Category Archives: Dan’s Digs

Mike Plumer 2012 Report on Annual Ryegrass and Other Cover Crops

“Why has there been such an increase in cover crops in recent years?” asked Mike Plumer at the Oregon Seed League meeting yesterday.

  • First, it’s about capturing the nutrients in the field, keeping nutrients from running off during winter and spring months. In a normal year, there can be 90 lb/ac of nitrate available for annual ryegrass or another cover crop to take up. In 2012, because of the drought, there was probably well over 100 lb/ac in many places. With the cost of nitrogen going to $1500 – $2000/ton, it’s easy math to see why cover crops make sense.
  • “Cover crops can double your yields,” Plumer said. Though rare, in a terrible weather year like 2012, there were lots of instances where farmers more than doubled their yields with annual ryegrass and other cover crops. The secret is rooting depth. Without cover crops, corn roots starve out quickly as they hit compacted layers. With annual ryegrass roots penetrating to beyond 6 feet, they allow channels for corn roots to follow.

Plumer’s caution to the group was in terms of cover crop seed quality. “There are about 7 varieties of annual ryegrass that are hardy enough to weather a Midwest winter,” he said. Because of the popularity of annual ryegrass, however, seed provided to unwary Midwest farmers may not be among those seven varieties. Plumer said it would be a tragedy to flood the Midwest with seed that won’t grow well. His advice to buyer’s;  beware…and ask lots of questions about the source and variety of seed. His advice to seed growers: make sure you’re sending us varieties that will withstand Midwest winter conditions.

 

Dan Towery Recalls the Early Days of Cover Crops

Back in the mid to late 1980s, Dan Towery got enthusiastic about cover crops. “Mainly, we were interested in reducing erosion but we were also looking at nitrogen fixation properties that could benefit corn planted into the residue,” he said.

But then, in the summer of 1988, the drought was much like it was this past summer (2012), and as Towery recalls, the results of “not knowing enough about cover crops” created a multiplier effect in the drought’s impact.”In order to give the hairy vetch the maximum time in the ground, to maximize the nitrogen fixation, farmers left the cover crop in the field until the 3rd week of May, when normal corn planting is the 3rd week of April.

“The vetch sucked too much moisture from the ground and the drought was made worse because of that decision,” Towery said. I said then: ‘I’m not promoting cover crops anymore!'”

But times and attitudes changed with the addition of annual ryegrass as a cover crop alternative in the early 90s.By the late 90s, Towery was working at the Conservation Tillage Information Center, promoting no-till mostly. Early results from Mike Plumer’s work with farmers in Illinois were producing promising results with annual ryegrass.

It wasn’t long before Towery was a believer again. In fact, he was an advisor working with the Nature Conservancy on a watershed enhancement project in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, where farmers were paid to use annual ryegrass to prevent field runoff.

“Look at the change in acceptance since then,” Towery said. “From a time where we paid farmers $500 to plant 10 acres of cover crops  (1998) to now, when we’re experiencing a shortage of annual ryegrass and other cover crop seed, because of the demand.”

Towery said that education has bee a key element in the popularity of cover crops. “And, an important element continues to be the caution about use of cover crops….you have to be willing to be a good manager of the cover crop, no matter which one you choose.”

Annual Ryegrass, Cover Crops in General are the Wave of Ag’s Future

Progressive Farmer magazine published an article by its Ag Policy Editor last week advocating the use of cover crops, especially this year, due to the potential for winter crops to sequester nitrates left in the field from the foreshortened corn crop season.

You can read the whole document here: Advocating for the Soil

Statistics indicate that less than 1% of farmers in the “Upper Mississippi River, Great Lakes and Missouri River basin” were planting cover crops in 2007. My belief, having seen firsthand the growth over the past decade, suggests that the increase in cover crop use since 2007 has absolutely gone off the charts.

I’ve been told that cover crop seed sales (and with annual ryegrass near the top of popular choices) doubled last year (2011) and tripled in the year before that.

Part of the increase has been publicity and the cost-sharing programs rolled out by various governmental agencies. In addition to cover crops being great for soil building, a lot of folks are looking at cover crops as the antidote to hypoxia in various bodies of waters: Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes and all the rivers feeding those massive bodies of water.

 

Annual Ryegrass Recommended for Forage & Cover Crop this Fall

Annual ryegrass was among the recommendations for forage this fall by the Where Food Comes From webside. The grass, already a popular cover crop in the US, can do double duty where farmers seek added food for livestock. Click here for full article...below is a paragraph from the article.

