Still baffled on cover crops

[furrowtickler]

Fella had a cover crop in last year, German millet, tillage radish, oats, annual ryegrass, peas. It caught a lot of snow over the winter.

This year it had triticale on it and there was another trit field nearby.

CC field did about 10 bushels an acre more.

But

He’s not convinced just because of the extra dicking around.

He doesn’t have cattle so had it offered up for neighbours to cut and bale but they were lowballing him and couldn’t make time for it so he said screw it, sprayed it out, then broke it up this spring, which would have exposed it to the heat and evaporation this May.

Meanwhile if it was this year that CC would be gold for cow feed and he wouldn’t have the extra work, just extra income.

That can be an issue with no livestock. You need a very reliable livestock producer to make it work.
Even getting just straw bales done can end up a mess with broken bales , twine , bales left out , not getting paid ……
Most simply don’t have time to deal with some of those situations on top everything else that must be done on time. Spraying , fall work and fertilizing . Some do lots , some do very little . Each area and farm very different.
Weed control would become very challenging I would think with cover crops ?

[Blaithin]

Weed control would become very challenging I would think with cover crops ?

Yes, he’s picky with what he uses since they’re a seed farm. I believe it’s fall rye that he won’t touch because it’s a disaster with volunteers after.

[TASFarms]

What about radish with peas like David Brandt was doing.
Seeding rate definitely plays a big factor in drought survival.
There is quorum sensing among multi species and water cycle is different too.
Is yield the best way to rate how successful something is? I got asked that question last winter. The more I think about it the answer is no. A refractometer. Will tell you more what’s going on. There are other ways to measure what’s going on

[bucket]

There is also the fact they are supposed to sequester carbon? Not sure of that but if true it should be somehow linked to the price on pollution that the phucktards in Ottawa keep harping on about. Carbon farming could become lucrative if government ever recognizes the benefit we provide!

[13stripe]

if you have a seeding window winter wheat adds benefits like a cover crop with weed suppression and weather window risk mitigation.

[poorboy]

Cover crops are really designed for areas of the world where the ground sits idle for 1-4 months at a time, but the ground is not frozen.

Not really designed for most of western canada where we are seeding 10 days after the ground thaws out and ground freeze up comes 14 days after harvest ends.

[poorboy]

I think the biggest problem with CCs, besides ideally having livestock, is you start hearing about them when it’s dry/drought. Hear little about them when it’s wetter.

So if you try them then they’re more likely to fail, like anything else in a drought, and then people are soured to them. Well they didn’t work!

But when moisture is good nobody wants to waste acres on a cover crop.

When its dry is usually an early harvest that allows time to seed a cover crop. Usually too dry to grow a cover crop, so you are correct.

When it is wet there is no time to get a cover crop seeded before freeze up

[furrowtickler]

Tried winter wheat , problem here was several things .
1 the only stubble it worked well on was canola stubble , by far the least winter kill
So we seeded some canola early to get it off on time to seed winter wheat before early sept
Worked a few years but then spring frosts screwed us on the early seeded canola thus pushing back maturity and made the window impossible to do in the middle of harvest
That brings up the other issue , manpower at critical harvest window.
We were all gun hoe for a few years but logistics eventually was a killer .
Then you do everything right and still get winter kill .
Recently seeding these new hrsw varieties early and giving them full fertility gives us as much return as the best winter wheat without all the extreme stress during the generally short harvest window . Also 8/10 years it’s simply too dry to get any crop to establish in late august to early September here .
But when it worked it was great , 100 bus dry wheat before end august and it was all gone and cash at hand

[furrowtickler]

It’s like most things , it should work on paper 9/10 years but Mother Nature and simple reality it works maybe 2/10 .
Tis the nature of farming in dry land Sask

[mustardman]

Lots of volunteer lentils, durum, etc growing in SW sask fields this fall due to POOR crops being harder to keep in the combine.
We used to hit it r-up in fall but weve changed our thinking to letting it grow and getting some soil biology out of the Living roots.