News

A good year for the covers

A pair of Illinois farmers say it’s been a good fall for cover crop seeding.

Kris Reynolds, who’s finished his corn and soybean harvest in Montgomery County, says he’s begun planting cereal rye in fields that didn’t have cover crops seeded into standing crops with a drone.

“Those fields started greening up.”  He says, “If we have a warm fall, we’ll get a lot of good growth on those. I think it’s just another way to try to get cover crops established early.”

AUDIO: Kris Reynolds – Illinois farmer

Derek Martin, who’s still in the midst of harvest in Logan County, says that he’s been planting covers after harvest for over a decade, but this year tried something new.

“We like doing it with our vertical tillage, so we get that good seed to soil contact.”  He says, “But this year, our beans just weren’t quite turning as fast as we wanted to, and so we had a fair amount of corn cover crop mix flown on. It’s looking really good.”

He tells Brownfield, “There’s not an abundance of soil moisture, but there’s enough in there.”  He says, “The temperatures are really good now and I think it’ll be a good growing season.”

Both say the long-term soil health benefits of adding cover crops to their rotations are worth the added fall management challenges.

AUDIO: Derek Martin – Illinois farmer