Cover Crops 3.0

Hi all. Am looking for a fast and relatively cheap method of establishing cover crops and was thinking of mounting a small air seeder on top of a grass harrow. Would that type of harrow create enough tilt on stubbles for the seeds to germinate? Thanks

Light run of a pigtail harrow twice and sow on the second run followed by rollling :undecided:
 
Light run of a pigtail harrow twice and sow on the second run followed by rollling :undecided:

That is four runs with a tractor at a time of the year when time is in short supply. Having to do that much work would take away from the fuzzy feeling you get when you have cover crops.
 
That is four runs with a tractor at a time of the year when time is in short supply. Having to do that much work would take away from the fuzzy feeling you get when you have cover crops.

I know :blushing:, I was trying to keep the spend down as much as possible. We used this method for AEOS in the past and sowing with a Vicon.
 
Would you consider lucerne in the deep limestone land?
I’ve been messing around with companion crops with a while, and I’ve no real success with clovers.
The lucerne, once established, is damn hard to kill. I’ve used up to 9L/ha of glyphosate on it to no avail. It will live happily underneath a cereal crop and not compete with it in any way. Once the crop is removed, the lucerne will grow away the finest. Before the next crop you can graze, bale, cut or mulch the lucerne, and plant another crop into it... even if you have weeds or volunteer cereals, you can spray it off with glyphosate, and do no harm to the lucerne. The most efficient way to remove lucerne is the plough.
The reason is asked about livestock is when establishing the lucerne it would need one full year on its own...the lucerne can be cut, bales and sold. A 22-24% protein forage is valuable...then after that first year, just ignore it. It’s excellent at fixing N and opening up the ground at depth. The roots will go down to 2m.
Seed is very expensive, around €15-20/kg, and planting at 15-18kg/ha, it becomes expensive to establish. However if interested I can organize HSS lucerne for substantially less than that.

Clovers as companion crops are, IMO, expensive and really tricky to get established in a beneficial way. The newer hybrid clovers are good but too expensive to be considered.

Cc crops, IMO, need to give significant and fast return on investment, otherwise why do it? I’m giving up on phacelia, mustard, radish etc, because the benefit doesn’t show as fast as squarrosum. Squarrosum is also by far the cheapest clover you can buy at around €2-2.5/kg. Squarrosum will nodulate N from before the rosette stage, loves water, and will put up with severe winter temps without any bother. It grows to about 4 feet high so you can bale and sell before planting your spring crop...or leave in place, mulch it and dd into the thatch. It’s quite deep rooting also.

There’s a friend of mine farming 850ha of organic tillage with 20yrs and I’ll run it by him on what to use with the shallow soils over granite.

I know that I’m probably going to stand on the toes of some posters here by dissing the usual cover crop mixes/varieties etc, but if you’re not getting an instant and quantifiable return for the investment and time it does become a little questionable.

your work with Lucerne makes sense
I’ve been working with double cropping winter triticale and forage maize. The protein comes from the triticale and energy from maize (separate forages). But in this season even the triticale has suffered in north Dublin with the wet. Coupled with no early N applied.
Can you companion crop Lucerne with maize as I’m planning to strip till maize this season after or into triticale stubble. It gave excellent results last season
 
your work with Lucerne makes sense
I’ve been working with double cropping winter triticale and forage maize. The protein comes from the triticale and energy from maize (separate forages). But in this season even the triticale has suffered in north Dublin with the wet. Coupled with no early N applied.
Can you companion crop Lucerne with maize as I’m planning to strip till maize this season after or into triticale stubble. It gave excellent results last season
Lucerne is tricky to establish, and once established, it’s hard to get rid of it.

Dry, deep, free draining land is needed.
Maybe plant in August after a cereal crop, and take out any weed competition? Let it establish over the winter and just strip till into the lucerne?

Lucerne is excellent as a companion crop because of its durability. Once it’s established it’ll just sit and not compete with the primary crop. However it won’t contribute anything to your forage crop, well nothing worth talking about anyway. All it’ll do is contribute N towards the maize plant.
If you’re looking for something to pump N and contribute protein to the forage crop you’re looking at something like beans/peas etc. This is a new departure for Ireland imo. Any intercrop will have to be planted inter-row after the maize is planted...and it’ll have to be a vining plant so as to get up there with the maize and compete for sunlight, iykwim.
We’ve an old Suffolk coulter Sulky drill modified for the job...about an hours work with an angle grinder! When the maize is at 4 leaf stage plant the beans, and herbicide at 5-6 leaf stage. Sounds easy but you need to be on the ball with regards timing.
I can’t see us having any time this year for it tbh.
 
