Category Archives: Dan’s Digs

Dan Perkins – A New Ryegrass Team Member

“Cover Crop Guy” Dan Perkins was still in college when the Oregon Ryegrass Commission began its cover crop initiative in the Midwest. He recently became the newest member of the ryegrass cover crop team, and his youthful exuberance and depth of practical knowledge will be of great use to us and those who wish to know more about cover crops.

Since graduating in 2001 or 02, he’s received a dual Masters degree in Environmental and Political Science. An enduring desire to farm materialized when he and wife, Julie, moved to DeMotte, Indiana with their first son, purchased 20 acres and started Perkins’ Good Earth Farm.

While the organic farm business was growing roots, Dan went to work for Jasper County Soil and Water Conservation District, where he earned a Certified Crop Adviser designation.

After a decade at the SWCD, he decided the family (now with a daughter and three sons) and the business (with a successful Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, client base) needed more of his attention.

Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people sitting, hat, child and outdoor

We’re very glad to have Dan join our team as a consultant. The loss of Mike Plumer a couple years ago was hard, and Dan won’t be able to fill his shoes. But, in addition to other team members Dan Towery and Mark Mellbye, Dan brings new perspectives from a different generation of farmers.

Click here to see a website he’s developed with his wife for their farm.

Click here to see an example of a video on one aspect of cover cropping: interseeding.

 

Cattle Ranchers Talk Cover Crops and Forage on Their Feedlots and Farms

Shane and Shawn Tiffany are young, energetic Kansas ranchers, who earned their stripes working for other ranchers before starting their own company in the early 2000s.

Cattle and cover crops

Tiffany Cattle Company is small by comparison, but the men have already begun to attract attention for their integrity, attention to detail and innovation.

Next month, Shawn will be a key presenter at the 2019 National Cover Crop Summit, March 20-21, 2019 — a free-to-attend online event featuring a series of seminars by experts across the cover crop spectrum.

It may come as a surprise to some, but the old fashioned feedlot has changed. Ranchers seek pasture grazing to bring healthier diets, as well as lowering their costs for supplemental feed. Shawn’s company raises 32,000 cattle at a time in two locations west of Topeka. They’ve found that cover crops are both sensible and profitable, they also help to rebuild prairie soil depleted from years of tillage and compaction.

In a search of the internet on the subject of cattle and cover crops, there is a surprising diversity in usage throughout the country. Here’s a story from a 1,100 acre ranch/farm in South Dakota, where Jared Namken raises Angus beef. He says rotational grazing allows him to use the entire acreage most of the year, even with heavy snow cover. He says the cattle will dig through the snow to get to the tasty vegetation.

Nancy Peterson and her husband graze cattle on about 4,000 acres of native grasslands in Nebraska, and  farm 2,300 acres. They use little to no irrigation and the area is dry; annual precipitation is less than 16 inches.

Getting back to the 2019 National Cover Crop Summit, March 20-21, 2019 , here are some of the other notable presenters:

  • Steve Groff, Common mindsets for cover croppers, cover crop consultant, Pennsylvania
  • Tom Cotter, Interseeding cover crops for grazing benefits, f

    armer, Minnesota

  • Paul DeLaune, Extending cover crop benefits in continuous wheat and cotton rotations, Texas A&M Univ.
  • Rob Myers, How cover crops impact farm profits, SARE/USDA
  • Erin Silva, Rolling cover crops in no-till systems, Univ. of Wisconsin Organic Ag.
  • Damon Reabe, Seeding cover crops aerially, even in spring, Cover crop applicator
  • Chris Teachout, Alternative row spacing and biomass-building with cover crops, farmer, Iowa

More Buzz about the Value of Cover Crops

“The good news is, soil will improve every year you grow a cover crop,” said Dan Towery, a crop consultant, and owner of Ag Conservation Solutions, living in West Lafayette, Ind.. “How soon you see measurable yield improvement depends on field history and what limiting factors, such as weather, are present in a year. For example, soils that are low in organic matter will benefit faster from cover crops.”

His comments are part of a longer article in the Farm Journal online. Click here to view the whole article.

Carbon sequestration graphicKen Ferrie is also interviewed for the article. Ferrie, Farm Journal’s Field Agronomist said “It might take many years to make big changes in soil health, but in some situations, you might see improvement (earlier than that.). For example, he cited a study in which annual ryegrass as a cover crop improved carbon content, bulk density and water infiltration IN THE FIRST YEAR!.

