2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Emerging Topics 3

Deloris Pittman & Mike Kamm Author

03/20/2023 Added

12 Plays

Description

Emerging topics in soil health 3. What’s new in the cover crop industry - Davis Behle, Green Cover Seed Upcoming events, evaluation, and closing

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:04.770]I was asked to talk
[00:00:05.603]about what's new in cover crops
[00:00:07.140]and I said yes before I realized that that would be
[00:00:09.510]at the end of a conference talking about cover crops.
[00:00:11.970]So a little bit of pressure to come up with something new
[00:00:14.520]but I think there's a few things that we can cover.
[00:00:17.100]Start out, can I get a show of hands
[00:00:18.900]of who actually plants cover crops currently?
[00:00:22.860]Okay, great.
[00:00:23.940]And then could you raise your hands again
[00:00:27.180]if you've planted something other than cereal rye.
[00:00:31.020]Okay, seems like it's about the same crowd
[00:00:34.050]and cereal rye, turnips, or radishes,
[00:00:36.330]if you've planted something else besides that.
[00:00:39.600]Okay, great.
[00:00:41.070]That's exciting.
[00:00:42.150]You'll hear people say that there's like four
[00:00:44.820]or 5% of the acres that are cover cropped.
[00:00:47.880]And then I ask about the diversity component
[00:00:49.860]because that's really what we focus on at Green Cover.
[00:00:52.230]Green Cover is a seed provider
[00:00:53.820]for cover crops and forages in South Central Nebraska
[00:00:57.270]about 30 minutes south, southwest of Hastings.
[00:01:00.690]And we have about 120 different cover crop options
[00:01:04.350]and fitting those
[00:01:05.760]into a corn soybean rotation is sometimes the challenge
[00:01:09.780]as we're working, especially with a warm season species.
[00:01:12.630]So short amount of time to cover
[00:01:15.600]some of the things that I'd like to do.
[00:01:16.950]But to start out
[00:01:18.870]with cover crops or what's new in cover crops
[00:01:20.880]I think there's two main approaches that I want to cover.
[00:01:23.490]One of those is species
[00:01:24.720]and then I'm sure that's probably what we think of
[00:01:26.940]when we talk about what's new,
[00:01:28.890]what species is coming out
[00:01:31.230]that's gonna solve these problems.
[00:01:33.030]But I think practices is another thing
[00:01:34.860]that we really need to hit on.
[00:01:37.260]To start off with some of the species,
[00:01:38.670]I want to talk about camelina.
[00:01:40.350]Has anybody heard of camelina so far?
[00:01:43.650]Okay, maybe the same hands
[00:01:45.780]that went up for the cover cropping question.
[00:01:47.610]So camelina is a winter hardy brassica.
[00:01:51.810]This is one of the few things that we can plant later.
[00:01:56.790]Oftentimes, most of the time I would say,
[00:02:00.690]we can't really say
[00:02:01.770]that it's better to plant this later in the season.
[00:02:04.650]And again, when we're talking about a corn soybean rotation
[00:02:07.410]that's really what we want.
[00:02:08.820]And so camelina is one of the few things
[00:02:10.860]that might fit that window pretty well.
[00:02:12.630]So as we get into October, most of the time
[00:02:15.090]we think rye is about the only option left.
[00:02:17.850]A lot of the brassicas like turnips, radishes, rapeseed
[00:02:21.510]they're not really going to do much, but camelina is one
[00:02:23.790]of those that can work pretty well in this window.
[00:02:26.490]You don't want this to go vertical
[00:02:28.560]at all going into the winter.
[00:02:30.210]You just want a rosette, flat with the soil surface.
[00:02:33.060]That's how you're gonna get the winter hardiness.
[00:02:35.190]It is important to make sure that you're looking
[00:02:37.200]for a winter camelina, not a spring camelina.
[00:02:41.760]It will not do the same things.
[00:02:45.300]The reasons
[00:02:46.133]for using camelina would be a diversity component.
[00:02:50.220]I mentioned rye is one of the most common ones, obviously
[00:02:53.730]but if we want to get something else out there
[00:02:55.920]recognizing that each root has its own root exudate
[00:02:58.980]that it produces, I think there's some value
[00:03:01.320]to consider what camelina could do.
[00:03:04.080]It also is going to be something
[00:03:05.940]that can really reduce the amount of seed
[00:03:07.710]that you have to put out
[00:03:08.910]especially if you're doing some cost sharing,
[00:03:11.340]400 to 450,000 seeds in a pound of this.