Squarrosum clover planted in December.
Will probably ensilé next week if we get the time.
To the left of the pic there’s a line of lesser green color, that’s where we came back at Xmas time to finish the field...it seems to have the same bulk, nodulation etc but the color is markedly different. Less N released?
 

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Squarrosum clover planted in December.
Will probably ensilé next week if we get the time.
To the left of the pic there’s a line of lesser green color, that’s where we came back at Xmas time to finish the field...it seems to have the same bulk, nodulation etc but the color is markedly different. Less N released?
That is very impressive considering the amount of rain you got. Was the rain a hindrance on it do you think? Of does it like wet conditions?
 
Squarrosum clover planted in December.
Will probably ensilé next week if we get the time.
To the left of the pic there’s a line of lesser green color, that’s where we came back at Xmas time to finish the field...it seems to have the same bulk, nodulation etc but the color is markedly different. Less N released?
Will you mow it for silage? That’s serious bulk for the planting date
 
Will you mow it for silage? That’s serious bulk for the planting date
Yea we’ll mow it shortly when we get a bit of time. Should do 5-6tdm? If it was planted in September it would yield over 8tdm but certainly not this year. Time is there now to get in some maize in as ground temps are over 13*. Maize is slow going for planting compared to spring cereals etc. There’s always a tense time getting cc pitted and maize and sorghum planted. We aim to have maize in the ground within 24hrs after removing the cc to try and conserve moisture.
We badly need rain.
 
Yea we’ll mow it shortly when we get a bit of time. Should do 5-6tdm? If it was planted in September it would yield over 8tdm but certainly not this year. Time is there now to get in some maize in as ground temps are over 13*. Maize is slow going for planting compared to spring cereals etc. There’s always a tense time getting cc pitted and maize and sorghum planted. We aim to have maize in the ground within 24hrs after removing the cc to try and conserve moisture.
We badly need rain.
Is it just clover or what is the grass/cereal type plant also visible J?
 
Is it just clover or what is the grass/cereal type plant also visible J?
The original mix included balansa and berseem along with Italian ryegrass (7kg/ha) and squarrosum (15kg/ha). I fired everything to hand at it because the ground conditions were so bad. The ryegrass and the squarrosum were all that grew. We’d have a big problem with wild ryegrass in most of the tillage ground also. I’ve other ground that got just pure squarrosum and there’s plenty wild ryegrass through it.
 
Just wonder what lads wold sow as a summer cover crop. Have a couple of acres when rabbits destroyed winter rape. Wheat going in next.
 
Just wonder what lads wold sow as a summer cover crop. Have a couple of acres when rabbits destroyed winter rape. Wheat going in next.
Berseem/Alexandria clover @ 15kg/ha or more.
Plant into a dry seedbed to a depth of 1cm. Roll twice.

It’ll condition the soil and save you buying artificial nitrogen.
 
Does anyone grow Westerwolds grass for sheep during the winter ? I take in about 300 ewes every winter for 4/5 months and was debating trying it this year for them, I remember in college one of the lecturers Mike Walsh insisted it was super stuff to grow and needed nothing only slurry
 
Does anyone grow Westerwolds grass for sheep during the winter ? I take in about 300 ewes every winter for 4/5 months and was debating trying it this year for them, I remember in college one of the lecturers Mike Walsh insisted it was super stuff to grow and needed nothing only slurry
Yes tried it already but would rate stubble turnips/forage rape as much better feeding. The brassica crops can be grazed right through the winter up until mid febuary before they think of going into stem extension, the westerwolds will try to go to seed before December so you will find it hard to get it all grazed before this happens, then you'll be short of grass through dec and Jan waiting for it to go grow back.
If it goes to seed it will persist in the field for years to come, Pacifica and falcon control it but control in a crop of barley could be a lot more difficult.
The seed is a lot more expensive than brassica seed.
On a plus side it grew a massive root structure and it was like ploughing a ley after it so from a soil benefit point of view it would be positive. We cut most of it for silage in 2018/2019 and in hindsight were blessed with the weather for machinery to travel. I wont be trying it again as in a normal winter you could really tear a field assunder trying to take the crop out
 
I had planned to take out a few acres to plant some type of brassica this week after cutting silage with a long term view to reseed it next spring. The dry weather meant that the silage return was back about 20%, so my first priority is to secure enough silage for next winter and this will be done through a second cut. The slurry went out this week and it should be cut and baled by mid august. Will it be too late then to put in some type of crop like Redstart or stubble turnip? I am hoping to graze a few of the lighter weanlings on it over winter and then reseeding in april.
 
