:17:38.400]And we've shown that in some hail-damaged fields,
[00:17:41.220]which aren't part of the on-farm research
[00:17:44.730]that I'm gonna share.
[00:17:45.563]But we have a lot of other fields
[00:17:47.250]where we've interseeded into.
[00:17:48.900]We don't have the research behind it,
[00:17:51.120]but we've been able to show that, you know,
[00:17:53.640]we've got cover crop biomass,
[00:17:55.020]and it keeps out the Palmer and the waterhemp.
[00:17:57.390]So there's trade-offs that way.
[00:18:00.570]But in this case,
[00:18:04.074]even with the Palmer and the waterhemp
[00:18:05.427]and the check treatments,
[00:18:07.920]there was still up to 10 bushel yield loss
[00:18:11.730]in some of these situations, okay?
[00:18:16.560]This is a situation on the left
[00:18:18.360]where we didn't have as much of a greensnap issue.
[00:18:23.190]And then this gives you an idea
[00:18:24.570]what's left after harvest in these fields.
[00:18:28.230]So one thing that we told the guys to do
[00:18:31.290]is shut off their chopping heads,
[00:18:32.970]because otherwise it can smother that cover crop.
[00:18:36.330]And when you look at that,
[00:18:37.467]for any of you who have a forage perspective,
[00:18:40.200]you're looking at that thinking,
[00:18:41.827]"Well, that's not that much biomass."
[00:18:44.400]We had anywhere from 200 pounds to, like I said,
[00:18:48.690]four tons depending on the year,
[00:18:51.120]depending on the site and everything.
[00:18:54.000]But everyone who grazed their fields
[00:18:56.580]still were happy with the fact
[00:18:58.020]that there was something green out there
[00:18:59.760]with their corn stalks.
[00:19:01.290]We didn't strip-graze anything to take the data
[00:19:03.990]for how that helped with animal unit months
[00:19:07.740]or anything like that.
[00:19:09.510]But they just grazed the entire area the same way.
[00:19:13.410]But that just gives you an idea
[00:19:14.510]of what it was like post-harvest.
[00:19:17.910]So this is what I was really excited about,
[00:19:20.250]and the growers were too: what survived.
[00:19:23.370]'Cause, again, in the back of our minds we're thinking,
[00:19:25.597]"Okay, can we get something that's gonna survive?
[00:19:28.230]And will it be able to stay within the row
[00:19:31.800]and help us with reducing other inputs?"
[00:19:35.130]So this top left one,
[00:19:36.300]you'll see it's annual ryegrass and red clover.
[00:19:40.860]The top middle one is hairy vetch.
[00:19:44.130]The bottom middle one is yellow sweet clover.
[00:19:48.240]That right photo either scares you
[00:19:50.310]or you think it's really cool,
[00:19:51.750]because that's yellow sweet clover as well.
[00:19:54.870]And at first I thought, "This is so cool."
[00:19:56.610]And then the more I kept going out there looking, I'm like,
[00:19:59.227]"Oh my goodness, this could be really interesting."
[00:20:03.420]But it was interesting because numerous fields that year
[00:20:08.640]had that kind of sweet clover growth,
[00:20:11.100]and annual ryegrass growth is mixed in there as well.
[00:20:15.720]And if you think about that winter of 2020
[00:20:19.860]going into the spring of 2021,
[00:20:21.810]we had a lot of snow that insulated the ground,
[00:20:24.750]that allowed for protection of those cover crops.
[00:20:27.750]And that's why we had such great survival.
[00:20:30.360]And then this is what cereal rye looked like
[00:20:34.080]with the person who tried that in his mix
[00:20:37.470]instead of annual ryegrass.
[00:20:39.480]So what we'd say is we don't really like
[00:20:42.210]the cereal rye interseeded.
[00:20:43.860]We'd prefer the annual ryegrass.
[00:20:46.140]But if you're gonna do cereal rye,
[00:20:47.490]you just gotta increase the rates far above what we used.
[00:20:50.430]We were only using a couple of pounds, up to 10.
[00:20:54.300]You're gonna have to really increase it a lot more
[00:20:56.310]if you don't want it spotty like that.
[00:20:59.130]Where I failed is in this upper right-hand photo.
[00:21:05.280]our farmers, several of them sit sidedressed there.
[00:21:09.000]Well, besides the fact
[00:21:10.020]that we had all that cover crop growth in 2020,
[00:21:17.520]the farmers, many of them sidedressed their nitrogen.
[00:21:21.690]So they wanted to know:
[00:21:23.797]"How much can I reduce my nitrogen amount this next year
[00:21:28.350]with this cover crop biomass there?"
[00:21:31.620]I had been taking soil samples
[00:21:34.590]throughout the growing season the year before.
[00:21:36.780]I took 'em over the winter. I took 'em in the spring.
[00:21:40.110]And everything kept coming back.
[00:21:41.790]These are just regular soil tests.
[00:21:43.530]Everything kept coming back with less nutrients
[00:21:45.810]where the cover crop was versus the check.
[00:21:48.480]And you're all thinking, "Well, duh, Jenny,
[00:21:51.450]the nutrients are in the cover crop."
[00:21:53.670]Okay, but that's where I failed.
[00:21:57.489]I wasn't thinking that way at the time.
[00:21:59.940]And I really wish I could have captured
[00:22:02.820]how much we could have gained from that biomass
[00:22:07.320]that we had in 2020.
[00:22:08.520]But I didn't do that then.
[00:22:10.740]We did it the rest of the years afterwards.
[00:22:12.690]But that's something you all can gain from me.
[00:22:16.350]If you wanna know what nutrients you have
[00:22:18.840]from your cover crop,
[00:22:19.680]you gotta take the biomass samples
[00:22:22.440]and send them in for nutrient analysis.
[00:22:28.320]Okay, I'm gonna pause.