[00:03:14.850]And so it just can really reduce the amount
[00:03:18.060]of seed that's needed.
[00:03:19.620]It also is going to reduce the biomass that's produced
[00:03:22.200]and so you think that's probably not a good thing
[00:03:25.590]for a cover crop.
[00:03:26.423]But in some situations, especially going into corn,
[00:03:29.670]that might be nice to have some reduced amount
[00:03:35.170]of biomass if you're not wanting to go
[00:03:37.470]through a six foot crop of standing rye.
[00:03:41.190]There's some good research being done with,
[00:03:43.050]I put UND but that's actually North Dakota State
[00:03:46.530]and University of Minnesota.
[00:03:48.030]I also wanted to give a shout out to Ruth McCabe
[00:03:51.210]who's over here in the red vest.
[00:03:53.940]I learned a lot of camelina information
[00:03:56.070]from her at a conference in Iowa.
[00:03:58.440]So ask her if you have more questions
[00:04:00.420]about camelina, specifically opportunities
[00:04:03.150]maybe around relay cropping or double cropping.
[00:04:07.470]The next thing I want to cover is rye
[00:04:09.240]but not rye as we know it.
[00:04:10.920]Hybrid rye.
[00:04:12.150]This one I'll go through pretty quickly.
[00:04:14.143]Look up KWS hybrid rye
[00:04:16.530]if you're wanting to learn more about it
[00:04:18.450]they have the best information about it
[00:04:20.220]because they are the ones doing the genetics for it.
[00:04:23.460]There's something for everyone with this
[00:04:25.350]whether it's for forage production
[00:04:28.290]maybe taking some silage, grain production.
[00:04:32.310]Especially either for feeding livestock or even malting.
[00:04:35.850]There's some niches opening up, I think with hybrid rye,
[00:04:40.470]more expensive seed, lower seeding rate
[00:04:44.100]but significantly higher yield potential.
[00:04:47.520]We're talking probably north of a hundred bushel per acre,
[00:04:51.330]whereas regular rye might be around 50,
[00:04:53.760]depending where you're at.
[00:04:56.280]Winter peas, somebody mentioned winter peas,
[00:04:59.910]I think at one point, and this is an exciting one
[00:05:03.210]because we're trying to find winter hardy legumes,
[00:05:06.120]oftentimes, I would say this is not going
[00:05:09.600]to be a reliable overwintering option
[00:05:11.610]unless your name is Paul Jasa.
[00:05:13.440]Paul is very good at getting this to overwinter
[00:05:15.660]at the Rogers Memorial Farm, east of Lincoln
[00:05:20.670]and he shares his secrets
[00:05:23.220]that we can all adopt to get these to overwinter.
[00:05:26.370]But a couple of the things is have a nice blanket of snow
[00:05:30.180]when it's negative 30.
[00:05:31.680]Since we can't control that,
[00:05:33.270]another option is to plant it deep,
[00:05:36.120]three to four inches deep.
[00:05:37.860]Now Paul is an expert
[00:05:40.860]when it comes to drilling things deep.
[00:05:44.293]His focus is in mechanical engineering and soil health.
[00:05:48.990]And so he's been able to figure this out.
[00:05:52.129]I would say for the rest of us, we can look
[00:05:55.020]at some of those principles to help us with that
[00:05:57.690]but also know that the genetics are improving in this one,
[00:06:00.930]we're getting some seed production
[00:06:02.640]on a WyoWinter pea even in northeastern Nebraska.
[00:06:06.000]So I do see winter peas becoming more winter hardy
[00:06:09.600]in the future
[00:06:10.433]with a little bit more genetic focus and breeding.
[00:06:16.470]So let's transition to practices.
[00:06:18.330]We often talk about, again, like I mentioned
[00:06:22.080]we have lots of different exciting cover crop species.
[00:06:25.080]I mean we could talk about sunn hemp,
[00:06:26.790]we could talk about cowpeas, we could talk about flax.
[00:06:29.310]We're looking at a lot of different flowers as well.
[00:06:31.490]So many different species.
[00:06:33.210]But how do we get this into a corn soybean rotation?
[00:06:36.360]Well, one option would be to add the small grain back.
[00:06:39.570]We listen to some people even here
[00:06:41.160]in eastern Nebraska who are adding small grains back
[00:06:43.740]to their rotation.
[00:06:45.330]And we've heard some other presentations earlier
[00:06:48.030]in the day about maybe why we need to look at doing that.
[00:06:51.000]One of the reasons that I would say is the amount
[00:06:53.940]of diversity that you can get in that window.
[00:06:57.450]We're talking about 12 to 15 way mixes easily
[00:07:01.140]as we get warm season and cool season species