Late August to Early September Plantings
Spring oat, spring triticale, and annual ryegrass can also be planted from late August to mid-September, immediately after an early corn silage harvest. These later planting dates will produce lower yields (1500 to 3000 lbs dry matter/acre) and harvest will be delayed into months with poor drying conditions (November to early December), but would be an excellent option for grazing or green chopping. Forage quality will be very high with these later plantings – CP will range from 20 to 32%, NDF will be 30 to 38%, and NDF digestibility will be 75 to 85%. If an early spring forage harvest is desirable next year, winter triticale and winter rye should be included in mixture with the spring oat and spring triticale planted in late August and early September.

Some Rain, Too Late. Cover Crops May Help Protect Soil, Save Nutrients

The half-inch or so of rain in the Midwest this week has sprouted spirits, although with more warm weather forecast, the prospect for a reversal of fortunes on most corn crops is slim. The worst drought in more than 50 years has farmers mowing starved and stunted corn for sileage and bracing for similar hits with soybeans. (Make sure to check the nitrate levels in the corn stalks before saving it…too high a nitrate level can be fatal to livestock.) Even those able to salvage a corn crop this year will see vastly reduced yields.

Purdue’s Extension forage specialist Keith Johnson today recommended planting annual ryegrass, or another forage crop such as spring oat or forage turnip. Seeded early enough (August), farmers could get a grazing off the grass this fall, as well as next spring. Ryegrass would normally have a better chance of wintering over than oats or turnips.

Perhaps the only “silver lining” in the drought news is that there’s probably a lot of residual fertility in the soil that can be saved by planting a late summer cover crop, according to Nick Bowers, a seed grower in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The good news with annual ryegrass: it’s inexpensive, it’s a scavenger of excess N in the soil and, even if it doesn’t germinate this fall, it will sprout next spring. If normal rainfall picks up, aerial seeding will be adequate, but drilling is otherwise advised. For more on seeding, check out this page.

Looking for another silver lining? Iowa State University climatologist Owen Taylor said it appears that this weather pattern – similar to 1956 and 1988 – comes in 20 year cycles. It appears, Taylor said, that we’re headed back to a “normal” pattern with an El Nino forming. Keep your fingers crossed.

 

Cover Crops Won’t Help the Corn Today. But They Will for Next Year.

The summer of 2012 has already shown up as a total bust for some corn and soybean acres in the Midwest. Some counties have already been declared a disaster; some acres have been mowed or plowed under. To read a recent New York Times article about the severe drought and its impact click here:

Yesterday, an email from Mike Plumer, about the dire straits in Illinois.

My part of Illinois will be lucky to get 20 bu/a corn and right now soybeans are 4 leaves and blooming so there is little yield expected.   It is 107 again today.  Many double crop acres were not planted so that is a possible site for early cover crops.

The big issue is how RMA will address yield losses and what they will pay—and when they will release the farmer to destroy the crop.   Some areas have been “zeroed” out and farmers have already mowed the corn.   I have been north to south in the state and there are very few areas that will be normal yield, and [accepting a] 50 bu/a loss would be nice [as an alternative to a total loss].   Field at Springfield I estimated Tuesday at 45bu/a. corn.

Our moisture here came as a 60mph hail storm, quarter-sized hail off and on for an hour,,, about 1-2” deep plus 3-5” of rain in 20 minutes—it was 111 degrees when the hail started.   All soybeans gone, broken off at the ground and corn is very damaged.  At least there is some soil moisture.   I will replant plots tomorrow and start on some cover crops on my farm.

 

Successful Annual Ryegrass Burndown Recipe

Here are a few observations and comments on annual ryegrass burndown this year:

  1. ARG plants need to be actively growing for at least a week to ensure all plants are indeed actively growing
  2. To kill the annual ryegrass, I always recommend 1.25 lbs a.i./a of glyphosate
  3. Always recommend at least 1 pt 2,4-D
  4. Adding Basis , Sharpen or Canopy with the glyphosate worked well this year (some fields initially had about 95% kill with this combination  but after additional 5-7 days all annual ryegrass plants were dead). This also provide multiple modes of action. More work on timing and rates is needed.
  5. Adding atrazine or Callisto to the glyphosate (especially with cool conditions) will result in poor control of the annual ryegrass
  6. In a normal spring with cool temperatures  glyphosate doesn’t translocate well, so, the following is  recommended:
    1. Reduce carrier to 8-12 gal/ac
    2. Use AMS and also lower water pH to 4.5 to 5.5
    3. Spray on a sunny day if possible
    4. Stop spraying mid afternoon so that there is at least 5 hours of sunlight.

