Category Archives: Soil Quality

Annual Ryegrass Video Series – for beginners and intermediate cover crop users

The experts said it back in 1998, that no-till and cover crops were a winning combination for corn and soybean growers. Ten years later, a series of videos were done to introduce the idea and bring basic understanding of the what and how of cover crops. Back in 2005, the idea that a cover crop could sink winter roots down to 50 inches or more was revolutionary in the ag industry. Today, the practice is becoming widespread in the Midwest. The videos stand up to the test of time, and continue to be a solid source of information.

In the first video segment, you can get a glimpse of the main characteristics of annual ryegrass, and a couple of its major benefits.

Root depth: “Better than a deep ripper, in terms of its ability to break up compaction,” said Dan Towery, of Ag Conservation Solutions, an Indiana consultant on soil health.”Far deeper than other cover crops,” said Mike Plumer a former university agronomist and pioneer in cover crop development in the Midwest.

Nitrogen scavenger: those who use livestock manure in the field benefit by having the nutrient stay in the field.
“Annual ryegrass is a great nitrogen scavenger,” said another cover crop pioneer in Indiana, Dan DeSutter, …keeping it in the field instead of sending it down the tile lines in the spring with runoff.”

If the videos are of some interest, perhaps you would also like more information about the science and the management of annual ryegrass. If so, click here for a free brochure. Or, click here for a library of information on the annual ryegrass website.

Annual Ryegrass – a Christmas Gift that Keeps Giving

With snow covering a lot of the Midwest this month, cover crops like annual ryegrass have a good chance of wintering over. That means continued activity in the soil, even if the vegetative part of the plant is dormant.

Annual ryegrass roots can dig all winter long, extending to a couple of feet or more by springtime. In the winter, the roots permeate compacted soil and open it up for better water infiltration and biological activity. These are important aspects of soil health and crop production next summer.

Here’s a recent article on annual ryegrass and other cover crops, from the Farm Journal, that outlines some basics in choosing a cover crop, some tips on selecting varieties and a lot of encouragement to try it out…even on a small test plot, until you get the hang of the management changes necessary for adding cover crops on a big time basis.

Here are a couple of other resources about annual ryegrass, how to grow it, where to get it, and how to terminate it in the spring.

National No-Till Conference – 25th Anniversary – Features Lots of Cover Crop Ed.

This year’s annual National No-Till Conference – Jan 10 – 13 – in St. Louis is perhaps the best ever. Here’s the link to the website. Click on the image below to see the entire prgram listing.

For you cover crop fans, here’s a listing of the speakers, classes and roundtable discussions about cover crops. There are plenty available on each of the three days of the conference.

Wednesday

Speakers

Ray McCormick, Indiana, 2400 acre grower, all no-till w/cover crop
J.C. Cahill – U of Alberta…how plants talk to each other and how knowing that might be important for your farm.

Classes

Ray Weil, U of Maryland soil scientist

Improve crop access to water and nutrients
Keep more N on your farm – research on how cover crops help N mgmt.
Boost soil bio processes in deeper layers

Ray McCormick, Indiana, 2400 acres, all no-till with cover crops

Adapting equipment for use in seeding cover crops
How to do it inexpensively ($13/a).

Dan Towery and Hans Kok, Indiana/Illinois

Interseeding cover crops into corn
Adding wheat to your rotation
Planting 8 – 15 way cover crop cocktail after wheat…and how that could produce a double digit increase in corn and soybean yields while cutting your N application rates in half.

Egon Zunckel, South Africa

Mitigating poor water infiltration, erosion and stagnant yields with a variety of practices, including cover crops
Introduction of livestock to help manage large amounts of crop residue.

Seth Watkins, Iowa

Cover crops, prairie strips, buffers, native grasses, terracing, crop rotation and rotational livestock grazing – protecting soils while building organic matter quickly and boosting profits.

Jim Johnson, Noble Foundation soils consultant

Grazing cover crops – how to get started
Research results from a variety of states.

Ten No-Till Round-table discussions on Cover Crops, including:

From the North Plains states, to NE and Mid Atlantic
Great Lakes and Ontario
Southern and High Plains
Midwest states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri.

Mike Plumer – Making Sense of Cover Crop Mixes

When does one cover crop – or two or three – make more sense than a cocktail of mixes?
How to balance cost with needs?
Determine what soils need before making decisions about seed.

