Mackane Vogel here with this week’s Cover Crop Connection and this week we are in beautiful Galena, Ill., and we got a choice to check out the first ever Soul of the Soil Conference. This is put on by the Fields of Sinsinawa and we are actually going to toss it off to one of the presenters to talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world of cover crops at the first annual soul of the Soil Conference. 

“What is the most dangerous phrase in farming, and I thought I believe this is the most dangerous phrase in farming. We’ve always done it this way. Well yeah, of course we’ve always done it this way it’s always going to be the same year after year after year — no it’s not. So, I want you to have that background whenever I’m talking here.”

“This mix is typically what we do for our summer mix after we harvest the oats and the rye. We roughly put in this mix. Now, I have a question mark with the crimson clover because we plant ahead and if next year we plan on putting corn in there we put the clover in. If next year it’s going to be into soybeans then we take the clover out. And so that’s what we have been doing with that. We’ve experimented with this mix a little bit. I think one year we tried sunn hemp and that for whatever reason didn’t work out. We’ve tried turnips, we’ve tried a lot of different things. So I’m not married to any of these but nonetheless it’s something we’ve been trying.

“Here’s another video of walking right behind — you’ll see — the clover and the rapeseed that’s behind that. You can see a little bit of that in there. Now, another thing you’ll notice here is that this is the same field when we are harvesting. As I was harvesting I thought I want to showcase that rye that is still doing that mulch, that weed suppression that’s down in there and I thought that was great to see that it was still doing that late in the season like that. From what I’ve observed, we talked about observations earlier today, and an observation I made is that the only weeds I see that are getting through that during the growing season — I’ve seen some dandelions and that’s about it. So, I tell a lot of people that I prefer dandelions over marestail and pigweed and all that fun stuff.”

Lots of great information this week at the Soul of the Soil Conference. Well, I’ve got to go catch my zipline over my shoulder there but that’s all for this week’s cover crop connection.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.