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Cover crops don't work in the Midwest, right? Why? Because it's too cold. We are harvest too late. Well, guess what? That's a bunch of bunk.
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And we're going to spell that whole myth right here. I've got Kelly Garrett at his field day in northwest Iowa. We're joined by TJ Curtis.
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He is with a company called Biot Till he's got the shirt right there to prove it. Anyway, we did a podcast.
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We talked about a bunch of different things on that. I wanna cover it right here. You say it's all bunk. I'm making cover crops work. Look at it.
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Absolutely. Now, if we get past October 5th or 10th here, I find that I don't get enough growth that I worry, you know, if it's gonna do very good.
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I, same thing with my winter wheat. Yep. I want to have that in last week of September to get enough winter growth
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to make it successful the next spring. But also, not all the growth is going on above ground. Some of it is going on below ground
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as well. And we can't forget about that. And that's valuable because putting a few inches of roots down there, first time it holds the soil,
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it protects you from erosion. It's also creating a lot of soil activity. So the idea that you might only get this much growth
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and then it stops, it doesn't go dormant that early. No, it doesn't. And that, that's the part we always worry about is they say, well, I got two inches growth on top.
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Yeah, it did. But if you can take a shovel out, and again, nobody takes a shovel to the field and you find 4, 6, 8, 10 inches worth of root mass
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underneath, that's the benefit to a winter crop. Winter crop should not put a lot of top growth on. It should put all root growth on
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so it gets a good establishments that over winters. Well, like it should spring is where it puts the top growth up. You
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Got, you've got Kelly turned onto this and he's a, a, a believer, but I think you were anyhow because you've got the hills
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and also you want to continue to reduce, uh, some applied nutrient and, and, and, uh, input costs. Cover crop, make a lot of things work.
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It's just that most farmers don't want to work with them. That's my Analysis. I would agree. And
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you know, the default cover crop has always been cereal rye. Um, you know, TJ and I went back and forth about cereal rye.
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I think we're on the same page now. Yeah. I always felt that it, there was a problem when I try to follow corn within things like that.
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Upon further research cereal rye combined with soil with fusarium. There's a seedling disease, an allopath effect.
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So TJ agrees with me now. No more cereal rye. So like you say, farmers don't wanna work with them. I agree. You need to find what species
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of plant work in your areas. We, TJ and I have done research and stuff. I'm really happy now. So what
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Are you using, like some of the stuff even behind us here with the field days going on, we've got what?
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We got a summer mix going behind us. We got sorghum sedan grasses. We got some summer brass going behind us.
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When we go back into the fall. What we use is either cereal rye or Winter Tri Kali Winter Trid Kali is a
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different makeup of cereal rye. We don't see the problems in front of corn with that. So if you have that over winter
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in front of corn, you're safe. Cereal rye in front of corn. We see problems with it. So that in front of beans works. Great. Rules
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Of thumb. You already said my one rule of thumb to make crop cover crops work going into winter. Don't get past about October five,
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October 10. What's your next rule? I really like to drill 'em. You know, the, some of the later harvested corn we have, uh,
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fluid on and things like that. Doesn't get the seed to soil, Doesn't get the seed to soil contact.
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I really like to drill 'em if I can. The problem is some of that later planted corns a after October 5th or 10th obviously.
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So we're exploring ways to try to try to combat that issue. Other Rule of thumb, if I wanna make cover
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crops work, I'm a Midwest person. You're from the Dakotas for crying out loud. It can work in the colder climates. Your rule of thumb is
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I we plant up till November one. Okay. I'll, I'll keep planting as long as I put it in the ground.
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So what I tell everybody is your later corn. Yep. Maybe gotta fly on or drone on or do something early. Your earlier corn that you take off, make sure you drill.
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But we'll go up till November one with, with winter rye, winter tri and winter camelina.
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Okay. Winter camelina is over. Wintering brassica gives us another species to work with. It actually likes it better if it's
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colder when it's drilled later, Somebody's gonna say, but what do I get? What benefits happening out there during a dormant soil
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and the winter have that cover crop aside from erosion control, you'd say, I, I would say I get cow feed erosion
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control, like you said. And then I want to choose a species of plant that, uh, outcompete some of my soul borne diseases like fusarium.
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Got it. He's Kelly Garrett. I'm Damien Mason. We're joined by TJ Carter. He's a Minnesotan. Turned to a Dakotan. Am I right? I guess so.
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That's what t blame me as now. So I'm a Dakotan. I thought it was Minnesotan. Well Anyway, anyway, he doesn't really like the warm
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temperatures, but you know what he's pointing out that neither do, uh, neither do you have to have warm temperatures to make cover crops work.
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We're coming at you from our field day here at Kelly Garrett's Garrett Land and Cattle. This is our third of seven field days
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that we're doing extreme ag. If you can't make it to one get in 2025, make sure you get on the list for 2026.
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A lot of learning. It's all free to attend. You just gotta register. Go to Extreme ag.farm. So next time, check out all of our library of information,
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including the podcast we did with TJ about cover crops where we went more in depth. 00:04:21.535 --> 00:04:22.725
