Tag Archives: deep rooting

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.

 

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.

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?

Farmers, Environmental Organizations and the Feds Chorus the Benefits of Cover Crops

What doesn’t stay on farmlands can easily end up in nearby waterways and in the air we breathe.

Image result for photos cover crops and water

 

Cover crops like annual ryegrass have become friends of the environment. Imagine living in an era when farmers and environmental advocates are standing side to side to champion cover crops.

  • Green Lands, Blue Waters is an effort to save the Great Lakes, major U.S. rivers and the Gulf of Mexico from pollutants that are killing our fresh water.
  • The Sierra Club has goals about how agriculture must be carried out in an environmentally sound manner. Among them, number 7 from the top is this: Agriculture must promote the use of cover crops and perennial crops to protect soils from erosion and protect water resources from nutrient runoff and leaching.
  • The federal Environmental Protection Agency says this: Growing cover crops is a beneficial practice to reduce nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural fields and improve water quality. Cover crops also increase soil health through enhancing soil organic matter content. 

Finally, until recently, crop insurance was in jeopardy when farmers decided to protect their land with annual ryegrass or another cover crop. But, because of the results of improved soil biology and crop productivity, because of pressure from the agricultural and environmental communities, the laws have now been changed to allow crop insurance on cover crops.

Show up with results…and you can move mountains…well, in this case, fix unhealthy soils and weak profits, while saving the purity of our fresh water and  air.

 

Feed the World? Feed the Soil First

The American Dust Bowl was a reminder about taking care of the soil. Yet here we are only 75 years beyond that deadly scourge and we find that the soil is still taken for granted.

Cover crops are an inexpensive way to replenish the soil. Here are some benefits to consider:

  • Keeping something green on the fields year ’round will keep the soil in place. Reduce or eliminate erosion. Reduce or eliminate topsoil being removed by wind. Annual ryegrass along the nation’s waterways would greatly reduce the dire problems in the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico and many other places, because of agricultural runoff.
  • The roots of annual ryegrass penetrate deep into the soil, breaking up compaction, creating millions of channels that allow other crops to follow.
  1. Corn roots can’t penetrate compaction. So, in dry years, corn suffers because the roots hit the compaction and then go laterally instead of deeper. Annual ryegrass roots extend to depths of 5 feet or more over the winter, passing right through compacted layers.
  2. When ryegrass is killed off in the spring, the mass of roots becomes organic matter, food for all kinds of critters that live mostly below ground.
  3. Once those channels open up, rainfall and snow melt can more easily be absorbed into the soil. Corn and other cash crops can find moisture and nutrients in deeper soil.
  • Cover crops, both the live plants and the decaying residue, are fodder for many life forms, including microorganisms, that are beneficial for soil health.

For more information about all these things, visit our website, or download a comprehensive guide to growing annual ryegrass.

Commodity Prices Tied to Cover Crop Usage?

Corn prices having fallen from $8/bu to about $3.50 has impacted farmers use of cover crops, at least some of them, according to Nick Bowers, a grass seed grower in Oregon (http://kbseedsolutions.com/)

Those new to cover crops are the ones taking a second look, he said. Considering all the inputs one must prioritize, cover crop seed might not make the list after fuel, fertilizer and pesticides.

Talking to hundreds of farmers at Midwest farm shows and field days, Bower finds that those who have been planting acreage with cover crops the past five years are not deterred by the drop in corn prices. “They’ve seen the value in cover cropping: improved soil structure and deeper moisture levels, the reduction of nitrogen inputs and the yield bumps they get with corn and beans,” Bowers said.

It takes three to five years planting annual ryegrass or other cover crops to begin to see a consistent benefit that translates into higher yield and profits.

Here’s a recent report from the Conservation Tillage Information Center (CTIC) about the value of cover crops, based on interviews with more than 3000 Midwest farmers. (The specific yield differences are discussed in pages 23 – 27).

Beating Compaction with Annual Ryegrass

1671_NNTC_JL_0116.jpg 

An article this week in No-Till Farmer, about a well-attended seminar at the recent National No-Till Conference. Click here for the whole article.

Beating Compaction

While radishes get a reputation for being a compaction buster, Hans Kok and Dan Towery say annual ryegrass is probably the No. 1 cover crop for resolving compaction.

Kok, coordinator of the Indiana Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, says annual ryegrass does a better job in the long run of breaking up compaction layers because its fine root system is able to cover a larger area.

“Radishes have that fine root network too, but it’s usually that one tuber that goes through,” he explains.

On compacted glacial-till soil in Indiana, Towery, a no-till consultant with Ag Conservation Solutions in Lafayette, Ind., dug a hole in April where there was 9-inch-tall annual ryegrass. He found its roots went 51 inches deep.

One of the most extreme cases of compaction they saw was in southern Illinois on hard, fragipan soils. Kok says the growers there had 18 inches of topsoil, and their corn and soybean roots couldn’t go any deeper.

