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Farmer encourages others to experiment with cover crops

A farmer with cover crop experience says the real benefits are underground.  Plymouth, Wisconsin farmer Dan Roehrborn says, “It’s not what’s on top that matters, it’s all under the ground.  You just look for something that goes deep and breaks up that soil pan, hardpan surface and you want the soil to aerate once the plant dies and that root structure dies off.”

Roehrborn shared his experiences during a field day with the Sheboygan River Progressive Farmers Wednesday.  Roehrborn planted various cover crop seeds in 18-inch long plastic tubes about three weeks ago in between rows of corn.   “The radishes went pretty much all the way down into the tube already in three weeks.  The crimson clover probably went about a foot.  We used barley because that’s probably our main cover crop that we use, and that seemed to do very well also.  It probably went about 12-14 inches deep.”

He encourages farmers to not only give cover crops a try but to experiment with different crops,  even soybeans.  “The soybeans put nitrogen back in the soil.  As long as you’re not harvesting it, there’s nothing wrong with it.  It gets a little expensive unless you can take them out of your own bin or you had some laying around from last year that you don’t want to risk planting that they wouldn’t germinate.  As long as you don’t harvest them, there’s really no problem with using them as a cover crop.”