[00:22:29.910]Well, are there any questions that you have
[00:22:33.090]regarding the corn interseeding part
[00:22:35.130]before I move into soybeans?
[00:22:39.450]Otherwise I can take 'em at the end.
[00:22:42.051](attendee faintly speaking)
[00:22:44.460]Great question.
[00:22:46.537]The question was how much grazing occurred.
[00:22:49.320]Over half of them were grazed.
[00:22:51.690]And I'll talk about that at the end.
[00:22:53.280]I don't have AUMs characterized for it
[00:22:55.650]because of the fact we didn't split it up
[00:22:58.830]into where the cover crop was versus not.
[00:23:03.720]But it was an important thing,
[00:23:04.770]especially after the windstorm
[00:23:07.320]that they grazed.
[00:23:11.089]So I'm gonna move into the soybeans then.
[00:23:12.990]And this is something where I was excited
[00:23:16.710]that the growers wanted to try this.
[00:23:18.330]And I was like, "Oh man,
[00:23:21.180]I had a plan A, B, C, and D.
[00:23:23.787]And E was, okay, we're gonna kill the cover crop
[00:23:26.030]at the end if we have to."
[00:23:27.960]And what's so cool about this is we made it with plan A.
[00:23:31.710]And I was so excited about this.
[00:23:34.920]And it taught us a lot
[00:23:36.060]about where we're going in the future.
[00:23:38.490]So we had two growers
[00:23:39.780]that chose to interseed cover crops into soybeans.
[00:23:42.840]And what we chose for this was to use wheat and red clover:
[00:23:46.740]26 pounds of wheat, 10 pounds of red clover.
[00:23:49.440]And the reason for this,
[00:23:51.300]Chris Proctor and his team
[00:23:52.740]had done some interseeding of soybeans
[00:23:55.770]for soybean management field days.
[00:23:58.320]They did it at V4.
[00:24:00.450]And we felt like that was a little bit too late,
[00:24:02.430]so we tried to go a little bit earlier,
[00:24:05.700]because they were finding that the cover crop
[00:24:08.730]would die in the season once the canopy got closed.
[00:24:11.430]So we decided to try a little bit earlier.
[00:24:14.220]So what we did for our herbicide program,
[00:24:16.110]we did a full PRE-.
[00:24:17.520]Now, both of these growers are no-till producers
[00:24:19.830]with a lot of residue,
[00:24:21.510]and they both had cereal rye planted in these fields
[00:24:24.780]ahead of us interseeding.
[00:24:29.610]One grower was in 15-inch rows
[00:24:33.000]and one grower was in 30 inch rows.
[00:24:35.850]The grower in 15-inch rows seeded at VE.
[00:24:39.090]We interseeded at VE or emergence on soybeans.
[00:24:42.960]The grower in the 30-inch rows we did at V2.
[00:24:47.520]Then what we were planning on doing
[00:24:49.800]for the herbicide program was one day before,
[00:24:52.590]so maybe I'm on plan B then I guess.
[00:24:55.110]But one day before, one day after, or the day of,
[00:24:57.810]we were going to use Liberty, Glyphosate, Dicamba,
[00:25:00.390]or a combination.
[00:25:02.610]And in this case what happened is it was a warm spring,
[00:25:07.530]the cover crop came up in three days.
[00:25:09.840]So that wheat started coming through in three days.
[00:25:12.660]And we're like, "Okay, it's a no-go now."
[00:25:15.000]So one farmer used no post-herbicide.
[00:25:19.980]Again, the back pocket residual of a Group 15
[00:25:23.850]can be applied if desired
[00:25:25.530]once that cover crop is up at least an inch.
[00:25:30.780]So this is what looks like. And it's very different.
[00:25:33.540]I mean, it goes back
[00:25:34.530]to what we were always trying to get away from,
[00:25:37.890]getting away from having weeds,
[00:25:39.600]weeds and grass in between the rows.
[00:25:41.370]And now we're intentionally putting grass and plants
[00:25:45.780]between the rows.
[00:25:47.130]Left-hand side is 30-inch rows, and we interseeded at V2.
[00:25:52.980]The right-hand side is 15-inch rows
[00:25:55.170]that we interseeded at emergence.
[00:25:59.310]Following this, I'm just gonna show you
[00:26:01.770]the 30-inch rows first.
[00:26:04.050]He had a really great campy closure.
[00:26:08.940]And what happened is it shaded out the wheat.
[00:26:12.510]And for the most part,
[00:26:14.040]we just saw wheat carcasses you can see underneath.
[00:26:17.220]He had over 90 bushel beans in this field,
[00:26:20.250]and there were some red clover that survived.
[00:26:23.100]But none of the wheat ended up surviving that.
[00:26:27.240]So he found no yield difference with the soybeans,
[00:26:31.200]and that's what we learned in his.
[00:26:34.800]In the 15 inch rows when we seeded at emergence,
[00:26:38.670]interseeded at emergence,
[00:26:40.290]this gives you an idea what it looked like at September.
[00:26:43.950]And I was gonna take biomass samples,
[00:26:45.900]but 15-inch rows in soybeans, I was too afraid
[00:26:48.540]I was gonna create more damage to the soybeans
[00:26:51.600]trying to walk through all of it.
[00:26:53.160]So I just didn't.
[00:26:55.170]So you can see it, a lot of green out there.
[00:26:58.200]This is what it looked like December 2nd.
[00:27:01.560]And what you see there on the December 2nd,
[00:27:04.200]the reason why it looks patchy
[00:27:05.250]is 'cause then he also drilled cereal rye at an angle to it.
[00:27:09.870]And so it took out a little bit of the clover.
[00:27:12.600]So what you see is the red clover
[00:27:14.250]is what pretty much survived.
