Hi I'm Kevin Shelly from the Nutrient and Pest Management Program, and I'm here
today at the site of the 2015 Wisconsin Farm Technology days the Statz brothers'
farm near Sun Prairie Wisconsin, and I'm at a demonstration of sixteen different
species and species mixes of things that can be used as cover crops. To help cover
the soil, add some organic matter improve soil structure feed microbes, and
if it's a legume, provide some nitrogen for following crop. Cover crops of course
being used to cover the soil during periods of time that might otherwise be
foul in between harvest and planting of the main crops in the rotation. So for
example, after cereal grain harvest midsummer cereal grain harvest or early
season vegetable or in Wisconsin here even after harvest of corn silage. So
today I just want to kind of go through the different plots, the species and
mixes that we have here. We're going to provide some additional information
about these in the video through some of the graphics. I'm gonna go through them
relatively quickly, but we're starting off your with medium red clover a very
popular species to be used as a cover crop. It's a short season perennial
legume, so we get this started relatively early in the season like companion seeded
with a small grain or frost seeded into winter wheat. By the end of the season we
can expect 68 pounds of nitrogen produced as well as it covering the soil
preventing erosion and suppressing some other weeds that would otherwise grow.
Here is an option for maybe planting midsummer. This is a mixture of two
annual clovers Berseem Clover is the one down here a little lower,
and we have some Crimson Clover mixed in with it. So, this will go to establish
and grow a little bit quicker during the heat of the summer, if we have moisture.
We need some moisture to really get those going, and if we get good growth
maybe forty to fifty or sixty pounds of nitrogen per acre produced from that.
We're gonna go into some different species here that in and mixes that
includes some porridge brassicas this is a mixture of daikon radish annual
ryegrass and the bar scene clover the radish is touted as something that can
produce that taproot sort of a buyer drilling or bio tillage down into the
soil we don't have a lot of research data to show that that really does that
but it it can to some extent than we do know that radishes are good at sucking
up where scavenging residual nitrogen that might be left over from the
previous crop it's very competitive and as you can see we don't see a lot of
clover or annual ryegrass in here probably need to back off I think
they're radishes about five pounds probably back off a little bit more
on our seeding rate per acre
this is drawf essexrape as well as barley and again we have the berseem clover
in there and once again we're not seeing a lot of clover
the Dwarff Essexrape is relatively competitive. we do have some barley
coming up and heading out there and the next one is again the daikon radish
along with barley and field pea. and field pea is going to be our legume here,
that's going to provide some nitrogen and you can see it's a little bit more
aggressive than that berseem clover is. The draw back here is the field pea tends
to be more expensive seed. This is a little bit more expensive mix here maybe
over 50 well over $50 per acre just in seed cost, but there's some potential.
And finally we have purple-topped turnips and oats. The turnips are a
popular Cover crop used among grazers to kind of fill that mid summer slump in
the pasture forage production so something that's going to produce little
bulbs that are really more on the surface of the soil we don't quite see
those yet but an alternative Brassica here and so what we're getting with
these Brassica Grass Legume mixes is kind of a multi-species benefit where
we're getting some nitrogen production some nitrogen scavenging from the
Brassica and some fibrous root development to really help the soil
structure from the grass or the the cereal grain in the form of barley there.
Next we are
we're going to a popular cover crop used by vegetable growers kind of a
mid-season thing that can be planted maybe after early-season vegetable and
before a fall or early fall vegetable. This is buckwheat and buckwheat can
really grow fast producing about two to three tons of biomass dry matter per
acre in about 6-8 weeks. It also is a heavy power producer with lots of nectar
that are good for pollinators and you can see all the honey bees we have in
this mix this particular stand is a mixture of buckwheat and cowpeas which
is a legume
in the bean family. This is a solid seeding of cow peas. Cowpeas are one that we
have not used very much to Wisconsin. But it's a high in nitrogen producer
90-120 pounds of nitrogen is to be expected after eight
to 10 weeks of growth. Its drought tolerant, that likes the heat of the
summer.