“As with any new practice, you’ll be eager to determine whether cover crops are having an impact,” Ferrie says. “Your soil physical provides a benchmark so you can follow up later and see if soil health is improving.”

Another farmer and rancher, Gabe Brown, talked about the benefits of cover crops in North Dakota. “You should use covers to address your resource concerns,” advises Brown. For the past two decades, he’s used cover crops to increase diversity, build organic matter, and improve water infiltration and the water-holding capacity of his soils.

“We look at each field separately and determine what the resource concern of each field is,” he says.

But make sure you choose a cover crop with a lot of forethought and advice from others with experience. Otherwise, you may be inviting failure or added problems. “Cover crops take more management, not less,” said Mike Plumer, who died last Christmas after dedicating 50 years to soil health and farmer education. “Farmers have to learn how cover crops react on their own fields.”

Plumer advised producers to start small with cover crops – perhaps a 20 acre plot or so, before “before incorporating on the entire farm.”

Mike Plumers Legacy Connected to Annual Ryegrass

mike-plumerWhen Oregon growers of annual ryegrass began wondering where this inexpensive plant might be of added value in agriculture, they looked at the Midwest, where many millions of acres are calling out for remedies to heal depleted soil.

Mike Plumer, in the early 1990s, was an ag resource educator working for the University of Illinois. It was the connection the Oregon growers would mark as the starting point for launching a new effort in soil conservation. It was a turning point in the corn and soybean industry, as well as in the Oregon grass seed industry.

It became obvious quickly that annual ryegrass was a radically root active plant and that, during mild winters, would sink roots deep into the Midwest soil. In optimum conditions, the new cover crop would stabilize soil from erosion. We learned, through Mike’s efforts to secure test farms on which to try out annual ryegrass, that it was good for increasing organic matter, mining nutrients, suppressing weeds, suppressing cyst nematodes in beans, reducing the amount of nitrogen added to corn, increasing soil friability with increased infiltration of precipitation, and so on and so on…it’s a very long list.

But what Mike was instrumental in helping Oregon growers figure out was this:

  • The “old” varieties of annual ryegrass (Gulf especially) was ill suited to withstand Midwest winters. At his urging, Oregon growers invested heavily in time and research cost to develop new varieties that are winter hardy.
  • The other early issue was ryegrass management. If let go, the plant could become a weed, and one that developed resistance to herbicides necessary to kill it in the spring. Mike helped farmers and crop advisors understand the science that drove a change in farm management. Because of his keen observations, his stern warnings and his ever-present assistance, the potential problem has been avoided…farmers took the warnings seriously and adopted necessary management techniques to control the cover crop while extracting the maximum benefits.
  • In more recent  years, Mike had been vocal about the trend towards more cover crop “mixes,” using annual ryegrass with other varieties. It proved ill advised to mix certain ones together, simply because each breaks dormancy at different times in the spring. Thus, achieving an effective kill of all cover crop vegetation was problematic, because the plants need to be out of dormancy and in active growth to absorb the herbicide.

Aside from his tireless inquiry into best practices in the field, Mike was also a tireless advisor for those seeking to improve crop production while aiding the soil’s improved health.

And among many of Mike’s assets was patience, perhaps learned in his many years as an educator…or fisherman. He was patient with those too stubborn to change, just as he was patient with those wanting to race ahead without science as their guide.

He will be missed for all that he represented in one fine package. The silver lining, if there has to be one, is that he leaves in his wake a lot of room for those who learned at his feet to grow into his shoes.

 

“Give it to Mikey. Mikey Will Know What to Do!”

No-Till Farmer magazine founder Frank Lessiter said this about Mike Plumer, after hearing about his death late in December, while he was awaiting word on a possible lung transplant.

“Mike was a great friend of No-Till Farmer and a staunch advocate for helping farmers succeed with cover crops.He was a tireless teacher. He would stand in the hallways at our meeting for hours on end taking questions from farmers and helping them find answers to their cover crop challenges.”

No-Till Farmer has also published online a link to the many articles Mike authored or co-authored, as part of his effort to educate farmers about cover crops and the intricacies of managing them.

Mike Plumer, Cover Crop Hero, is Gone, but Not Forgotten

“When we lost Mike, we lost a champion, a champion in innovative agriculture in the U.S., North America and other points of the world, primarily Africa.”