[00:27:16.200]And then the far right photo
[00:27:17.220]is what we were super excited about,
[00:27:19.107]was to see the red clover coming back in March.
[00:27:22.770]And I was gonna get biomass samples
[00:27:27.870]before he planted his corn crop,
[00:27:30.210]'cause this was totally unexpected,
[00:27:32.400]that any of this would happen:
[00:27:33.600]that we'd get red clover surviving
[00:27:35.130]and soybeans of all things.
[00:27:37.650]And I was gonna take biomass samples,
[00:27:39.390]but we didn't communicate
[00:27:40.560]to the commercial applicator soon enough.
[00:27:42.870]And they applied the pre-corn herbicide,
[00:27:45.600]and it took out the red clover.
[00:27:49.470]But it excited all of us that we were able to see that.
[00:27:56.490]I'm gonna go into the yield results now then,
[00:28:00.330]or the summary of the results that we had.
[00:28:04.890]So what you see here,
[00:28:06.090]these are all of the site-years that we had
[00:28:10.280]for the interseeding studies.
[00:28:12.510]So unfortunately, this part of the state,
[00:28:16.320]we were hit by so many things.
[00:28:19.590]2020, we had the July 9th windstorm.
[00:28:23.190]2021, we also had a July 9th windstorm:
[00:28:27.600]same day, two years in a row.
[00:28:30.210]2021 though, that greensnap ranged from 0 to 25%.
[00:28:36.690]So it wasn't as severe as what we saw in 2020.
[00:28:40.110]And then June 14th of 2022,
[00:28:43.650]we had a massive hailstorm hit our area of the state,
[00:28:47.400]and we lost all of those studies except for two.
[00:28:51.120]And so it's been really hard,
[00:28:55.320]but I'm so grateful that the farmers just kept going
[00:28:59.010]with these studies and kept wanting to learn
[00:29:01.800]and and kept trying 'em.
[00:29:04.110]And then we had only the two soybean studies in 2021.
[00:29:11.733]So for the results,
[00:29:14.730]we had a total of 12 corn site-years,
[00:29:18.090]and this is not including 2019.
[00:29:20.190]So if I included 2019, it would've been 14 corn site-years
[00:29:24.930]and two soybean site-years.
[00:29:27.672]For the cover crop biomass, in 10 of the 12 site-years,
[00:29:31.350]that interseeded cover crop had more biomass
[00:29:34.140]than the check treatment, which is what you hope for.
[00:29:37.050]You hope that you have more cover crop biomass,
[00:29:40.410]and you don't have much for weeds in the check treatment.
[00:29:43.620]And so at two of those sites,
[00:29:45.420]it's because the canopy opened up,
[00:29:47.160]and that's why we had weeds in the check treatment.
[00:29:52.320]For the yield at half of the sites,
[00:29:54.720]6 of the 12 sites, we had no yield reduction.
[00:29:58.230]But in 6 of the 12 sites there was a re reduction
[00:30:01.050]where we had the cover crop interseeded versus the check.
[00:30:04.770]And that yield reduction
[00:30:05.940]ranged from 1 to 10 bushels an acre.
[00:30:09.660]There were no differences in the soybean yields
[00:30:12.300]between where the cover crop was interseeded
[00:30:14.490]versus the check.
[00:30:17.400]For the net return, in 10 of the 12 site-years
[00:30:21.930]and one of the soybean site-years,
[00:30:24.330]check treatment had a higher net return.
[00:30:27.510]And so when we think about net return,
[00:30:29.820]we're talking about the cost
[00:30:31.080]of seeding the cover crop of the seed itself
[00:30:35.280]and of looking at the yields
[00:30:37.020]and the price of the crop for that year.
[00:30:41.190]We're not looking at,
[00:30:42.930]in that economic analysis,
[00:30:44.460]we weren't looking at any benefits
[00:30:46.050]to the soil, to grazing, to anything like that
[00:30:49.590]because we hadn't documented any of that, okay?
[00:30:53.400]So those are some things
[00:30:54.960]that we could be thinking about as well going forward.
[00:30:58.890]Soil health: so we took 0 to 8-inch soil health samples,
[00:31:03.120]PLFA and Haney.
[00:31:04.503]So PLFA, phospholipid fatty acid analysis,
[00:31:09.240]where basically it's characterizing
[00:31:12.030]the microbial community of the soil.
[00:31:14.790]We looked at total microbial biomass, bacteria, fungi,
[00:31:20.820]and that's primarily what we looked at there.
[00:31:23.490]And then the Haney test is using weak acids,
[00:31:27.300]and we were looking at Solvita,
[00:31:30.000]so the carbon dioxide burst from the microbes
[00:31:33.630]as well as an index, a soil health index
[00:31:36.840]is what's provided with the Haney test.
[00:31:40.080]So we saw large numerical increases.
[00:31:42.990]What we did is we combined all the data
[00:31:44.880]from the six sites together.
[00:31:46.530]And the reason is these tests
[00:31:48.060]get very expensive, very quick.
[00:31:49.920]And we had five to seven reps
[00:31:51.480]in each one of these fields, in six fields.
[00:31:54.480]It's a lot of money we're talking at one time.
[00:31:57.510]So what we did is we looked at all the analysis together
[00:32:03.720]versus individual fields.
[00:32:06.270]And what we saw is that large numerical increases,
[00:32:11.790]as well as there was a difference between 2020 and 2022
[00:32:17.340]for the interseeded for these parameters.
[00:32:21.720]There was also a difference in 2020 to 2022 for the check
[00:32:27.690]for these same parameters.
[00:32:29.340]So at the end of the day,
[00:32:30.300]you compared the check versus the interseeded
[00:32:32.610]across these six sites.
[00:32:34.107]And we can't say there was any difference
[00:32:36.030]due to the interseeding itself.
[00:32:40.170]Am I clear on that?
