Cover crop

And so they're kind of testing some things, but they don't, like he said, every time in the past, they've tried to wait until the crops are off because they don't want to smash the crops.

Um, And he said, by the time everything, you know, the crops were off, it was too late to establish the cover crop.

And so he's like, there's really not been a way to do it to where the cover crop's solid by the time winter

comes.

What seed were you spreading? Clover.

I told him as soon as they harvest the beans, I want to know because I want to go back and see.

Yeah.

That was the same way with the corn, the stuff I did, you know, cover crop on corn.

But before we hear from Alistair and Steven Aldous on fungicides, tillage, and harvesting, I spent some time with George to discuss the latest thinking on cover crop use, particularly given the likelihood of more dry springs in the years ahead.

[upbeat music] I'm very pleased to be joined by Georgina Barrett.

We're here talking about cover crops.

It's the right time of year, and hopefully growers that are interested in putting cover crops in have had a chance to have a look at some of our literature that we have on the website.

But as we have the, the font of all knowledge in front of me here, let's make a start.

So, George, what are the implications of all this dry weather? Should we have cover crops or not?

That's such a good question, and one we keep getting asked at the moment.

So it's difficult prioritizing on farm.

[laughs]

And, and so at the first meeting, I gave her a copy of my cover crop, uh, cover cropping book, and, uh, she cordially thanked me, and I said, "Well, no, thank you for all you, what you do." The...

In that second meeting, she was waving this book in front of everybody and saying, "Every time he says Western Canada, think Western Australia.

Every time he says overwintering, think over summering."

Uh, Reason Press is, uh, the, the, the printer that I worked with, but it's on Amazon.

Um, if they wanna get ahold of me I can, I can get 'em copies.

Um, yeah, it's, uh, the, the, the, the cover cropping book that, uh, you guys did, another really good resource.

Uh, so if you can get ahold of Keith and get his book also.

We're almost about as far north as they really take off.

I mean, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of our listeners much further north than we are that do a lot with cover crop.

If you do, you've got to start so early in the season, then if we're not careful, especially in corn, you can start getting more, you get growth down in the leaves.

You start, all of a sudden now we get stuff, we can get some ear molds, different things like that.

They're really a double crop.

We're very fortunate with our feedlot to be able to utilize the forage out of some of those.

And the ground that we already have cover crops seeded on is gonna get chopped.

So it's gonna be some of the first fields completely taken off.

We have a couple of news items as we head into the Labor Day weekend.

First, a survey shows continued growth in cover crop use.

The 2026 National Cover Crop Report indicates growing interest in cover crops among farmers.

The survey found cover crop users planted an average of nearly 398 acres in 2026, and and expect to exceed 400 acres next year.

Nearly half of the respondents reported more than 10 years of experience using cover crops.

The survey conducted by the Conservation Technology Information Center, USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, and the American Seed Trade Association included responses from 657 farmers, across 46 states and Puerto Rico.

Researchers noted that cover crop use is often flexible rather than continuous, with many farmers adjusting acreage based on economics, weather, labor, availability, and crop rotations.

More than 73 percent of farmers who have never used cover crops say they would consider trying them.

I'm standing in the shade at the edge of the field by the river.

I'm just going for a walk tonight and I'm really curious about this cover crop.

And you can tell from the house that it's up and it's really nice to see it up close.

I guess oats or barley, I'm not sure which, probably the barley.

It's a, it looks really uniform.

Like I always wonder, Oh, is this going to be streaky or what's this going to be like? But, um, as it just, it's a hundred percent, it just looks really great, super even, and it's really dense.

It's going to be a high biomass cover crop for sure.

So that's really nice to see.

I had five bags, five 50-pound bags from last year of just straight oats and barley, like 80% or 80 pounds per acre of barley and 20 pounds per acre of oats.

And then I've got 45 bags here of blended cover crop seed, and that's, uh, gonna be put on...

I g- I've, I've got it at 16 and a half acres.

It's around 17 acres, I'd say.

So that's good.

Crisis averted.

What's the price on this? This cover crop seed is $1,358 I think it was.

So it's a big deal to make sure it gets on properly and that in addition I guess the tillage, the diesel and all the maintenance and stuff that goes along with the tillage.

Episode 84 was just released.

It is the third in a three-part series called Cover Crop Conversations.

and we'll hear again from three farmers.

This time, they'll provide advice about the hard lessons they've learned over the decades, and more importantly, the practical things someone knew, or even experienced for that matter, can and likely should deploy.

Adam Dahmer farms in deep southern Illinois, not so far from the Ohio River.

Brent Fowler's farm sits halfway between the Illinois and the Mississippi rivers in McDonough County, and Greg Thorne farms in the driftless region of the northwestern corner of the Prairie State in Joe Davies County.

Today, we'll hear their final thoughts on using cover crops, as explored in the webinar, and some down-to-earth practical management advice.

We'll start with seeding a cover crop.

Like there's, um, poplar trees up there and they're, they're really something else for, um, propagating, uh, with the roots underground and just expanding their, their, um, uh, area, uh, by growing sap or like new trees, um, from roots, uh, along the fence line.

So anyway, I had tons of, tons of roots with the chisel plow and, and some of them were maybe, say like two inches in diameter so pretty significant and they kind of bunged up the chisel plow and and i started raking so i'd have to stop and dump and clear out all this uh all these roots it took me i don't know to do that section it took me probably 45 minutes to do two passes it was a pain in the butt but hadn't been done in a long time so those two things have to be fixed up before i do anything else and also there's some ash trees maybe five of them along by the river that are dead and i want to cut them and chop them up for firewood before uh before i put a cover crop in that field um next step in there is going to be the disc again To level and knock down the clods of dirt that the chisel plow brought up.

And then I think I'm just going to broadcast the cover crop.

And I ordered one from Courtney's and it's ready to go.

It's actually in bags, 46, 50-pound bags.