On Christmas Day, Mike Plumer died. The quote above is from a tribute written about him by Bryan Ostlund, administrator of the Oregon Seed Growers Commission.

Here’s a link to the whole article, which will be published this spring in the Oregon Seed magazine. 

mike-plumer

 

Towery and Kok to Present at NNTC on Cover Crop Variety

The upcoming 2018 National No-Till Conference in Louisville, KY (Jan. 9 – 12) will feature some familiar faces, but with them comes new information about how to make cover crops work for you. Here are two of the classroom presentations you may wish to schedule.

Towery and Kok NNTC 2018

 

Dan Towery and Hans Kok have been educating people on cover crop choices for close to 20 years. Towery helped to introduce  “interseeding” of cover crops into standing corn and beans about six years ago. This year, Iowa farmer Loran Steinlage will discuss his experience with interseeding, and the increases in crop production as a result.

Photo - interseeder from Iowa 2017

 

Here’s a link to the whole 2018 NNTC program

Trick or Treat – Annual Ryegrass as a Cover Crop Delivers Both

Growing a cover crop like annual ryegrass has immense benefits, as you have no doubt learned. Thus the “treat” this Halloween is in the form of tangible revenue that growers receive from annual planting of cover crops:

  • Improved soil conditions – without tillage, soil health continues to grow. With cover crops, that growth is accellerated
  • Fewer inputs – less tillage, fewer passes over the soil, less compaction and fewer dollars spent on fertilizers, like nitrogen
  • Deeper soil profile, opened up by the deep, penetrating roots of annual ryegrass, allows better access to moisture in dry years and migration of deeper layers of nutrients
  • More profit – when the soil is happy, crops are happier, and production increases.

Halloween photo

The “trick” of annual ryegrass, as with any cover crop, is learning the details of new management techniques. The seeding of cover crops and the management of annual ryegrass in particular, in the spring, are very important. If managed poorly, annual ryegrass can become a pest, a weed. But as you learn the tricks, management becomes almost second nature.

For more information about growing and managing annual ryegrass, click here.

Thinking about Annual Ryegrass This Year?

It’s still not too late to consider starting a cover crop on your acreage this year. In fact, August may be an ideal time to broadcast seed.

In years past, the use of fixed wing aircraft to apply seed has been increasingly popular. Fast and effective, you can put seed on 1500 acres in a day if you have the seed located close to your fields.

Jamie Scott owns a 2000 acre farm and he started using annual ryegrass more than 10 years ago. He now  helps newcomers get seed on their field by contracting the purchase and application of seed by plane. This year, his company arranged for more than 100,000 acres of cover crop seed to fields owned by more than 400 growers.

Here is a quick reference guide to questions about application by plane.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAScott said that the cost is comparable to broadcasting seed with high clearance equipment or by drilling after harvest. The advantage of aerial application is that you fly it on before harvest, rather than afterwards. That gives you at least an additional month for the cover crop to establish.

The proper time to apply seed depends on a few things – crop maturity is the most important. Condition of the soil and the amount of rainfall are the others.

For more information on aerial seeding, check out information on our website, here. You can also watch a video on the subject, by clicking here.

Or, you can also download a management brochure that explains elements of the process.

In the end, knowing someone who applies cover crops each year is a good resource for getting answers that will pertain to your farm.

 

Interseeding Annual Ryegrass into Corn

The increasingly popular practice of interseeding annual ryegrass and other cover crops into spring corn continues to receive attention. Why?

  • In the Northern Corn Belt, growers find efficiency to seed cover crops in the spring, rather than the fall, when the window of opportunity for planting is very slim – between harvest and onset of winter.
  • The annual ryegrass gets established in young corn, but goes nearly dormant when the corn foliage creates too much shadow for more cover crop growth beneath it.
  • Interseeding annual ryegrass does not compete with the corn for nutrients or moisture, given that it goes nearly dormant.
  • Once the harvest is complete in the fall, the annual ryegrass picks up where it left off in the spring. The fact that the cover crop is already well established increases the chances it will survive the winter weather.

2015 Interseeding MN

It’s important to interseed the cover crop into corn that is about knee high. Dan Towery, an expert in interseeding, says that you want to let the corn get at least to V4 stage before planting the ryegrass. Otherwise it might compete with the corn for sunlight.

For more information, you can contact Towery at this email address: dan@agconservationsolutions.com

To read the whole article, click here. The article begins on page 17.