[00:32:42.060]So there were differences for all three years
[00:32:46.470]for both the check and also the interseeded,
[00:32:48.837]but we can't say it's due to the interseeded itself.
[00:32:51.660]So then afterwards I'm looking at all this data
[00:32:54.030]and I'm like, "Okay, what's all going on here?"
[00:32:59.040]So these farmers are really good
[00:33:01.050]about doing a lot of different soil health practices.
[00:33:04.500]The majority of 'em were seeding rye
[00:33:08.250]after the main crop.
[00:33:11.640]Corn or soybeans was taken off the field.
[00:33:14.460]Over half the sites, they were grazing the whole field.
[00:33:18.990]I had one grower that told me
[00:33:21.390]he had applied his own compost extract
[00:33:23.940]across the field for several years.
[00:33:26.790]But I didn't know that till afterwards
[00:33:28.290]when I was having individual conversations with the growers.
[00:33:31.620]I had another grower tell me
[00:33:33.090]he had been applying a biological product
[00:33:35.430]across the field for several years.
[00:33:38.070]So the good thing is they were applying it
[00:33:40.020]across the whole field,
[00:33:41.490]but all these growers were doing things
[00:33:43.200]to benefit soil health in general.
[00:33:44.790]And so at the end of the day, I told them:
[00:33:47.497]"Just celebrate the fact
[00:33:48.570]that you increased your soil health hopefully overall
[00:33:52.260]across your fields."
[00:33:54.240]And that's what we basically came down to for that.
[00:34:00.990]Soil nutrient values,
[00:34:02.250]we said that we found that there was no differences
[00:34:05.100]in organic matter, pH, phosphorus, sulfur,
[00:34:08.580]potassium-based saturations
[00:34:10.350]between the check and the interseeded from 2020 to 2022.
[00:34:14.970]Individual locations had numerical increases,
[00:34:18.210]but we didn't see it across the board.
[00:34:22.620]Okay, so what did we learned?
[00:34:25.290]We learned a ton.
[00:34:27.330]So much that we learned.
[00:34:29.250]The first thing that I would say,
[00:34:31.800]I'm just so proud of our growers and I'm proud of our team,
[00:34:35.010]because we proved that we could drill
[00:34:37.320]in our seed cover crops early on in the season
[00:34:41.880]using pre-herbicides,
[00:34:43.890]and still get cover crop establishment,
[00:34:46.680]get growth until we had canopy closure,
[00:34:49.350]and still have something surviving at harvest time
[00:34:52.920]and even into the next spring.
[00:34:55.110]And that's not something
[00:34:56.130]that most have been even able to say.
[00:34:59.010]So I'm so grateful for that.
[00:35:01.620]In 2021, and we had a dry spring.
[00:35:04.680]And so when we were interseeding those cover crops,
[00:35:08.850]our growers really could have benefited
[00:35:10.950]from rain or irrigation to get them going.
[00:35:14.220]And that's something,
[00:35:15.966]it's hard mentally as a grower.
[00:35:17.520]You don't want to run your pivot that early.
[00:35:20.760]And that's something
[00:35:22.290]that we would just encourage people to think about,
[00:35:25.680]is if you're doing things like this,
[00:35:28.260]you're going to need that cover crop get established
[00:35:31.140]in that top inch of soil.
[00:35:33.330]And usually it's pretty dry at that point in early June,
[00:35:36.600]unless we get some rainfall.
[00:35:38.610]So an inch of rain or irrigation would've helped.
[00:35:43.560]I already talked about #3 and #4.
[00:35:47.707]#5, I didn't show you this information.
[00:35:50.490]But we had one grower that had watermark sensors
[00:35:54.390]to measure soil moisture status
[00:35:56.310]where the corn was in the check treatment
[00:35:58.980]versus the corn in the cover crop treatment
[00:36:02.220]all the years of the study.
[00:36:04.020]And his graphs always showed the same thing.
[00:36:06.570]It used less moisture
[00:36:08.310]where the cover crop treatment in the corn,
[00:36:11.250]where the cover crop was,
[00:36:12.840]versus the corn in the check treatment.
[00:36:15.450]And I know that's hard to understand.
[00:36:20.542]It's something that I've seen
[00:36:23.820]throughout my Extension career.
[00:36:25.320]We've first seen it with Keith and Brian Berns
[00:36:29.460]before they started Green Cover Seeds.
[00:36:31.890]Because he had his farmer-rancher grant,
[00:36:34.770]a Little Blue NRD, and I was on, he involved us in.
[00:36:38.790]And that's the first time we saw it.
[00:36:40.650]So hypotheses there,
[00:36:43.530]we don't know really what's going on
[00:36:45.210]with all those different roots, you know, in the soil.
[00:36:49.470]And another thought there
[00:36:50.610]is if we have a bunch of extra microbes there working,
[00:36:54.450]and we have them mirror all these plant roots,
[00:36:57.210]they're respiring.
[00:36:59.070]So it's possible they could be just leaving additional water
[00:37:02.910]as they're respiring within the soil.
[00:37:05.580]That's a hypothesis that we have.
[00:37:07.230]We haven't measured any of this stuff: just some thoughts.
[00:37:11.460]Really cool is where the cover crop was.
[00:37:13.680]It became like a butterfly sanctuary.
[00:37:16.440]There's butterflies, lacewings, lady beetles.
[00:37:19.410]It was beautiful the buckwheat.
[00:37:21.780]It's really a different way of looking at things I realized.
[00:37:25.680]But when the buckwheat's flowering,
[00:37:27.660]the flax is flowering, it's really pretty.
[00:37:31.650]And what was really cool is we noticed the bad insects
[00:37:35.430]were the pests, the grasshoppers,
[00:37:37.410]Japanese beetles, rootworm beetles,
[00:37:39.630]they were feeding on the cover crops
[00:37:41.940]but they weren't feeding on the corn.
