Still baffled on cover crops

[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.

[WiltonRanch]

Covers make sense if you have cows. It’s really a no brainer but for a grain guy in this country it makes absolutely no sense. My clover mix I seeded last spring with a cereal forage crop started out decent this spring which i drilled in some more cereal and fertilizer and took off early milk regrew for some fall graze the cows are enjoying right now. Hope it fixed some nitrogen, drilled deep roots, recycled tied up nutrients down below, and increased the micro flora of the soil. I try this stuff to see if it works with my crappy management and maybe improves this clay solonetzic soil without much effort. Don’t believe half the bs Gabe Brown the most successful motivational speaker er’ farmer spouts but he’s right about changing it up and trying things.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

The research I have read, and I don't remember where I read it, is that a cover crop will use less water than the bare ground would otherwise lose.

That may not be the case in a full no till situation, assuming there is no bare ground.

Personally, in our climate, and soil, I can see the benefit of a cover crop that would start growing later in the growing season under the main crop, and start over again early spring to use up some moisture( I know, this contradicts what I said above, but we are not dealing with bare ground, typically completely covered with straw), to give us a fighting chance to get crops seeded on a wet spring, and have them survive the June monsoons.
Direct seeding into lush sprayed out alfalfa on a wet year has given very good results here, especially side by side with stubble.

Here, I think the ideal cover crop is alfalfa, spray it enough in the spring to set it back but not kill it, let it regrow under the crop, and as a perennial, lasts for years. And if it is too wet too seed in the spring, let it grow and salvage it as feed.

[Old Cowzilla]

Seed guys pushing cover crops ( big Money $ 50/acre ) to make up for lost cattlemen acres. Good way to get rid of #2 or poorer seed at good price. But yes any crop covering dirt instead of bare ground a good thing just get me an alfalfa that grasshoppers DON'T like ! Watching crop come up from sprayed sod from year before is very satisfying .

[Hamloc]

The research I have read, and I don't remember where I read it, is that a cover crop will use less water than the bare ground would otherwise lose.

That may not be the case in a full no till situation, assuming there is no bare ground.

Personally, in our climate, and soil, I can see the benefit of a cover crop that would start growing later in the growing season under the main crop, and start over again early spring to use up some moisture( I know, this contradicts what I said above, but we are not dealing with bare ground, typically completely covered with straw), to give us a fighting chance to get crops seeded on a wet spring, and have them survive the June monsoons.
Direct seeding into lush sprayed out alfalfa on a wet year has given very good results here, especially side by side with stubble.

Here, I think the ideal cover crop is alfalfa, spray it enough in the spring to set it back but not kill it, let it regrow under the crop, and as a perennial, lasts for years. And if it is too wet too seed in the spring, let it grow and salvage it as feed.

You certainly live in a different rain fall area than me AB5. We have sprayed out hay in the spring and attempted to grow a crop in the past. Sometimes we get enough rain that it works. But to simply stunt the alfalfa and let it regrow under the crops canopy, would work here maybe once in the last 20 years. As most have pointed out, our growing season does not lend itself to planting another crop post harvest, either there isn’t the moisture or the time.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

You certainly live in a different rain fall area than me AB5. We have sprayed out hay in the spring and attempted to grow a crop in the past. Sometimes we get enough rain that it works. But to simply stunt the alfalfa and let it regrow under the crops canopy, would work here maybe once in the last 20 years. As most have pointed out, our growing season does not lend itself to planting another crop post harvest, either there isn’t the moisture or the time.

Yes, year in and year out, our area is an exception within the semi arid prairies, we typically get more moisture than we have enough heat units to fully use. This year and 2021 being exceptions, there were areas that suffered from the lack of moisture in both June and August. We also have large areas where the water table is close enough that they never seem to suffer from a moisture deficit, a curse on a wet year.


And in my case, growing long season crops in a very short season, there is no shoulder season on either end. Your area does typically have growing season left over after crops are off.