Thursday

Joe Breker, ND grower (spoke at inaugural No-Till Conference in 1993)

Cover crops in northern climates
Slash input costs with improved organic matter, banding fertilizer and cover crops.

Mike Plumer – Tips for Terminating cover Crops more effectively

How to do it effectively and save yourself headaches?
How weather, seed varieties, growth states and herbicide choices factor in?
Why to avoid the Variety Not Stated (VNS) label?

Alan Mindermann, Oklahoma

Use cover crops to help mitigate the effects of unpredictable weather and limited moisture
How to track moisture and herbicide applications while making rotation decisions?

Robert Kremer, Ag Research Center, MO

Impact of cover crops on suppressing weeds and weed seed banks.

Roundtable discussions

Making the Right moves with Cover Crop mixes
Seeing the Potential in Cereal Rye Seeding
Getting out of the Starting Gate with Annual Ryegrass
Turning Up No-Till Diversity with Radishes

Friday

Round-table discussions

Tips, Tools for Timely Cover Crop Seeding
Cover Crops that Cut Your Fertilizer Bill.

Randy McElroy, Sustainability researcher at Monsanto Co.

Transform soil with a variety of tools, including cover crops.

Thanksgiving – A Gift to Keep Giving

A cover crop like annual ryegrass gives fertile minds the room to use it as a metaphor, or symbol.

The roots of ryegrass go deep, like the roots of our common heritage as humans. Whether we came from Europe, Africa, Pacific Islands or Asia, we derive from the same holy place. We thrive each day by consuming the bounty of the earth. We surrender to that same earth on the day of our death.

The inter-workings of Earth and the Solar System have conspired to make life habitable: breathable air, drinkable water and nurturing soil. Caring for each helps to assure our continued life here, among all the plants and animals that also sustain us.

Partisanship has no comparison in agriculture. You either work together with nature or you shrivel. Cooperation of the Native people made the Pilgrim’s first weeks on this continent possible. Cooperation with your neighbors in times of hardship and in times of joy, has given this country the chance to show a beacon of hope to other countries struggling with fairness and with sufficient food. Communities, like cover crops, help to blunt the erosion of society and to grow a more healthy crop of children to take our place.

Annual ryegrass is a vehicle for bringing together the elements of our environment. Rain feeds its birth; sun feeds it’s growth; and the decay of all things that make up the soil feeds its nutrient qualities.

In turn, annual ryegrass – like other cover crops – feeds the soil and feeds the crops that follow. In like fashion, we are called upon by our faiths to do likewise. The product of our goodwill towards others begets a new season of peace.

But society, like annual ryegrass and the soil itself, takes careful management. We cannot take for granted that our liberty and our freedoms feed themselves. Without awareness and action, the life in our community can be leached away. Being able to guide our culture thorough the deep values in our life is as important as knowing how to improve the pH and organic matter in your fields.

At this time of Thanksgiving, think about your place in the chain of life.Consider how your life is similar to a cover crop…how your roots go deep into a soil of age-old values, how your sturdy form and health have given life to others, how the fruits of your labors have created life and work for others. And consider, too, how those who you have never known, who you will never meet, also contribute to your health and your family’s sense of security and well being.

May you know peace. May you enjoy health. And may you find at this time of year, an opportunity to give thanks and show gratitude for all those who have contributed to your life.

Annual Ryegrass – Deepest Rooting of any Cover Crop

By now, with winter around the corner, your cover crop is already going to work to secure topsoil from the erosive qualities of run off and wind. (If you don’t have cover crops on all your acres, it might be interesting to compare how bare topsoil, or even crop with residue laying on top compares with a health cover crop field.)

Annual ryegrass, researched now for more than 20 years (throughout the Midwest, parts of the East coast, upper south and into southern Canada), consistently ranks first among cover crops in terms of deepest roots. Why is that important?

Deep mining of nutrients. After generations of plowing, the top foot or more of soil is depleted of nutrients and organic matter. Annual ryegrass roots access nutrients deeper in the soil profile, providing health to the crop but also limiting the amount of fertilizer inputs needed. The residual root mass, left after the crop is terminated in the spring, continues to feed the microbiology of the soil and create crucial organic matter.

Compaction. Annual ryegrass roots grow right through compacted layers of soil. After the roots die each year, corn and soybean roots can follow the same channels created by annual ryegrass. Eventually, the compacted layer is so run-through with root channels, the compaction is completely permeable, allowing roots and infiltration of moisture.