[00:37:43.830]And you go to the line to the check treatment,
[00:37:46.980]and they'd be feeding on the corn.
[00:37:49.260]And I saw this field after field
[00:37:52.230]in various reps throughout the fields.
[00:37:54.600]Some of the farmers observed this too.
[00:37:57.150]So it's just interesting to see that as well.
[00:38:00.090]And so what are some other benefits we could be doing
[00:38:02.670]with adding beneficials into the system as well?
[00:38:11.100]The buckwheat and the flax, I already mentioned that part.
[00:38:14.947]#8, I mentioned that they're the first ones that come up,
[00:38:18.060]so I believe they help with weed control.
[00:38:20.340]So those are ones that I do recommend in the system.
[00:38:27.150]I already mentioned #9 nine, 10.
[00:38:30.757]#11, so then what happened after 2020,
[00:38:35.400]some of our farmers were like,
[00:38:36.967]"Okay, we get a windstorm again, I want a HyFlex hybrid."
[00:38:41.520]And some of them were changing populations,
[00:38:43.680]things like that.
[00:38:44.610]Well, then you gotta think about that hybrid
[00:38:47.400]and the architecture of that hybrid.
[00:38:50.700]So something that we learned from our farmers
[00:38:53.130]is they went with some Flex hybrids
[00:38:55.380]that are really, really good,
[00:38:57.540]but they have big...
[00:38:59.730]And so we had great cover crop establishment to begin with.
[00:39:03.690]But then as we got towards September,
[00:39:07.680]the shading effect was so great,
[00:39:09.270]it really reduced the amount of biomass we had
[00:39:11.850]within that canopy.
[00:39:13.350]So thinking about our hybrids
[00:39:15.960]makes a really big difference on this.
[00:39:18.390]Even corn populations, row spacing, things like that.
[00:39:22.980]And I already mentioned that one as well.
[00:39:27.360]You wanna know what I learned
[00:39:28.380]about herbicides and cover crops?
[00:39:30.450]This is what I learned.
[00:39:31.830]So I did it like this.
[00:39:33.120]You can take a picture if you'd like.
[00:39:35.520]But really documented and watched how cover crops
[00:39:42.030]reacted with the different herbicides.
[00:39:43.740]What was really interesting
[00:39:45.660]was watching some of the pre-herbicides
[00:39:49.470]that had HPPD inhibitors on our sweet clover and so forth.
[00:39:54.330]It didn't kill them,
[00:39:56.490]but it would stop nodulation for about 30 days.
[00:40:00.780]And then the nodulation started up again.
[00:40:03.090]So it was really interesting
[00:40:04.380]just to watch these things happen over time.
[00:40:07.410]So anyway, that's my shortened version
[00:40:10.830]of what happens with herbicides, cover crop sites.
[00:40:15.540]Okay, any questions around that?
[00:40:20.850]Maybe how about this.
[00:40:21.780]Let me just finish this,
[00:40:23.070]and then we'll open it up for questions.
[00:40:25.860]So where are we going?
[00:40:27.570]We got really excited
[00:40:29.370]about the way that the clover had survived,
[00:40:32.010]and the way that we were able to get clover
[00:40:33.870]established in soybeans.
[00:40:36.540]I have a question for you.
[00:40:38.243]Yes, sir.
[00:40:39.304](faintly speaking),
[00:40:50.756]the residual effect on next year's crop.
[00:40:53.181]Well, they were on the same,
[00:40:54.014]okay, so the question is what is the residual effect
[00:40:56.490]on the next year's crop?
[00:40:58.879]So to explain this,
[00:41:01.110]these guys kept the same treatments
[00:41:02.850]on the same strips for three years.
[00:41:06.270]So in 2021, it really depended based on 2020.
[00:41:12.360]2021, it just really depended on how much greensnap they had
[00:41:17.670]as to on their impact onto the yield on the corn.
[00:41:21.960]So I mean that's a great question
[00:41:23.160]to see if there's cumulative effects.
[00:41:24.930]But I can't say that we really saw that.
[00:41:27.414](attendee faintly speaking)
[00:41:34.920]Okay, so yes, they've done it on the same strips
[00:41:38.910]for three years in a row.
[00:41:40.110]One of the guys, it's year 4 now.
[00:41:43.650]So the question is:
[00:41:48.277]"How to measure the cumulative effects of the yield?"
[00:41:51.630]Well, we do have a couple of growers
[00:41:53.280]who've considered not doing anything this year
[00:41:56.253]with interseeded and just seeing what happens.
[00:42:01.980]Still thinking through that,
[00:42:03.450]still talking about we'll see what happens.
[00:42:09.450]Let me finish this out quick.
[00:42:12.420]So where we're going is perennial clovers.
[00:42:15.180]So it got the guys really excited about this.
[00:42:18.990]So in the spring of 2022, it was March of 2022,
[00:42:24.630]we had six different growers who dormant seeded clover
[00:42:29.760]with the goal of planting corn and soybeans
[00:42:31.830]into the dormant seeded clover.
[00:42:34.890]It all came up eventually.
[00:42:36.840]it was a really dry spring,
[00:42:39.510]and we lost it either to the drought or hail.
[00:42:44.070]We only had two sites that survived.
[00:42:47.340]So this is our plan, and we are gonna do it again.
[00:42:49.920]I'm actually still delivering clover seed to people
[00:42:52.560]'cause we're doing it this month of March as well.
[00:42:56.490]So we dormant seed clover in March.
[00:42:58.920]A lot of these guys already have rye in their fields.
[00:43:01.410]So if they had a small grain that was planted,
[00:43:03.840]we're planting the soybean green into the rye.
[00:43:06.570]If they had corn in their system,
[00:43:08.730]we're killing out the corn ahead of time with clethodim,
[00:43:12.300]because clethodim is safe on the clover.