But 5 years of annual ryegrass started to break through that compaction layer, and now the growers have 3 feet of topsoil for their corn and soybeans, Kok says.

Kentucky Researchers Praise Annual Ryegrass

Annual Ryegrass Dispatches with Fragipan Problems, They Say.

Midwest  farmers who have been working with annual ryegrass for some years as a cover crop know that annual ryegrass busts up fragipan (and other soil compactions). They have probably seen for themselves how annual ryegrass as a cover crop then allows corn and soybeans roots to access deeper soil moisture and nutrients.That boosts production, as we’ve seen now for about 20 years.

Mike Plumer, a long-time pioneer in no-till ag and cover crop systems, discovered the deep rooting aspects of annual ryegrass back in the 1990s, when he was still working as an agronomist for the Univ. of Illinois Extension. He and his cooperating farmers also discovered that the roots grow right through compacted soils. In subsequent years, they noticed a yield increase in crops in those same fields.

In a recent article in No-Till Magazine, researchers at the University of Kentucky did both laboratory and field trials using annual ryegrass on soils with fragipan. Here are a number of paragraphs from that article.

Soil fragipans exist in 2.7 million acres in Kentucky and in 50 million acres in the U.S. In Kentucky, the average depth of the fragipan layer in the soil is about 20-24 inches. This results in a shallow soil that limits crops’ yield potential due to low water-holding capacity. This is especially true during dry growing seasons or droughts. These same soils are easily saturated with water in the winter, which limits yields on cool-season crops such as wheat.

 Breaking down the fragipan would increase the soil depth and should significantly boost grain yields in the state, similar to the boost farmers received from implementing no-till production.

Four years into the research project, Grove and fellow UK soil scientists Lloyd Murdock, Tasios Karathanasis and Chris Matocha have found that annual ryegrass and some chemical combinations appear to break down the fragipan.

 In the lab, Karathanasis submersed chunks of fragipan in several different solutions, one of which was a ryegrass extract.

“Within 2-4 weeks we began to see the ryegrass extract break down the fragipan,” he said. “Not only does ryegrass have a deep root system that can penetrate the pan, but it also releases a chemical or chemicals that can help break it.”

 UK soil scientists have planted annual ryegrass as a cover crop in grain fields followed by either corn or soybeans for the past three growing seasons with the fourth round now in the ground. The first year when annual ryegrass was followed by corn, there was no yield difference. The second year when it was followed by soybeans, there was a 25% yield increase in the soybeans. The third year, the researchers followed the ryegrass with soybeans again and there was a slight, but not significant, yield increase.

UK researchers traveled to Hamilton County, Illinois, to take soil samples from a field that had been planted in a ryegrass cover crop since 2000 and followed every year with no-till corn. Mike Corn roots in ARG 6-06 StarkeyPlumer had used a part of this field in some of his earlier cover crop studies.

They found the fragipan layer to be much deeper in the soil profile in the fields with ryegrass. More encouraging news came when the farmer told them about his yields.

“When the study started in 2000, the farmer’s yields were 15 bushels an acre below the county average. His fields are now averaging 30 bushels more per acre than the county average,” Murdock said. “We really do not know how well this field represents our situation in Kentucky, but this gives us significant encouragement that we are beginning to prove that annual ryegrass is effective and will give significant results with accumulative years of a ryegrass cover crop.”

Field Day for Cover Crops in Illinois

MO-Matt-Volkman-NRCS-ARG-field-shot.jpgA cover crop field day has been scheduled at two locations in Illinois’ Coe Township, convened by the Rock Island Soil & Water Conservation District.(See below for specifics)

According to an article in the Dispatch-Argus paper in Moline, IL, cover crops continue to prove their value, both in building soil health and improving profits for growers. Here’s a segment of the article (if you want to read the whole thing, click here)

“Cover crops lengthen the growing season of live plant material with many winter annual species like winter wheat, cereal rye and annual ryegrass maintaining live root systems under the soil surface during the winter months providing food for soil microbes to stay active.  Currently, idle crop fields become biological deserts in which soil microbes reduce in population with limited food resources.  Some covers like cereal rye and annual ryegrass also provide biological weed control in crop fields during the early portion of the growing season.  This helps reduce the amount of pesticides that need to be used.”

“Those benefits include reduced soil erosion, enhancement of soil biology through increased microbial activity and the development of higher organic levels, improved water quality from reduced run-off along with the capture of un-used phosphorus and nitrogen making those nutrients available for the next cropping season.”

Location of the field days:

Wed. Nov 5th – DePauw farm, located at 122nd Ave N, in Port Byron, IL.

Thurs. Nov. 6th. – the Anderson Farm located ½ mile east of Sherrard High School or west of the junction of 176th Ave W and 63rd St. W.

For more information and reservations call the Rock Island SWCD office at (309) 764-1486 ext. 3.