Tag Archives: aerial seeding of cover crops

Researchers Experimenting with Very Early Seeding of Cover Crops

Agronomy researchers in Pennsylvania and Quebec, Canada, are finding success with planting annual ryegrass and other cover crops early in the late spring, when corn is about knee high (“lay-by time”).

The more traditional time to plant annual ryegrass is either immediately after harvest or just before harvest. In both cases, cover crops are weather dependent…they need enough water to germinate and enough growing time before a killing frost to get established. More farmers are aerial seeding annual ryegrass just before harvest, which give it extra days or weeks to establish. Aerial seeding also frees up farmers during an already busy harvest time.

But few have tried seeding annual ryegrass in the late spring, thinking the shade of the corn would stifle growth and the heat of the summer would suffocate it. But over a three year trial in Quebec, the annual ryegrass established in the spring and, because it is shade tolerant, managed to stay alive throughout the summer. Then, once the corn was harvested, the fall weather gave the annual ryegrass all the daylight it needed to thrive.

In Pennsylvania, researchers are working with a new piece of equipment that will seed the cover crop, while also applying herbicide (for residual annual weeds) and fertilizer for the corn.

With a longer growing season, annual ryegrass will better survive harsh winters, sending down deeper roots.

More testing on this seeding method is necessary to prove its value elsewhere, but the results are promising.

 

Dan Towery and Jamie Scott Present at OSU Conservation Tillage Conference

Earlier this week, more than 900 attendees at the annual Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference (Ada, OH) heard from more than 60 presenters on an exhaustive array of topic dealing with improving soil, reducing nutrient leaching and improving harvest yields.

Dan Towery and Jamie Scott presented in separate workshops in a day-long intensive on cover crops. Towery, together with Nick Bowers (an Oregon seed grower), Clem Bowman and Matt VanTilburg (no-till farmers) talked about managing annual ryegrass. While some still imagine this cover crop to be difficult to kill, VanTilburg dispelled that notion. According to Towery, VanTilburg said: “I never spray annual ryegrass (for a burndown in the spring) when the nighttime temperature falls below 50 degrees.” That’s a simple solution, Towery added, but not everybody will have ideal temperatures leading up to corn planting. For more information on management tips for controlling annual ryegrass, visit the annual ryegrass site by clicking here.

Jamie Scott, a Pierceton, IN farmer and cover crop innovator, was on a cover crop panel earlier in the afternoon and then presented later on his strategy for planting 35,000 acres of cover crops each year. Most of that acreage is in annual ryegrass, and all of it is aerial seeded by plane. Towery said that, based on comments by farmers in the northern corn belt, aerial seeding by plane or with high-clearance equipment is preferable simply because of the timing. It’s important to get good fall growth with annual ryegrass to give it the vigor needed to withstand winter temperatures. Planting after harvest is risky because early frost could then lead to the cover crop doing poorly.