[00:43:15.780]And that's our plan.
[00:43:18.960]When the clover's at least an inch tall,
[00:43:21.000]we apply a Group 15 like Zidua,
[00:43:23.610]and then we did it three weeks later.
[00:43:25.530]And then in this case what we did
[00:43:27.300]is we let the grower compare that
[00:43:29.520]to whatever herbicide program
[00:43:31.050]they would traditionally do with the check.
[00:43:33.330]And the goal is to look at a systems approach
[00:43:35.100]over several years.
[00:43:36.600]What are the economic benefits?
[00:43:39.180]Can we reduce herbicides?
[00:43:41.970]Can we reduce nitrogen costs?
[00:43:44.430]We'd already have the seeding costs established.
[00:43:47.640]So those are our goals, our thoughts around it.
[00:43:50.910]This is looking at mammoth red clover
[00:43:52.920]and corn this past year.
[00:43:54.930]Again, the only thing applied to this is clethodim
[00:43:57.057]and two rounds of Zidua.
[00:43:58.503]That clover got 2 1/2 feet tall,
[00:44:01.800]and then just laid down like a mat.
[00:44:03.960]So that got everyone pretty excited.
[00:44:06.300]We're not gonna use mammoth red clover
[00:44:09.990]for anyone else though.
[00:44:11.010]We're gonna go with Dutch white or AberLasting.
[00:44:15.510]AberLasting is a combination hybrid of Dutch white.
[00:44:19.860]Dutch white's what grows in your lawns.
[00:44:22.140]So think about an aggressive clover in your lawn.
[00:44:24.690]And Kura clover.
[00:44:26.220]So Dutch white times Kura clover is AberLasting.
[00:44:29.040]And it has a little bit more drought tolerance,
[00:44:31.680]and it's really good for grazing.
[00:44:34.350]Or we're using Medium Red Clover or we're mixing 'em.
[00:44:38.550]Or we have one grower that's doing AberLasting
[00:44:42.480]with Kentucky bluegrass, based on some information
[00:44:45.840]that we have from the Land Institute.
[00:44:47.940]So just looking at perennials in our systems as well.
[00:44:52.230]And I know, very outside the box thinking,
[00:44:54.450]but these are some things that we're doing.
[00:44:57.330]This is what that field of corn looked like
[00:45:00.080]on November 2022.
[00:45:02.777]You can see he's a strip-tiller,
[00:45:04.560]so he created his strips there.
[00:45:07.770]Looking at soybeans, this looks really scary.
[00:45:12.780]But this is after clethodim had been applied.
[00:45:15.960]It was killing it 'cause I was pulling out the stems
[00:45:18.720]and they were brown and stinky.
[00:45:21.600]This is a close-up.
[00:45:22.650]This was hailed then on June 7th,
[00:45:26.280]where the clover started recovering
[00:45:27.780]faster than the soybeans.
[00:45:30.120]This is what it looked like September 8th
[00:45:32.010]with the clover growing with the soybeans.
[00:45:33.900]So that looks kind of scary to a lot of people.
[00:45:36.570]That's what it looked like
[00:45:38.490]when we were collecting biomass before harvest.
[00:45:40.950]And about 30 pounds of nitrogen that we saw
[00:45:43.590]that we got from the biomass.
[00:45:45.750]This is harvest chugged down a little bit.
[00:45:48.870]But for the most part, it went through really good.
[00:45:50.700]And he had his setting set really well in the combine.
[00:45:53.490]I took pictures of the grain tank too;
[00:45:55.680]didn't have much grain.
[00:45:57.000]We didn't have any grain really in the grain tank.
[00:46:00.060]And then it smelled like fresh-cut alfalfa
[00:46:02.730]or silage afterwards.
[00:46:04.050]It was just smelled amazing.
[00:46:06.570]and that's what it looked like November 8th.
[00:46:08.180]So he's gonna plant corn straight into those strips then.
[00:46:11.820]So again, the goal
[00:46:12.900]is we're gonna look at the system over time
[00:46:14.820]and see what happens with that.
[00:46:19.170]And so if that's something
[00:46:20.640]that anyone's interested in joining us on,
[00:46:23.460]even online via on-farm research,
[00:46:27.481]we'd be happy to have you join us.
[00:46:30.900]How we're doing this is we're just seeding blocks:
[00:46:33.840]so blocks of clover, blocks of check.
[00:46:36.450]And then we're taking certain combine passes
[00:46:39.000]in order to get our reps.
[00:46:41.640]Great presentation.
[00:46:42.473]I'd like to go back to your biological test,
[00:46:44.880]your PLFA and Haney test.
[00:46:47.430]And, you know, you mentioned from 2020 to 2022,
[00:46:50.310]both the check and the cover crop increase.
[00:46:54.570]So you also mentioned about half of them
[00:46:56.280]had livestock on them.
[00:46:57.930]So given integrating livestock
[00:46:59.640]is one of the six soil health principles,
[00:47:01.320]is there a way to look through that data
[00:47:03.570]to see if the livestock had a positive effect
[00:47:05.790]on those studies?
[00:47:07.050]Compare the graze versus the non-grazed,
[00:47:09.390]or is it all too convoluted?
[00:47:12.390]So that's a great question.
[00:47:13.950]So can we go back through the data
[00:47:16.350]and look at the fields that were grazed versus not-grazed
[00:47:18.870]and see if there's any differences that way.
[00:47:22.050]Why it's so hard to do that
[00:47:23.940]is because even though half of them were grazed,
[00:47:27.660]so many of 'em,
[00:47:28.710]either the majority of 'em had cereal rye,
[00:47:31.800]but some of them were doing other things with biologicals.
[00:47:34.860]So it would be too hard to pull that out.
