Soil Guy - 10/7/2024 10:38

We’ve used covers on my family farm since 2013. Overall I’d say they’ve been a net positive and provide a lot of value if you own cattle. We’ve used cereal rye and typically have little issues getting it established. We did have issues getting it killed this year for the first time ever. From what I’ve been able to decipher, the issue was the form of glyphosate we used which was power max 3. We planted some triticale this fall and I think we’ll like it from a field value standpoint. We’ve planted some rape seed, red clover, radish’s and turnips. In our geography you better get them established early part of September to give you any benefit as a cover. We seed most of ours with a valmar seeder attached to an aerway. It does a good job. We had to fly some on this year with a drone due to a government program. Flying covers on has been hit and miss from what I’ve seen. We’ve planted into tall rye before. Shark tooth wheels seem to work good. When we got hydraulic downforce on our planter it worked really well planting into the tall rye. We do not use a no-till coulter. We burn the rye down and plant into it. Our closing wheels are copper head poly spike wheels. We’ve had rye wrap around those before. One year was really bad. I believe the year it was really bad, we were planting beans and they were on 15 inch rows and the narrower rows might of had something to do with it but I can’t remember.

Have we seen increases in organic matter? Not really
Have we seen increases in nutrient levels in the soil? No

You can reach out to me with any further questions. I can give you more experiences that I’ve had with covers good and bad. It’s gets to be a lot to post on here.