I had planned to take out a few acres to plant some type of brassica this week after cutting silage with a long term view to reseed it next spring. The dry weather meant that the silage return was back about 20%, so my first priority is to secure enough silage for next winter and this will be done through a second cut. The slurry went out this week and it should be cut and baled by mid august. Will it be too late then to put in some type of crop like Redstart or stubble turnip? I am hoping to graze a few of the lighter weanlings on it over winter and then reseeding in april.
Redstart will grow a crop if planted in mid August, but it will be small and may not be economic if the Autumn is cool or too wet. The extra yield from establishing a crop Redstart in June versus August will be more than the yield off a 2nd cut of silage. If you are in a position to use the extra Redstart you will have more fodder if you get the Redstart established now. I would consider the 15th August as the latest day to sow Redstart, and that is on tillage ground that will return nothing for the rest of the year, up with you I would think that date moves a little earlier and on grass ground it again will move earlier because of the grass it will grow in the Autumn. I would guess 31st August would roughly be your last economic time to sow.
 
I had planned to take out a few acres to plant some type of brassica this week after cutting silage with a long term view to reseed it next spring. The dry weather meant that the silage return was back about 20%, so my first priority is to secure enough silage for next winter and this will be done through a second cut. The slurry went out this week and it should be cut and baled by mid august. Will it be too late then to put in some type of crop like Redstart or stubble turnip? I am hoping to graze a few of the lighter weanlings on it over winter and then reseeding in april.

I put in redstart mid August last year and it grew very well I have to say. I would see no issue with it.
 
Redstart will grow a crop if planted in mid August, but it will be small and may not be economic if the Autumn is cool or too wet. The extra yield from establishing a crop Redstart in June versus August will be more than the yield off a 2nd cut of silage. If you are in a position to use the extra Redstart you will have more fodder if you get the Redstart established now. I would consider the 15th August as the latest day to sow Redstart, and that is on tillage ground that will return nothing for the rest of the year, up with you I would think that date moves a little earlier and on grass ground it again will move earlier because of the grass it will grow in the Autumn. I would guess 31st August would roughly be your last economic time to sow.
If you sowed Redstart in mid June, would it not get too strong almost by the time it was being grazed in the winter months? I thought proper Kale was best suited to sowing in June, but that Redstart was for August.
 
Redstart will grow a crop if planted in mid August, but it will be small and may not be economic if the Autumn is cool or too wet. The extra yield from establishing a crop Redstart in June versus August will be more than the yield off a 2nd cut of silage. If you are in a position to use the extra Redstart you will have more fodder if you get the Redstart established now. I would consider the 15th August as the latest day to sow Redstart, and that is on tillage ground that will return nothing for the rest of the year, up with you I would think that date moves a little earlier and on grass ground it again will move earlier because of the grass it will grow in the Autumn. I would guess 31st August would roughly be your last economic time to sow.

The brassica was planned to be an experiment. I have no experience of growing any. I can't risk relying on it to replace the silage. I'd prefer to be sure of myself and get the silage and do my experiment afterwards if it is possible to do it.
 
If you sowed Redstart in mid June, would it not get too strong almost by the time it was being grazed in the winter months? I thought proper Kale was best suited to sowing in June, but that Redstart was for August.
I have never found that, I have plant more Redstart, (Rape/Kale hybrid) in June than I have planted in August and never had a problem.
 
The brassica was planned to be an experiment. I have no experience of growing any. I can't risk relying on it to replace the silage. I'd prefer to be sure of myself and get the silage and do my experiment afterwards if it is possible to do it.
Understood, but if sowing in mid August don't depend on any increase in yield over aftergrass, it will be more usable through the winter but no big bonus yield.
 
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