[00:47:37.440]Going forward
[00:47:41.190]we could have some growers
[00:47:42.600]maybe consider grazing strips,
[00:47:45.330]and we can maybe pull that out.
[00:47:48.390]To the side of this, we had a grower,
[00:47:52.725]that farmer that built his own interseeder,
[00:47:55.320]he had 'em go ahead and interseed into his field.
[00:47:59.490]And he was looking at corn populations.
[00:48:01.170]Now, this isn't research,
[00:48:03.300]but he had reduced his corn population down to 10,000
[00:48:06.840]and had that interseeded in there.
[00:48:09.060]And we took biomass samples.
[00:48:10.530]There was 200 pounds of nitrogen in there
[00:48:12.240]for the next year's corn crop.
[00:48:14.550]But for those of you who know forages,
[00:48:18.150]24 rows at a 10,000 population,
[00:48:21.690]he had the same animal unit months of grazing
[00:48:24.390]off of 24 rows as he did a whole 1/4 of cornstalks
[00:48:27.690]for one month.
[00:48:29.370]So there's ways to make this work
[00:48:31.770]for guys who are super interested in grazing.
[00:48:33.660]And then to look at the economics of that too,
[00:48:36.720]whether that's going into reduced populations
[00:48:39.630]or greater row spacing.
[00:48:42.900]But to answer your question,
[00:48:44.100]I don't know how we would pull that out.
[00:48:47.580]Thanks. Mm-hmm.
[00:48:56.190]I've got a couple of questions.
[00:48:58.170]Very interesting presentation.
[00:49:02.790]You did this work with several farmers, right?
[00:49:07.350]Was there consistency in terms of the varieties
[00:49:10.650]or cultivars they were growing?
[00:49:12.900]And was the corn oil genetically engineered,
[00:49:17.768]modern cultivars?
[00:49:19.783]Hey, so yeah, the question
[00:49:21.712]is on the corn hybrids themselves.
[00:49:24.210]Were they all genetically engineered or were they non-GMO?
[00:49:29.430]We had one grower that was always using non-GMO corn
[00:49:33.270]in his fields, just because that's what he chose
[00:49:37.170]for the premium in the market that he was looking for.
[00:49:40.770]For the other growers,
[00:49:43.200]they were all using genetically engineered hybrids.
[00:49:47.400]There wasn't consistency on the specific hybrid
[00:49:51.240]that was used though amongst the growers.
[00:49:52.950]They were all using based on their preference
[00:49:57.000]of what they were purchasing,
[00:49:58.980]who their relationships were with their seed dealers,
[00:50:01.320]things like that.
[00:50:02.850]This is a poor county area that we're doing this.
[00:50:05.460]My second question relates to,
[00:50:08.370]you were commenting about where you're going in the future.
[00:50:11.460]Do you have parameters laid out
[00:50:15.090]for measuring soil health
[00:50:18.060]and impact of this program as it goes forward?
[00:50:22.260]Great question.
[00:50:23.093]So how are we measuring soil health going forward?
[00:50:27.720]So we had the clover studies that I showed you.
[00:50:32.250]One of those, the soybean one,
[00:50:33.780]is actually in our on-farm research book.
[00:50:36.420]And we saw up to a six bushel an acre yield loss
[00:50:41.640]where the interseeded was.
[00:50:43.860]We collected biomass samples.
[00:50:45.750]We collected beginning soil health parameters,
[00:50:49.920]meaning we collected baseline soil nutrient levels
[00:50:55.710]as well as PLFA and Haney.
[00:50:58.380]I would love to hear from all of you.
[00:51:00.240]Like is there something else we should be looking at?
[00:51:02.520]or are those the right indicators?
[00:51:04.620]Are those the right things we should be looking at
[00:51:06.630]for soil health (audio cuts out) tools available.
[00:51:10.080]And so I would rather be collecting data
[00:51:15.990]based on the tools that we have,
[00:51:17.820]and not regretting going forward:
[00:51:19.987]"Oh man, I wish we would've collected this."
[00:51:22.710]That's the attitude I've had on it,
[00:51:24.720]and that's why we've collected so much data so far.
[00:51:27.780]But I would love to hear from all of you.
[00:51:29.760]Is there something else we should be looking at? Kara.
[00:51:38.340]I wonder if, you know, when you presented them,
[00:51:42.450]that it was no different (faintly speaking).
[00:51:50.940]But that is discouraging for them.
[00:51:52.680]Something that will say like,
[00:51:53.969](muffled speaking) in the past.
[00:51:58.650]Because, I mean, they lost their faith.
[00:52:00.780]Or they say like, "Okay, actually,
[00:52:02.941]it's probably not enough time
[00:52:04.835]to actually see a big impact.
[00:52:06.972]Or perhaps there is not enough power
[00:52:10.256]in the number of samples that I'm collecting.
[00:52:12.663]So, you know, a single sample will not tell you that much.
[00:52:16.663](muffled speaking)
[00:52:22.006]from your replication and your experimental design.
[00:52:24.460]So wanna hear from you,
[00:52:26.126]like (muffled speaking),
[00:52:30.758]like going and testing and moving forward.
[00:52:33.829]And I don't know, (muffled speaking).
[00:52:37.728]This is being the the sign,
[00:52:39.581]or like actually the time
[00:52:41.055]is too short to see (faintly speaking).
[00:52:44.032]Yeah, so the question Kara asked was:
[00:52:47.560]Did it discourage the farmers
[00:52:49.200]to not see that the interseeding,
[00:52:52.520]that we couldn't say that the interseeding
[00:52:54.780]caused any soil health impacts
[00:52:57.720]compared to the check treatment.
[00:53:00.150]And I think at first,
[00:53:01.200]well, I think I was disappointed too,
[00:53:04.080]just to be honest.
[00:53:05.280]and I think they were disappointed at first.