 

Yes, growers using annual ryegrass as a cover crop also have some additional management details to learn.  But it seems once they understand and believe these recommendations, then most of their problems also go away.

I have seen much lower broadleaf pressure on fields where growers are using cereal rye and annual ryegrass.  I have also observed these cover crops eliminating marestail (includging RR resistant marestail).

 

 

 

NW Indiana SWCD Research Report on Cover Crops including Annual Ryegrass

The Jasper/Newton Counties Soil and Water Conservation District report on cover crops (click here to see the whole report) is further proof of the efficacy of cover crops. Some highlights:

Here are the goals farmers (in their own words) are trying to accomplish:

  • Capture nitrogen
  •  Promote soil biology
  •  Improve soil quality
  •  Address compaction
  •  Reduce weed population
  •  Manure nutrient capture
  •  Prevent wind and water erosion
  •  Build organic matter
  •  Provide nitrogen credit
  •  Break hardpan layers
  •  Increase yields
  •  Reduce risk of drought
  •  Diversify rotation
  •  Be a steward

Pits dug, both in the fall after planting and again this spring, allowed a close look at how annual ryegrass and other cover crop varieties accomplished the task of breaking up compaction.Among the best, and no surprise here, was that annual ryegrass roots were found at depths of 3 to 4 feet.

Dan Perkins, the Watershed & Conservation Program Specialist who produced the report, also has some videos from the cover crop plots. Here’s one in which he shows off the fields with annual ryegrass, crimson clover and radish, and discusses the logic and process of successfully killing the cover crop in the spring.

Cover Crop Root Growth – Annual Ryegrass

Steve Berger did a trial of annual ryegrass this past winter. It was ideal soil, having been in no-till for 25 years. On one plot he planted cereal rye; on the other he compared the growth of four annual ryegrass varieties.

Iowa has lagged behind other Midwest states in adoption of cover crops. Berger’s farm, in SE Iowa, is an ideal place to test it out. In that respect, Berger is an early adopter for trying annual ryegrass.

The winter was unusually mild and, thus, all the annual ryegrass did well, as did the cereal rye (a grain, not a grass). The surprising thing, when he did a root depth analysis…the cereal rye roots went deeper into the soil than annual ryegrass. Usually, on poorer soils, the opposite it true: annual ryegrass roots sometimes go as deep as 60 inches over the winter, while cereal rye roots are much shallower.

Two theories. One, annual ryegrass roots seek nutrients and moisture. On the Berger farm, there was plenty of nutrients and moisture in the no-till soil, thus they didn’t need to work overtime to get nutrition. Secondly, he did the tests in early April, a couple weeks earlier than usual. Perhaps a couple more weeks of root growth would have added more root depth.

Another thing to consider in the next year…whether cover crops tend to do better after corn or soybeans. Corn is more demanding of nitrogen, and thus the amount of available nitrogen in the soil might impact the growth of a following cover crop, especially if nitrogen was not added.

 

Burndown of Annual Ryegrass – Details are Important

A Farm Journal article spells it out plainly and simply. Here’s a few paragraphs from that article. You can read the whole article by clicking here.

One of the cover crops that does double duty to achieve all of the above benefits is annual ryegrass. It comes with a caveat: using a cover crop such as annual ryegrass “involves a learning curve,” says Dan Towery, agronomy consultant with Ag Conservation Solutions in Lafayette, Ind. With an extensive and fibrous root structure, unlike other cover crops, annual ryegrass can be a challenge if you don’t do your homework and adjust to adverse weather conditions, he cautions. “You need to know the growth pattern of annual ryegrass and use the proper system to kill it.”

The biggest challenge in getting a good ryegrass kill is working with the weather, according to Mike Plumer, farmer and consultant with Conservation Agriculture near Creal Springs, Ill. Pay attention to the maturity stage of ryegrass and the ambient air temperature, Plumer advises.

Both consultants say annual ryegrass is ideally sprayed with glyphosate once the temperature gets above 50°F (when annual ryegrass actively starts growing) and before it reaches the first joint stage, or 7″ to 10″ tall. Ryegrass is easier to kill young, but there will be less mulch left on the ground. Larger plants (less than 16″) can be controlled with warmer expected temperatures, but wait too long to spray and the plants will be entering the boot stage, with the threat of seed production. Also, the plants are producing lignin in the stem at this stage, tying up nitrogen and making it unavailable to young plants, and residue decomposition is slowed.