2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Emerging Topics 3

Deloris Pittman & Mike Kamm Author

03/20/2023 Added

10 Plays

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

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[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.

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2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Emerging Topics 3

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