Finding Time To Plant Cover Crops
Remember when I stated that conventional tillage leans to the cookie cutter side? Conservation tillage leans to the other side of the spectrum. This is not an overstatement. There are a hundred ways to skin a cat and one hundred and one ways to do cover crops and conservation tillage. Every farmer will find their own way. Every farmer can compile all the knowledge available and find what works on their own farm. Not my farm or the neighbor’s farm, but their own farm. Personally, I attended every seminar and field day I could make it to. It was and continues to be a lot of fun and is invigorating to me. My Daddy would say “It blows your frock up,” whatever that means.
It seemed to be a simple process to discover if cover crops are true and practical for our farm. When thinking about the process of choosing a cover crop two issues kept coming to mind.
First, there is expense not only in the cost of the seed but also in the planting operation. On the expense issue my thought was I am going to buy seed, I am going to plant that seed, then I am going to kill the plant that grew from the seed I bought and paid for, and I am not going to receive a thing in return. That sounded like a recipe for disaster, but we moved forward. I knew the USDA had a couple of programs that were designed to encourage conservation practices and cover crops were a component of these programs, so I signed up to participate. Over time my farm had grown from 700 acres to 1200 acres to 2000 acres. These programs only covered 300 or so acres so it was not going to help on most of our farm, but it was a start. The first year we planted 300 acres of Abruzzi rye as our cover crop.
This leads into the second issue of cover crops that kept raising its head as I played the different scenarios out in my mind: the lack of time and labor to actually get the cover crop planted. Farmers, especially southern farmers, will find getting the cover crop planted to be very challenging. Challenging to the point of deciding to just not plant the cover crop.
It is common for farms in our community to have a large number of cash crops. It is not unusual for a farm to grow wheat, double crop soybeans, full season soybeans, corn, cotton, and peanuts plus maybe a chicken, turkey, or hog operation thrown in just to make absolutely sure there are no idle hands which I hear is the devil’s workshop. On our first cover crop year the thought of chuckin’ this madness in the creek did cross my mind. Time was running out to get the cover crop in and we saw no light at the end of the tunnel for finding time to do it.
Our local ariel applicator had a pilot working for him here in South Carolina for the summer spray season. Bill was from Ohio and in conversation one day he shared that as soon as he finished his gig here in South Carolina, he was heading home to start seeding. Seeding? Seeding? What is seeding I asked? The pilot proceeded to tell me that the lion’s share of his work was fall seeding in Ohio. The pilot would mount a spreader under the hopper of his plane, fill the hopper with seed, and fly his pattern over the fields spreading the seed as he went. The timing of the spreading was such that the leaves were still on the soybean plants but were yellowing up and would fall off the bean plant shortly thereafter, covering the seed that had been flown on earlier.
He also told me there was a seed spreader over behind the hanger. A seed spreader over behind the hanger you say. Yes sir, over behind the hanger.
My next question was “Will this work in cotton?” He said that he had heard that it would. The timing would be to fly the cover crop on the fields a few days before defoliating the cotton. For a moment I thought about my daddy and what he would think about this. Would this be a no go because it did not cause enough sweating to be in Angus Graham Newton’s program? Was this a lazy man’s way? Whatever the answers to those questions were, I decided to plant my first cover crop by flying it on.
As it turned out the spreading was done, the leaves fell, then it rained, and week or so later I saw the first rye seedlings emerge through the leaves that had fallen. At this point I knew everything there was to know about the establishment of cover crops. Yes sir buddy, no problem, a piece of cake. By the way, the seeder behind the hanger was utilized to spread dry nitrogen on a wheat crop when the conditions were too wet and muddy to apply by ground machines. It just so happens that the spreader can be used for seed or fertilizer. Have I got a horseshoe or what?