So I think it's one we want to take a little bit more of a look at. Jumping
across the alley way here I have a mixture of Sorgum sudan grass and
cowpea. So some more of those copies this is a midsummer adapted species both of
these species like the warm weather need a little bit moisture to get going but
once they can go will tolerate the heat and a little bit a drought and the
sorghum sudan grass in particular is one that's going to be able to produce a
lot of biomass that can be added back into the soil to help condition the soil
through added organic matter. The sorghum sudan grass, if we let it get too
big, can be kind of fibrous. So the idea here with the cowpeas is that we're
adding a little bit of nitrogen that might help that that carbonaceous
biomass to break down a little bit better. Here is another legume this is a
vetch. this is a chickling vetch which is a very cool season of a vetch, can be planted
very early in the season or rather late I'm thinking in southern Wisconsin maybe
as late as late September. it's very frost and cold tolerant, and is something we
need to collect more data on, need to learn more about. It looks like it has
some potential for nitrogen production as a legume at the front end or the tail
end of the growing season that some of the clovers and other legumes won't do.
This is another plot of buckwheat, this is just solid seeded buckwheat. And one of
the concerns - we do get those blossoms relatively quickly and it's a heavy seed
producer, so I was worried about this going to seed and becoming a weed seed
issue. I clipped this down two weeks ago and today we're here in the beginning of
August and it is starting to grow back
and delayed some of that seed production but it it's blossoming relatively quickly
as it grows back. OK, now we're gonna get into some more grass species, some forage
grasses and cereal grains. This is annual ryegrass and it's a very quick establish
sure covers the ground really fast it's fairly shallow rooted so it can
condition that the top ten inches of the soil or so but doesn't have the real
deep fibrous root system that some of the other cereal grains or forage
grasses will have but very quick grower this is not your beginners Covercraft
there are some issues associated with it going to seed in the seeding year and it
can be hard to control that with glyphosate or other herbicides so
something we need to use caution. This is cereal rye. It's a winter grain. It's
probably the most popular cover crop used across the upper Midwest. It can be
planted in early fall and will grow into the late fall keep growing developing a
pretty good deep fibrous root system very good at scavenging nitrogen and
keeping that in the system well over winter. We're evaluating it in
Wisconsin as a, you can either
terminate it early in the spring as a cover crop or let it grow and use it as
an early-season forage, with still enough time to plant the full season
crop afterwards and a relatively inexpensive option to do all those
things that we need a cover crop to do. This is Japanese Millet, not something I
haven't worked with before, popular in some other areas of the world, but it's
touted as being a quick biomass producer and it has been de- fibrous root system
take up a lot of nitrogen and other nutrients, keep that in the system, and it
can be used as hay. I did cut this two weeks ago, I think we could easily get
one
or two crops of hay out of it during the summer with pretty good re-growth.
The first crowd was susceptible to some rust, however. Moving on, this is a
Spring Triticale. Spring Triticale is a mixture of hybrid or a bread blend of
spring wheat and winter cereal rye. Just one we're kind of taking a look at, it
doesn't have quite the nitrogen immobilization, a fact that cereal rye
does in the spring. So, it also will winter kill as a spring grain in most
years will winter kill, which can serve as a management
advantage there if that's desired. In this last one is something that there
is a lot of interest in. We're just learning about it, it's Sunn Hemp and it
is a tropical legume touted to produce quite a bit of nitrogen, a lot of
biomass. As you can see, it's grown a lot here in the five weeks since it's
been planted and is tap rooted, so it should do a lot to help condition the soil,
and we look forward to doing more testing and evaluation of Sunn hemp. The
seed cost was very high for a few years. It's really came down this year; it's
still a relatively expensive option. But we'll see what the future brings.
So with that thank you for joining me on this quick tour of the cover crop plots
that we have here at the 2015 Wisconsin farm technology days show.