Editor’s note: This article originally published in July 2021.
Time is one of the most precious commodities on a farm, writes CCA Dusty Sonnenberg at Ohio’s Country Journal. There are windows of opportunity to accomplish certain tasks in production agriculture, and with the adoption of new practices, such as cover crops, sometimes those windows become limited.
One example is the seeding of cover crops after corn that soybeans will be planted into the following spring. Depending on the corn maturity, often the window following corn harvest is too late to successfully establish a cover crop and meet the requirements of many government programs.
In an effort to mitigate the timing issue of late seeding after harvest, some farmers have attempted to “fly-on” the cover crop just prior to leaf drop. In some cases, farmers have seeded with a “hi-boy” type machine. Siebeneck Farms in Putnam County is inter-seeding cover crops at the same time they sidedress their corn with a modified sidedress applicator.
In this approach, timing is critical. The corn needs to be emerged and growing at a rate that the cover crop will not compete with the corn like a weed. At the same time, a window of opportunity needs to be found to allow the cover crop to germinate and establish itself before it is shaded out by the corn canopy. The annual rye will then go dormant and begin to re-grow in the late summer as the corn canopy opens again as the corn ripens and dries down.
“We are running a Salford SD10 cart on a J&M 28% applicator frame, so we are doing a twin bin dry application,” said Aaron Siebeneck. “It is all ISOBUS through our Pro700 monitor. We are running it through a Mueller controller, so we are twin variable rating applying our phosphate and nitrogen application as well.
Read more at Ohio’s Country Journal.
