-E. Taylor
A little over a week ago I had the privilege to attend the Grazing/Cover Crop Field Day put on by Ingham County MSU Extension Educator, Dan Hudson. Following wheat harvest Dan planted a replicated trial in a farmer’s field in Mason, MI on August 20 with several different monoculture and polyculture forages/cover crops. He would have liked to have planted earlier in August as he was able to do in 2008, and would recommend that for growers planting forages/cover crop. As a result of this later planting date some of the crops had not accrued as much biomass as in 2008.
I was particularly interested in looking at the chickling vetch, which I had written about in the IWM:Fine Tuning Bulletin but not seen growing in a field. At first glance it could be mistaken for a grass, but when you look closer you can see its leaves and tendrils and upon digging you find its nitrogen fixing nodules. Other cover crops that I was interested in seeing were triticale and spring pea, again cover crops I have read about but never encountered. The spring triticale produced quite a bit of biomass, similar to that of oats. Speaking of oats they appeared to have produced the greatest amount of biomass and were the cheapest cover crop at $0.16/lb.
There was a lot of variability between the plots and within them. Stand establishment seemed to be an issue with some of the crops because of the warm, dry soil conditions. Even with this variability it still looks as though there are many great cover crop options available for the window between wheat harvest and corn planting to get the ground cover, reduce erosion, trap nutrients, produce additional nitrogen, reduce weed populations, and graze livestock.