[00:53:07.620]But then I just kept thinking about this and I'm like,
[00:53:10.627]"You guys should feel really good about the fact
[00:53:13.110]that overall in your fields,
[00:53:15.120]you increased soil health
[00:53:16.500]based on what we measured.
[00:53:19.050]The whole field improved in soil health."
[00:53:22.980]So what has that done going forward?
[00:53:27.150]The majority of guys are actually switching
[00:53:29.280]to the perennial system.
[00:53:31.380]So they're actually the same strips
[00:53:35.490]going to go in with the perennials,
[00:53:37.110]or they're gonna do it in a different field.
[00:53:40.530]There's a few of the guys,
[00:53:42.120]we're gonna be meeting next week.
[00:53:44.640]So then I'll find out what else they're gonna do,
[00:53:47.130]if we're gonna do more interseeding or what's gonna happen.
[00:53:50.310]But several of 'em have chosen.
[00:53:51.660]They're just gonna try the perennial system next.
[00:53:56.520]Yes.
[00:53:57.750]Oops, I'm sorry.
[00:53:59.160]Yes. (muffled speaking)
[00:54:04.328]I was curious, when you were making comments
[00:54:05.940]about the arthropod insect diversity in the fields,
[00:54:11.790]were any arthropods or insects actually collected,
[00:54:14.370]like via like (muffled speaking) traps,
[00:54:15.810]or was it just a general observation that was made?
[00:54:17.867]It was just a general observation.
[00:54:19.860]So the question is:
[00:54:21.150]Did I actually collect insects in the field?
[00:54:24.600]No, it was just a general observation that was made.
[00:54:28.260]So yeah, that's a great question.
[00:54:32.064]Yes.
[00:54:32.897]We do have a couple of questions online.
[00:54:36.480]First one: "Would it work to have fewer species
[00:54:39.810]in the corn mix?
[00:54:41.010]Maybe something like 2 to 4?"
[00:54:44.340]I'll let you.
[00:54:45.420]Yeah, so a question on fewer corn, or fewer species.
[00:54:50.040]Absolutely, when it needs such a big mix.
[00:54:53.850]The guy who built his interseeder, he's only using,
[00:54:57.900]he's using flax, buckwheat, cowpeas, collards,
[00:55:04.992](muffled speaking).
[00:55:05.825]So he's using five.
[00:55:07.230]But you could easily get away
[00:55:10.230]with less than what we had here.
[00:55:13.410]The goal with this was just, part of it,
[00:55:16.320]trying to see what survived the herbicides,
[00:55:17.910]what would come up, everything else.
[00:55:21.360]Okay, thank you.
[00:55:22.710]Second: "Annual ryegrass
[00:55:26.730]and some of the brassicas can become problem weeds.
[00:55:29.910]Is there a concern about that?"
[00:55:32.460]Yeah, that's a great question,
[00:55:35.550]regarding annual ryegrass and brassicas becoming weeds.
[00:55:40.230]We haven't had any issues with killing either one so far.
[00:55:44.790]So I guess that's what I would say.
[00:55:48.450]Okay, final online here:
[00:55:51.967]"What about flying on the cover crop seed?
[00:55:55.920]Can good stands be established this way?"
[00:55:59.160]Flying, so broadcast interseeding,
[00:56:03.354]it can be done as well.
[00:56:06.150]We are just firm believers
[00:56:08.250]in seed-to-soil contact with the drill,
[00:56:11.490]especially when it goes early on in the season.
[00:56:14.940]We've got another whole project
[00:56:16.950]where they're looking at Hagie,
[00:56:19.170]interseeding with the Hagie late in the season.
[00:56:22.050]And then many farmers have tried aerial application
[00:56:27.030]with either helicopters or airplanes,
[00:56:29.520]as the corn and soybeans are senescing.
[00:56:31.574]It just seems like it's about a 50/50,
[00:56:35.610]50% chance how well it works.
[00:56:39.030]I'm not gonna discourage farmers from doing it,
[00:56:41.280]because you can still get something to grow out there.
[00:56:43.800]The key thing is just having moisture
[00:56:46.170]after it's broadcast interseeded.
[00:56:49.620]But if they're looking at trying to get something
[00:56:52.020]for erosion control or something,
[00:56:53.580]they can certainly do it.
[00:56:55.290]I'd still rather, I guess personally,
[00:56:58.650]I'd still rather see them
[00:56:59.940]just follow the combine with the drill
[00:57:01.650]and get in dry instead
[00:57:03.600]if they're thinking about late season.
[00:57:06.090]But that doesn't work for everybody.
[00:57:09.240]They may not have the labor, the equipment,
[00:57:13.170]or want to pay someone to do it.
[00:57:14.640]And so it's just easier to do it with a plane.
[00:57:19.590]Thank you.
[00:57:20.423]Any more questions here in the room or online?
[00:57:22.920]Oh, Bruce.
[00:57:28.370]Your producer who's looking
[00:57:29.340]at plant population with his corn,
[00:57:32.580]I would rather see him try a skip-road type of treatment
[00:57:37.050]rather than lowering the corn population.
[00:57:40.110]I think that would have different
[00:57:42.360]effective light effects within,
[00:57:45.630]than trying to lower that corn population.
[00:57:50.040]Yeah, I don't honestly know
[00:57:52.530]which way would be better or not.
[00:57:53.717]He was actually, in that case,
[00:57:55.410]he was planting milo into there too.
[00:57:58.380]And the milo in that ended up headed,
[00:58:00.780]and yeah, it was just incredible.
[00:58:05.220]Milo, sorghum.
[00:58:09.300]Any last questions?
[00:58:11.640]Okay, well, we are out of time.
[00:58:13.320]Thank you for the wonderful talk from Blend.
[00:58:17.315](audience clapping)

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Interseeding Cover Crops into Corn and Soybeans: What We’ve Learned

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