For more information about the benefits of annual ryegrass, click here.

Annual Ryegrass Has Important Benefits

Farm Progress published a management guide for growing cover crops…it’s available FREE online. Click here. (You will be asked to fill out the information they want – name, email address – before emailing it to you free.)

Cover Crops: Best Management Practices

Here’s part of what the report says about annual ryegrass:

Today, farmers often hear about annual ryegrass and cereal rye grain as popular cover crop choices. It’s important to know the differences of each of these cover crops. Annual ryegrass is a versatile cover crop choice that will protect the soil, reduce soybean cyst nematode populations and hold nitrogen through the winter. Annual ryegrass – which is often referred to as “ryegrass” – has about 33% more roots than cereal rye and provides higher quality feed than cereal rye grain. Annual ryegrass is lighter than cereal rye grain and farmers and custom applicators using high clearance, drills, spreaders for dry fertilizer and airplanes can seed more acres before having to refill than if they choose cereal rye. Annual ryegrass needs to be seeded in August into early and mid-September, depending on location and the weather, while cereal rye grain can be seeded later in the fall, often into October. That, of course, also depends on the weather and location.

If you regularly plant cover crops, it’s probably a safe bet you’ve planted by now. If you’re considering planting a cover crop for the first time, looking at Farm Progress’ Management Guide is a good start. You can also find tons of detailed information about growing and managing annual ryegrass by clicking on this link, which will take you to the annual ryegrass website.

Or, click here to look at videos that discuss various aspects of managing annual ryegrass.

New Midwest Incentives for Cover Crops

Among other things, Dan Towery manages the Indiana part of the Soil Health Partnership, a network of innovative farmers in eight Midwest states. Dan has been a consultant for the Oregon Grass Seed Growers Commission that promotes use of annual ryegrass as a cover crop for more than a decade. He has been a steady voice for conservation agriculture since he graduated from Western Illinois University.

Dan was a staff agronomist for the Conservation Technology Information Center and was state agronomist in Indiana before joining the staff of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). In recent years, Dan’s been tireless making connections – both one on one with Midwest growers – as well as nationally and in other countries, with leaders of industry, policy and conservation. That work created a natural space for him on the board of the International Soil & Water Conservation Society board for 6 years. He was selected as its president in 2012 and 2013.

This past growing season, the Soil Health Partnership conducted more than 40 field days in eight states, attended by more than 1500 farmers, eager to learn from each other the details of managing cover crops. The field days covered subjects like cover crops and other soil improvement methods, as well as equipment, nutrient management and other topics. The initiative, sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association has also gained tremendous support of a dazzling variety of groups including Monsanto, NRCS, the United Soybean Board, the Walton Family Foundation, the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy.

In September, largely because of its effective promotion of conservation tillage in the Midwest, the Soil Health Partnership learned that it won a $1 million Conservation Innovation Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grant funding will help to quantify the gains being made by farmers using cover crops and other conservation strategies, according to a news release from the organization.

Farmers enrolled in the SHP program will be invited to participate in the carbon reduction incentive system, in which growers are paid by corporations to sequester carbon in their soil, according to the article.

“This is a great opportunity for farmers to continue being a part of the solution to carbon sequestration, and gain financial incentives for carbon-smart ag practices like growing cover crops and using minimum tillage,” said Nick Goeser, NCGA director of soil health and sustainability and director of the SHP. “We hope to provide businesses with a quantifiable method to reduce their carbon footprint by increasing these on-the-ground conservation practices.”

Cover Crops in the Midwest Saves Lives in the Gulf

Agricultural runoff has dramatically altered life in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Hypoxia, in essence the cutting off of oxygen, has choked off aquatic life in the Gulf. Continued practices will essentially kill off life, and the massive fishing industry will die with it. In the photo below, you can see the massive amount of farmland drained by the Mississippi River system into the Gulf.

Image result for hypoxia in the gulf photos

Cover crops can significantly reduce the amount of runoff, particularly nitrate, into the streams and rivers that supply the Gulf from the Mississippi River. In fact, in a study conducted by Eileen Kladivko (Purdue Univ.), Tom Kaspar (USDA-Iowa) and others, they estimate that the adoption of cover crops more uniformly by farmers, in just five Midwest states, can reduce the amount of nitrates by an estimated 20%. These five states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Michigan) are responsible for almost HALF of the nitrate loading in the Gulf.