[00:07:04.500]planted together to cover a whole host of benefits.
[00:07:08.790]Sometimes people are using this window
[00:07:11.070]to have a really nitrogen heavy focus planting.
[00:07:15.750]Spring peas, winter peas,
[00:07:17.940]cow peas, sunn hemp, faba beans,
[00:07:22.020]go really heavy on the legumes.
[00:07:24.120]Some people might want it just for stockpiled forage.
[00:07:26.730]And you see that here with this herd
[00:07:28.860]and some of what Mary Drewnowski was talking about.
[00:07:31.710]So it's a great option to just mix up the crop rotation,
[00:07:35.850]diversify for the sake of breaking some pest cycles
[00:07:39.750]but also many different root types
[00:07:41.970]that you can get in the soil.
[00:07:45.150]We heard about interseeding earlier today
[00:07:47.250]and I think there's some really exciting work
[00:07:49.080]being done on this.
[00:07:49.913]I won't dwell on it
[00:07:50.746]because we've heard some great work on it.
[00:07:53.130]Just know that we are also hoping to get much more
[00:07:56.460]of a focus on this this year.
[00:07:58.710]As Katja explained, I run our test plots
[00:08:02.040]in Bladen and this is one
[00:08:04.560]of the things that we're hoping
[00:08:06.900]to show a lot of different mixes this year.
[00:08:11.310]We're hoping to show some different timings,
[00:08:13.380]some different plantings.
[00:08:14.970]There's a lot of merit to figuring out this system.
[00:08:18.900]I don't think we're gonna have the perennial focus
[00:08:20.790]to it this year like with the everlasting clover
[00:08:25.290]but red clover is a common one and we will be showing that.
[00:08:27.840]So know that when people are talking about interseeding.
[00:08:31.410]they may mean two different things.
[00:08:33.630]V3-V4 interseeding when the corn is really young
[00:08:36.782]or flying on aerially
[00:08:39.150]when the corn is starting to wilt down.
[00:08:41.520]Just a little bit of a note there.
[00:08:45.210]Now, bio-strips is one of the last things I want to cover
[00:08:48.180]and we've seen some other pictures that look a little bit
[00:08:51.060]like this where we've got one species
[00:08:53.100]and then a row of another species alternating like this.
[00:08:56.820]We haven't discussed this particular method
[00:08:59.520]so far though today
[00:09:01.080]and this is one that I think is worth mentioning it.
[00:09:03.930]It's probably at least five years old,
[00:09:06.630]perhaps much longer than that.
[00:09:08.280]But what we have here is some radishes.
[00:09:11.820]Those are the gonna be the taller, broad leaves.
[00:09:13.890]And then we have rye in the middle there.
[00:09:17.160]Why I think this deserves being looked at
[00:09:20.220]is because the radishes are going to winter kill.
[00:09:23.850]They have the tuber in the ground
[00:09:25.350]that's really opening the ground up.
[00:09:27.390]We get a lot of earthworm activity around there.
[00:09:29.550]But since they're going to winter kill,
[00:09:32.310]that strip is going to be collecting a lot of moisture
[00:09:34.830]without using the moisture.
[00:09:36.390]So then you can plant the corn right down that strip.
[00:09:39.270]The soil has opened up a little bit and you still have rye
[00:09:43.080]in between the cornrows for a little bit more residue
[00:09:46.350]that's going to last a little bit longer
[00:09:48.060]into the season and help with weed prevention.
[00:09:51.780]So I just wanted to mention that concept as well.
[00:09:55.740]And the last thing again, is just an emphasis on management.
[00:09:59.040]I was at church this Sunday telling somebody
[00:10:01.380]what I do and yeah, I work with cover crops
[00:10:04.260]and they were quick to tell me,
[00:10:05.797]"oh yeah, we use a little bit of cover crops,
[00:10:07.770]but we've kind of gotten away
[00:10:09.630]from it because it just doesn't work
[00:10:11.460]with dry spring, that uses all the moisture
[00:10:15.510]and then kind of screws us on the corn."
[00:10:18.090]Well, I would say let's think
[00:10:20.400]about the management that goes into this.
[00:10:22.560]Cereal rye that grows this tall is going
[00:10:24.480]to use a lot more moisture
[00:10:25.830]than cereal rye that grows this tall.
[00:10:28.080]And so I just wanna emphasize that we need to be adaptive
[00:10:32.190]in how we manage these cover crops.
[00:10:33.990]We need to be using different species.
[00:10:36.030]We need to be looking at different ways to terminate them
[00:10:39.660]and especially different timings to terminate them.
[00:10:41.640]So management is everything.
[00:10:43.740]And last thing is give things some time.
[00:10:46.920]Going back to the winter peas
[00:10:48.870]those have significant potential for nitrogen production.
[00:10:53.580]We've taken some biomass samples
[00:10:55.860]from our test plots the last several years.
[00:10:58.050]This last year was week by week as the vetch,
[00:11:01.860]the winter peas were coming on.
[00:11:04.080]Two years ago, we collected some biomass samples
[00:11:06.690]from our peas.
[00:11:08.292]It was one strip.
[00:11:10.290]We did not replicate this,
[00:11:11.790]but on May 28th it was 240 pounds
[00:11:14.610]of nitrogen in that biomass.
[00:11:16.410]That's not gonna all come available
[00:11:17.790]to the corn in that year, but that's a lot of nitrogen.
[00:11:21.360]And even if we say 80
[00:11:22.710]to a hundred pounds might come available,
[00:11:24.870]that's some significant savings on fertilizer.
[00:11:27.930]So I say that though
[00:11:30.180]because it took until May 28th to get there.
[00:11:33.690]You're not going to get those benefits if you plant the corn
[00:11:36.120]into that lagoon cover crop on May 1st, for instance.
[00:11:40.020]It needs some time.
[00:11:41.520]It's amazing.
[00:11:42.353]We've measured the vetch again week to week
[00:11:44.610]and it will literally double itself
[00:11:46.950]in the amount of biomass nitrogen supply,
[00:11:50.760]week to week as we go throughout May.
[00:11:52.860]So give things time
[00:11:54.600]when you're using some legume cover crops.
[00:11:56.490]So again, those are some species
[00:11:58.830]and some management practices
[00:12:00.330]that we can think about with cover crops.
[00:12:03.720]And I also wanna mention
[00:12:04.980]we do a soil health resource guide each year.
[00:12:07.620]I think some of you have been able to grab some of those.
[00:12:09.930]We do have those on the handout table here.
[00:12:12.480]Question in the back.
[00:12:13.429][Audience Member 1] Yes, when you talk
[00:12:15.030]about diversity at cover crop species, is there a limit?
[00:12:18.660]And over the years you see people put a cocktail
[00:12:21.660]of anything together, but is there a practical limit
[00:12:25.740]of how many species should be
[00:12:27.240]in some kind of cover crop cocktail?
[00:12:31.050]Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:12:33.540]The number of species that needs to go in a mix,
[00:12:36.480]it all depends on the goals.
[00:12:38.340]So let's say for instance,
[00:12:41.820]the goal might be something to roller crimp.
[00:12:45.600]We wanna roller crimp for the termination method.
[00:12:48.390]In a case like that,
[00:12:49.260]I'm saying let's be pretty simple with the blend,
[00:12:52.260]maybe it's not even a blend, maybe it's just cereal rye.
[00:12:55.830]To get roller crimping to work effectively,
[00:12:58.260]you need things to be at a uniform stage,
[00:13:01.110]all reaching anthesis for it to actually crimp kill.
[00:13:04.860]That would be a situation where, let's keep it simple.
[00:13:08.220]We deal with forages too, and there's times where
[00:13:10.950]if somebody wants to pour some fertility to it
[00:13:14.130]maybe keep it more simple.
[00:13:16.170]Again, in the case of after wheat,
[00:13:18.690]I think that's a wonderful case where we can get
[00:13:21.210]a lot of different species.
[00:13:22.380]So then the question is, so what does 12 species do for you,
[00:13:25.890]that eight doesn't do?
[00:13:28.470]I think that goes into plant density and the ratios.
[00:13:32.940]We figure things on a percent of a full rate basis.
[00:13:37.230]So for instance, rye might be 82.
[00:13:41.490]Well yeah, if it's going to be, let's use oats for example.
[00:13:46.470]80 to a hundred pounds might be the full rate of that
[00:13:48.750]but then we want some rapeseed with it or some collards
[00:13:51.870]with it and we want seven or eight pounds of that.
[00:13:54.270]We're gonna figure things on the percent
[00:13:56.910]of a full rate of each of those
[00:13:58.560]and combining those to get to a hundred percent.
[00:14:01.950]If we're using 12 different species in there,
[00:14:05.550]that's just so small, we're getting smaller
[00:14:08.400]and smaller of the percentages of each
[00:14:10.080]that we're going to have in there.
[00:14:11.640]And then it comes down to when you walk through the field
[00:14:14.460]are you actually seeing those or not?
[00:14:16.110]There's gonna be a difference if you were walking
[00:14:17.790]through the field versus driving by it in what you see.