Here’s a link to the study (click here)

The study looked only at cereal rye as a possible cover crop. Use of annual ryegrass has benifits over cereal rye.

It has deeper roots, which means deeper nutrients and moisture for corn and soybeans. Deeper roots also means less compaction
Annual ryegrass is a scavenger of nitrogen. In addition to saving on inputs of fertilizer, annual ryegrass stores nitrogen and then yields it to the corn in the spring, when the grass is killed.

Check out the other differences between annual ryegrass and cereal rye in this publication. Among other things, cereal rye can tie up nitrogen too long, thus requiring added inputs for corn growth. And, cereal rye can grow too much on the surface (6 -7 feet) and thus make it difficult to plant into in the spring. Annual ryegrass, on the other hand, releases nitrogen in time for the corn to use efficiently. And it’s root mass creates more biomass in the soil, thus creating more food for worms and microbes, more organic matter and healthier soil.

Old Ways Fade as Cover Crops Gain Favor

Iowa isn’t known as an early adopter with cover crops. But according to an article in Farm Journal recently, more than half of the acres in production in that state are leased. So, while farmers themselves may choose to do what’s best for the soil, owners may be reluctant to invest.

Nonetheless, the article went on to say that about 25 percent of Iowa farmers claimed to be using cover crops, though most said the acres committed to the conservation tillage measure were small…usually less than 100 acres.

That’s great news, because it suggests that owners are beginning to see that investment in conservation tillage brings dividends. According to the article:

Researchers say that landowners could benefit economically from farmer adoption of conservation agriculture, which can reduce in varying degrees the use of fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, equipment and labor. Crop insurance provides another potential opportunity in light of evidence that conservation agriculture can increase crop resilience to weather threats such as droughts or floods.

In the article, reference was made to a 2010 study by the University of Illinois (another latecomer to the value of cover crops) that concluded that the jury is still out on whether cover crops increase yields for corn and soybean crops (we believe it is conclusive that they do). But the study did say that cover crops significantly increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, which indicates soil health.

…it does increase the amount of sequestered soil organic carbon. Soil organic carbon stock gains were 30% higher for no-till, 10% higher for chisel plowed and 18% higher for moldboard-plowed plots.

“This suggests that soil organic carbon stock losses from tillage, water erosion and some disturbance or mixing during no-till planting, aeration, nitrogen injection in corn years and mineralization were less than the soil organic carbon gain from the cover-crop treatment,” says U of I soil scientist Ken Olson.

Mike Plumer – Granddaddy of Modern-day Cover Crop Advocacy

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before we had met Mike Plumer, he already had more than a decade of advocacy and research into no-till farming and cover crops, especially annual ryegrass. At the time, Mike was an Extension Educator with the University of Illinois, a post he held for 34 years..

We, in Oregon, where 90 percent of the world’s ryegrass seed is grown, had no idea that Mike Plumer was about to give the industry of agriculture an immeasurable gift, while giving the annual ryegrass seed growers a new reason to get up in the morning.

Plumer, working with an innovative Hamilton County, Illinois farmer named Ralph “Junior” Upton, helped quantify the benefits of annual ryegrass in “siltpan” (Bluford) soil. Upton was concerned about the productivity on parts of his 1800 acre farm, where the compacted soil restricted the root growth of corn and soybeans. He wondered if going no-till and adding cover crops might improve productivity.

Plumer began testing on Upton’s farm and quickly discovered what we in Oregon didn’t know – that annual ryegrass roots grow through and permeate compacted soil. Better than that, the roots then extend downwards to a much as five feet, creating new pathways to moisture and nutrients for corn and bean crops to follow.

Since 2004, Upton has seen dramatic changes in his corn yields., according to a USDA profile on him. He says no-till saves him around $15 an acre. Using cover crops costs $8-$20 dollars an acre but it is well worth it. The amount of organic matter in Upton’s soils started at less than 1 percent (.81). That level is now up to 3 or 4 percent. “And that’s exactly what I needed for my soils on those fields,” Upton said.

Since then, Plumer has experimented all over the Midwest (as well as contributing to agriculture internationally) and become the best known cover crop advisor in the country. Below are a couple of very informative power point presentations developed by Plumer, which outline both the benefits and the precautions of annual ryegrass and other cover cropping system. Visit the annual ryegrass by clicking here.

Managing Annual Ryegrass

Cover Crops in Illinois: Why Use Them?