[00:14:20.490]And so your analysis might be a little bit different
[00:14:22.290]in that way.
[00:14:23.250]But I think there's something to be said
[00:14:24.720]about giving the options for the soil too.
[00:14:28.860]There's going to be,
[00:14:30.210]I've seen fields that grow one thing dominantly one year
[00:14:34.620]and grow something completely different the next year
[00:14:37.140]with the same seed or seed bank even.
[00:14:39.750]And so giving options to let the soil
[00:14:43.800]kind of tell you is another approach.
[00:14:45.600]But yeah, I would say most mixes
[00:14:47.940]that I'm creating are probably six to 10 species.
[00:14:53.839][Audience Member 1] On the camelina with rye,
[00:14:55.440]what would be the ratio
[00:14:57.030]if you're seeding 70 pounds rye in the fall as a cover
[00:15:01.380]how much camelina would you put in there?
[00:15:04.860]You might do something like 35 to 40 pounds
[00:15:08.910]of rye and go to two to three pounds of camelina.
[00:15:14.460][Audience Member 2] Can you, or you'll seed the camelina?
[00:15:18.839]I would maybe defer to Ruth on that one.
[00:15:21.630]Small seeds are,
[00:15:23.280]you don't need as much seed to soil contact.
[00:15:26.640]So that's one school of thought.
[00:15:28.560]On the other hand, when you're getting that small,
[00:15:32.190]that could spread rather easily.
[00:15:34.920]I would say.
[00:15:36.780]Let's keep it a little bit closer to the soil.
[00:15:38.670]Actually, one of the things that Ruth had
[00:15:40.230]in her presentation that I attended,
[00:15:42.180]was even showing the difference
[00:15:43.980]when we extended the drop tubes, if I'm remembering right.
[00:15:47.520]And that would obviously go
[00:15:50.700]through maybe the small box of two box drill.
[00:15:54.960]And there was a big difference
[00:15:56.580]in the ones that had a short drop tube
[00:15:59.700]versus when they extended the drop tube
[00:16:01.740]closer to the press wheel
[00:16:03.510]and getting much better results with longer drop tube.
[00:16:07.350]And so I would be hesitant to aerially broadcast it.
[00:16:13.489][Audience Member 3] Can you speak to availability?
[00:16:15.600]Right now, I personally am waiting for some plantain.
[00:16:18.810]Is there a pretty good availability
[00:16:20.820]of everything else across the board?
[00:16:23.610]Across the board,
[00:16:24.600]it's no, I guess would be the short answer.
[00:16:28.800]There's gonna be a lot
[00:16:29.633]of things that we have got great supply of
[00:16:31.650]and there's gonna be things that are lesser.
[00:16:34.050]When we have that many different species,
[00:16:35.670]it's just hard to make an across the board statement.
[00:16:38.550]Plantain is one thing that I'm pretty excited
[00:16:40.590]to get back in when we're doing some pasture
[00:16:44.010]over seeding mixes and things like that.
[00:16:46.860]You're talking about separating out
[00:16:48.810]if they were to be a diverse mix, and we don't want
[00:16:51.630]to see this part of the field be all the small seeds.
[00:16:54.570]This part of the, okay.
[00:16:58.230]If we're talking about a two or three species mix
[00:17:02.130]and we've got maybe winter peas and rapeseed,
[00:17:06.300]that's going to separate very easily
[00:17:08.070]because you've got some bigger spheres
[00:17:12.420]and you've got some very small spheres.
[00:17:14.520]And as that's going through
[00:17:16.110]some different bumps through the field,
[00:17:18.060]that's going to separate out pretty easily.
[00:17:20.250]As we add some different shapes, different sizes,
[00:17:23.790]different structures of seed and get it more diverse
[00:17:28.350]then it's going to not separate quite as much.
[00:17:30.510]We use oats, even five or 10 pounds is going to really help
[00:17:35.010]in locking that seed in place a little bit more.
[00:17:38.370]And sunflowers would be kind of similar.
[00:17:40.770]So typically two or three species,
[00:17:44.070]I might be a little bit more hesitant.
[00:17:45.600]So rye and camelina, let's keep those separate
[00:17:49.200]and plant them through separate boxes.
[00:17:51.390]But if we're talking about a 10 way mix for after wheat,
[00:17:55.680]I would typically plant that all together.

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

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

Comments

0 Comments

2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Emerging Topics 3

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments