Hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop podcast. I'm Kathryn Seebruck, commercial Agriculture Educator with University of Illinois Extension serving Jo Daviess, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. Talking Crop is a seasonal crop production podcast with episodes occurring every other week during the growing season between the months of May and September. In each episode, I bring on a guest speaker to discuss topics related to their areas of expertise. In today's episode, I'm joined by Nathan Johanning, another fellow Commercial Agriculture Educator with Illinois Extension who also serves as the Illinois Representative for the Midwest Cover Crop Council.

Nathan and I discuss essentially the who, what, where, when, and why of cover crops. Everything from your goals for cover cropping to how to plant them, when to plant, when to terminate, and really everything in between. It's a great follow-up to the episode that we did with Daniel Smith earlier this season. In the video description for today's episode, you can find the link to the Midwest Cover Crop Council website where you can find a ton of really great information, including the incredibly useful cover crop selector tool that Nathan talks about. Also, in the video description is where you can find the link to the evaluation for this podcast.

The next episode of Talking Crop will release on Wednesday, September 18, and the final episode of this season of the podcast. In it, I'll be joined by Dr. Andrew Margenot, Associate Professor of Soil Science in the Department of Crop Sciences at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. For this episode, we'll be discussing his Illinois Centennial soil archive project as well as his work to update the phosphorus and potassium recommendations in the Illinois Agronomy Handbook. It's gonna be a great final episode, and I really can't wait for you to hear it. Without further ado, please enjoy this episode of Talking Crop, talking cover crop selection, planting, termination, and more with Nathan Johannan.

Nathan, welcome to the talking crop podcast, and thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to you about cover crops.

I'm excited to be here and I always love talking about cover crops.

Perfect. We're just going to jump right into it with the questions. That's how I like to do it. Get down to business right away. I've already had an episode this season of the podcast talking about cover crops, but I wanted this to be an extension of that to talk a little bit more in-depth about some practical information about implementing cover crops, which I know you know a lot about.

We have the right person on with us today. My first question for you to start things out is when a farmer is trying to decide if they haven't done cover crops before and they are trying to decide whether they should or not, what factors should go into that decision to implement a cover crop or not?

I think anytime you're starting something new, it could be a new hybrid, it could be new, whatever. I think you want to look at what is your goal for that? If you don't have a goal, then maybe look at some of the cover crop information out there and what goals are out there and see which ones you like. Is it weed management? Is it just building soil health?

Is it scavenging nutrients, etcetera? There's lots of great resources out there that have the benefits of cover crops. Anytime someone asks me about cover crop selection, I always default to what is your goal? Because all cover crops have a little different palette as to what they can do for you. If you can't just go in and say, well, here's my prescription for what you're going to do.

You need to have some goals in mind and it's fine starting off if you don't have goals. I think maybe the first thing is to do a little research and help determine your goals. Once you have some of those goals in mind, you can fit some things that work around that and work pretty well for you. So lots of resources out there, but I think finding your goals and with anything starting off, don't get overwhelmed by all these thirteen and seventeen way mixes and other things like that. They're fine.

I've seen some of those. I think there is some good in moderation, especially starting off with. If you just plant one species or maybe if some of the government programs may require two, just one or two, and start with that in a field. Start off small, manageable, experiment with it. If you're a little leery of it, don't jump in all however many hundreds of acres or whatever.

Work with it and get a good feel for it. And as you're planning and picking those cover crops, start with the basic things you know you can achieve. Obviously there's multiple, but cereal rye is, and especially ahead of soybeans is about as fairly simple straightforward as you can get. Also don't feel like you necessarily have to go super high on the seeding rate. Look at our cover crop recommendation rates and even go on the lower range. There are some other details we can talk about, how to kind of narrow things in on that. But I think that's the biggest thing. Find some goals, start basic and simple. Don't worry about getting overwhelmed. If I want to do this, I have to do everything.

Look at that. And then once you pick those, of course, also in with that plan is think about how you're gonna manage it. Do I need a plan on having a burn down at a certain time of year, early, etcetera? Have that penciled out in your mind. It's not just about planning it and then forgetting about it.

You also want to be thinking, it doesn't even hurt now to think to put in your mind if you're not used to it like, okay, I really want to, I know in my area, I'm going to target planting by May 1 or maybe it's mid April. Think about, do you want to plan into it whenever it's green or do you want to need to plan to make an application two weeks ahead of time and have it more brown and crispy ahead of time? This kind of the whole light gamut of you're picking your goals and then just look at those kind of stair steps as you go through that season to find out where you need to make those decisions and tailor something to get you started on a good experience.

Yeah I think that's a good point to kind of look at the entire picture rather than just starting with planting and when you're gonna plant and then stopping there then implementing. Then you're kind of like okay well now what am I gonna do to terminate? I think that's really great advice. Speaking of planting, what are the different ways that cover crops can be planted? I know there's a variety of them and I'm assuming well I know that they all have kind of their different pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages. Can you speak kind of broadly about the different planting methods and what might be better or worse depending on your situation?

Sure. I think looking at really drilling your cover crops as a no till drill is the first kind of the tried true, I guess you'd say maybe it's the gold standard as we look for a lot of things. The strength of it is the fact that you get good seed to soil contact, fairly good seed placement as good as a drill does, but certainly better than some of the other options we'll talk about. But it's fairly easy, reasonably speaking to calibrate because there's some tables and charts. There's a little bit of nuance to it.

There's not completely foolproof, but it's a good viable method to get seed soil contact to move on. Now, downside a little bit is that if you don't have a drill, well, that's obviously an issue. Many of you don't in small grains may not have one anymore. And also with that, it does take more time. The crop has to be harvested.

Obviously you can't drill through your crop prior to harvest and that can lead to plant time, planting time issues, planting date, etcetera, depending on how the season and harvest is going. It is a little slower going, drilling depends on your drill size, but you're probably going to spend more time per acre drilling than you would maybe some of our other passes. You can't go maybe quite as fast, etc. Cover as much ground in a pass. That's certainly the beginning. From there, really it kind of opens up to innovation. I'm going to talk to I'll speak some broad concepts, but you can almost use your creation as a farmer as to how you can implement some of these things. There's no cookie cutter way that they have to be applied. From there, there's some like broadcast within corporations. A lot of people are putting air seeders on vertical tillage tools. If you want to do that, that's one way of doing it and actually is pretty successful. A lot of you get decent seed to soil contact, maybe not quite as good as a drill because you're just kind of throwing the seed out there and letting it kind of fall. You don't have some of those, say seed firming and other things a little bit there, but it's good to get contact and get that seed below the residue and kind of growing. You can a lot of those you can cover a lot ground a little more quickly than what you could with just a conventional drill. From there, look to more just broadcast without incorporation kind of concepts. This could be multiple things. The one way I've worked with is actually mounting air seeder on a combine header. You're actually air seeding underneath the header as you're harvesting. Putting it so the seed is basically going out underneath the header, not so much in the back of the combine.

The goal with that is when you do it that way is you're actually laying the seed out as soon as you've taken that residue off, the seeds going down, and then the chopper spreads and the residue over the top is kind of a layering effect and keeping that seed closer to the soil versus if you're just spreading out the back of the combine. If you're spreading on, if you get on top of that residue, then it works, but the seed has to work its way down to the soil, a little more temperamental with moisture and things because you're not quite as close to contact. Just, blending seed with your fertilizer spreader. If you're, putting any fall, any fall dap or or fall potash on, blending seed and just spreading it. A lot of things, most cover crops, there's a few exceptions that don't do particularly well that way, but broadcast. Any kind of broadcast application you can do. From there, then it goes to airplanes, although more recently actually drones have become probably more prevalent. The nice thing with drones and airplanes, and also I'll throw in there's a few people that have done like high clearance cedars like high boys and other things mounted with Gandy, air cedar units, and having drop tubes that go down into the canopy, etcetera. All of those those last couple of things I mentioned can go into the standing crop. You can go in, airplane drone, highboy, whatever it may be, go in and get these started earlier. If you're trying to get, if you're going to do a broadcast seeding and you can get it on before the harvest comes, a lot of times that can buy you some extra growing units for those cover crops to get established. That's really something that I think is an area to explore. The downsides though to any of those broadcast or aerial type applications in the standing crop is that we're fairly dependent on moisture and rain, especially right now, at least in Southern Illinois, we're very dry. We went from very wet to now really dry. Even if you drill the seed, it's not gonna come up, until we get a rain.

So certainly having seed laying on top of the surface, while most of it will sit there there's always chances of predation by insects, birds, voles. It could get just enough moisture to germinate especially laying on the surface say a light rain but not enough to get it really established in the grounds a little bit, tends to be a little more, durable to that than what it is whenever it's just laying on the surface. But certainly rainfall is the is the big factor. And when I talk to farmers, they'll say that, yeah, some years the broadcasting and aerial application type concepts work really well. They get good establishment and it all usually comes back to when you get to the end of the conversation, rain. If you catch a rain after you put it out there, a decent rain that gets some good moisture inside that canopy, it can do really well. Otherwise, not so much. Another thing with some of the aerial applications, a little more so with corn is there's that concern of getting seed that's hung up in the leaves. And so you lose a little bit of seed there. Usually we do increase our seeding rates a little bit whenever we go to any kind of broadcast versus drilled. We have some resources a lot of times it might be 10 or 15% higher, whenever we're doing aerial applications where we know we're just accounting for the fact that we were doing this, but we know we're going to lose some of our seed and it's not going to all get to the soil to germinate. I think that's some of the biggest things you if you are doing the aerial or any kind of broadcast seeding into that standing crop, make sure to try to get, this is more so on soybeans, get your seed down before all the leaves fall off, somewhat with corn, but you want to do it usually at soybeans before you get that or at the time you get that first yellow leaf. There's a little, and this is something you can experiment with on your own farm and in your own area and geography, but one of the biggest struggles on broadcasting, say in soybeans because they have so much leaf drop, you have all the leaves off and then you try to lay that seed in there, it just ends up laying on top of the leaves.

And unless you get a really wet period, that you get enough moisture, some of that germinates and that radical find its way down through there, it's just hard to get consistent moisture there. Now versus if you lay the seed down and then all the leaves fall on top of it, there's moisture there. If that seed germinates and so long as it's not like literally covered up by a rock, it's going to find its way out and they will work its way up and emerge out. But if the seed never gets a chance to even get to consistent moisture above the leaves, on top of the leaves that are fallen, it's just it's harder. Again, with moisture, anything is possible but I think the getting it down closer as anything you think about as close to the soil directly as you can.

Sure. I like what you said earlier too about how it doesn't have to be a cookie cutter approach and typically it's not. Some of the examples you gave of the different kind of more innovative ways to get your cover crop spread I've heard a couple of those up in this part of the world too. Folks just kind of they innovate and they do what works best for them to reduce time and labor and all of that. There are definitely ways to get it to work and I know that some folks who are maybe on the fence about it that that's one of those barriers to implementation. I think it's good to be able to hear that those success stories of innovating and finding ways to make it work for you. Moving forward a little bit from planting and but then talking more about cover crop varieties. You mentioned earlier about mixes and there are so many cover crop species and varieties out there so how do you as a farmer decide what to use? How do you know what's best? If there's so many how do you sift through all of that?

Are there any resources that you recommend that people use or just kind of a again not a one size fit all but I know cereal rye is a really popular one that people it's really easy to start out with. Would you recommend that or is there something else that you point folks in the direction of?

I think that cereal rye as we you mentioned and alluded to is a great basic cover crop. I would really feel like I would put it ahead of soybeans more than I would corn. It can be done with corn. That's a whole another topic in of itself. But just remember in that case cereal rye likes nitrogen probably just as much, maybe even a little bit more than what corn does. It can get out of hand on you, and you can end up taking nitrogen away that your corn really wants just due to some immobilization issues even into the spring.

But as far as how to choose a cover crop, certainly going to events different things we have, if you get to see a walk through of someone to do a walk through different species, how they're used, their timings, are they summer annuals, winter annuals, perennials, understanding those concepts is great. As a farmer to start off with, I would direct people towards, the Midwest Cover Crops Council. If they go to, midwestcovercrops.org, we have all kinds of resources there. That organization, I'm a part of and represent Illinois and that group amongst many other of my Extension colleagues. We have a lot of resources there.

It's basically a group of our 12 Midwestern states plus two Canadian provinces that basically make a working group. Predominantly a lot of our land grant institutions, but also we have representation from farmers, USDA and NRCS and some of our other agencies and industry as well that all kind of come together. We have a cover crop selector tool which helps to dial in cover crop planting dates and windows and gives you different information as far as how much to plant, etcetera, all through this selector tool. If you look at the selector tool tab on that website, just in a nutshell, enter in your state and county and it will dial in ideal rough planting date ranges for each of these cover crop species based on your frost dates of your County. So it is specific.

That's why we ask for your information for that and it manipulates it in that way. That way at a basics, you want to understand what are summer cover crops and what are things that need to get planted early fall and what things can get planted more of like a mid fall timeframe, maybe a little bit later. Once you see that breakdown, it does help you a lot to make sure that you're not planting a summer cover crop on the October 1 something that's frost sensitive. It's not gonna survive even after a frost. So putting a seed out for that on October 1 is not gonna be productive versus putting out cereal rye seed might be really productive. There's little things that's a very crude example of that dramatic difference, but knowing that is really important. A lot of these species are maybe they're common crops from some of them maybe fifty or one hundred years ago, things that maybe we've heard about, maybe our grandparents talked about or parents, but it's not something that we just have a good recollection of how to raise the culture and even understanding the different opportunities there and how they grow, what's their prime growing season, etc. That is if in doubt you're not familiar with the species use some of those resources to help learn about it and anytime if you're the cover crop council we try to be pretty good it's all Midwestern based. If you're looking just broadly across, make sure you look at your geography and where your information is coming from. I love tagging, of course, in my line of work, looking at extension resources.

I use extension resources from other states all the time, but you have to keep in mind if this is from the University of Florida, is this gonna apply is say planning dates, are they gonna apply to Northern Illinois? Probably not. Just keep that in mind. Use your common sense. The states that are in our general similar climate in the Mississippi, Ohio Valleys and Upper Midwest. Look at some neighboring states especially for some of their work as well if you're doing searches beyond just the Cover Crop Council. But that's a great way to give you a foundational start, see what options are out there, and then just talking to other local farmers that are doing things, local networking opportunities and field days is always great.

Yeah definitely. I think it's super helpful to get out there and watch it and see it in action to get a really thorough understanding of the concept. You mentioned a couple times about determining when you should plant and of course this will depend on your cover crop species for example but what are some other factors that should be considered when you're determining what your planting date might be?

Well, first and foremost, your seeding method is going to be somewhat dictating your planting date. Obviously, if you're going to do anything that requires ground field access such as most of the broadcast spreading and things unless you have a high clearance application is going to be after harvest. Then it goes back to when is harvest. And there may be chances where this time of year you're trying to order cover crop seeds get things in line you're looking into your crystal ball and saying when am I going to be harvesting and there's a leap of faith and it depending on your seed commitments and how you have things arranged I've heard of guys saying okay it got late I changed my mix maybe it didn't completely change it upside down, but they may say, hey, I took this species out because I knew it was too late. I think that's a valid point even some things you can keep seed or maybe they have a situation they could return some things but there's nothing worse than doing a mission where you're planting something with probably a 95% chance that that species specifically is going to fail because it's later than what you anticipated and what you're hoping for.

Now sometimes you get lucky and the weather cooperates or you get a warm fall or something and it does still make it but just especially if you're but just know that risk is out there and if you're okay with putting out there's nothing wrong with putting that seed out there and occasionally even in research we push the envelope all the time and we'll see things that really almost shouldn't survive or happen, but they do because of the weather and conditions. But just know that you need to adapt that. And again, selector tool has some great options because it gives you basically the calendar year and it gives you green bars across the different points in that calendar year where those cover species reliably established. You can look at a glance and say all right I'm going to look at September the beginning of September on till November and you can see which species have green bars in that area so you can say okay these species work but oh this one kind of ends here mid October so I better get that one in earlier vice versa. Some of those you can push the envelope maybe a little bit later.

Of course, the green and this is you'll see in the key and it says reliably established. We don't want to claim reliability too boldly, but we try to be we also try to be a little bit progressive and not just be super conservative with our dates. Start with when you can get in the field and then start dialing in what things are options and then go from there.

Yeah. Something that I think a lot of people, at least up in my neck of the woods in extreme Northwest Illinois, you find folks who haven't implemented cover crops yet they consider our location to basically be a barrier to implementation as well because we are so far north that they feel that the growing season just isn't long enough to get a cover crop in, especially after you're harvesting corn for example. Are there not necessarily ways around it but I mean are there species that kind of overcome that? Are there different things that need to be considered that do feed into the success of planting cover crops even as late as November?

I think probably a little bit later if you have the opportunity to get better seed to soil contact, I feel like that can be a work for you because then you have a better chance for a quicker establishment and making the use of any growing units that you may have in that. With that, I think this is an opportunity where looking at some of those interseeding opportunities could really be of more benefit. Some of our species, especially clovers and things other than the cereal grains, most of them have some pretty low seeding rates. Some of our Nebraska cover crops, the rapeseeds and some of those have low seeding rates, turnips, even rye grass and many of the clovers are all low rates so putting them on a plane or even a drone isn't quite as challenging as putting on 60 pounds of cereal rye per acre. Some of these others you may be talking five or 10 pounds total of seed versus 50 or 60. That's you you can get a lot more acres covered out of that payload, and that that all of a sudden makes that a lot more efficient and cost effective. Cereal Rye for what it's worth is very durable and some of the other cereal grains are too as far as even if it is late, they're still going to make something especially if you give them a little bit of time in the spring, they may not be the first things to green up in the spring, but certainly there's a lot of options there. Yeah, there are limitations with the season and I think that's also where, Kathryn, I know you're working with us on some research up there. We're trying to look and see what is the reality for planning date. I think some of it is just a little bit of lack of experience.

Not to say that you're incorrect in the fact there's a shorter growing season up there. But just looking at the fact that we need to understand how some of these different species and even varieties within the species work because there's a lot of companies that have been on board and the breeding side of taking say Balansa Clover is one. I've worked with a specific variety not to endorse it but there's one that called Fixation and it is the standard Balansa Clover was more of a warmer season clover but they've been doing breeding in colder climates and actually bred some that are more durable.

I'm not saying they're invincible to the winter weather but they're a lot more durable so when it comes to some of those things especially the legumes and others knowing the variety you're getting having a good seed dealer or someone that has experience with it and kind of backs that that yeah this is a good one to try for our area there's no guarantees but there are some species on some of these some varieties of species that may not be adapted to doing what you want, especially when you get in more northern climates. Those are a few things just to keep in mind, but I think there are opportunities, but it's just more experimentation, not only on your own farm, certainly things that us through the University, other local Universities and Extension, trying to help innovate. Always learn from any of those opportunities you can to see what other things and other people are doing in the area.

Those are really good considerations and I think too if you haven't implemented it you mentioned earlier about it can just be a lack of experience just for a lack of not doing it yourself. In your mind you might think, if I'm going to be planting something in late November there's no way I'm going to get anything out of that. But a lot of folks that I have talked to up in this area that do regularly cover crop, I mean we have people who have been doing it for six, seven, ten years now and they've done it successfully and they've found that you might not get much of cover or germination if you're planting in November, but those folks then realize come spring that there are a lot of growing degree days in the springtime before you have to plant your cash crop that that cover crop really takes advantage of. That's a good example of getting out and talking to people who have done it before and learning from others. Whether it be a field day that Extension puts on like you were referencing with that research that we're doing or just talking to your neighbors that you know whether directly or through the grapevine.

Because a lot of people who have at least I've found personally that a lot of the people who have done cover crops they're also very welcome and open to talking about their successes and failures with other farmers. That would be to put my own little aside and that would be my recommendation to people as well. It's really great to get out and actually learn from people who have done it.

No, I agree and I think some of the even your own experience some of these species I think just in general, haven't, we haven't really used in different parts, especially of the state. The more people like us have a chance to encourage and showcase some of these things or showcase even maybe it showcase some of the failures, that you can learn just as much if not more from that. I think that's all a part of this trying things and so no, I think that's not right on.

Then going on the flip side of the growing season of your cover crop then we've talked planting but now shifting gears to talk about termination. I know you can terminate early, terminate late, don't terminate till after you plant. What are the different things to consider when making those decisions as well?

I think termination, it comes down to what are you comfortable with? Have you been, say, no tilling for a long time? You feel like you can no till through about anything? You're really confident in your planter and its residue management? Or are you maybe in between, like, I have a no till planner.

I haven't really pushed its capabilities that much. I want to try, but I don't know. Well, I'm just still trying to figure out what it can do, what I'm comfortable with. I think as far as termination in the spring, I was going to summarize it. I think ahead of corn, I have a little bit more of a tendency to terminate earlier, maybe just because of the nutrient considerations of corn and it just seems to you can make a little bit of a mess and sometimes the plant doesn't compensate and recover from that as quite as easy as what soybeans would. I think as you start off with, I would try it maybe err on the earlier termination. You could do some planting green. I think if I was starting off in corn, though I would look for like a two week before planting, ideal planting termination. Hopefully that would still be giving your cover crop some time to get some growth out of it if it is a chance we have really early planting and maybe you would go to maybe you have a few acres like well I really want to terminate this two weeks before planting, but that would be now and it's really nice. I feel like I want to try to plant something now.

Then maybe in that case, the cover crop is probably still reasonably small, maybe you do some plant green and then just do your termination if you get a spring like this spring where we had people getting out in the field early. Told someone I think the best thing you can do looking back, which is easier to say now than in the moment, just would have just planted it rather than waiting the two weeks to plant it, just plant it and spray it off right then while it's still smaller, get it a head start, not knowing what the season would bring. But in general, I feel like early on until you get a handle on corn, corn is a little more responsive and better experiences starting off with a little earlier termination. I say two weeks because with a lot of these species and a lot of the herbicides you're using, it takes, especially if it's a little cooler, it takes about two weeks for a good herbicide kill. And there's nothing necessarily worse than trying to cut and plant through a half dead cover crop.

When it's green, it cuts pretty good. When it's brown and crispy, it cuts pretty good. But when it's in that in between kind of half green brown, it gets really tough. Some things, especially some of the cereal grains. It's really tough.

It gets really hard to cut. It likes to hairpin with your coulters and do all kinds of obnoxious things that you don't want it to do that just hamper your your seed placement and other things. Whenever it's dry, cuts just fine. Whenever again, when it's green, it actually cuts pretty good, but there's I've had more than one farmer and even my own experiences that there's about a window in there from about three to ten days after you spray it, that it's just it gets harder to cut and manage than it would be if you just planned it the first or just waited the extra week and a half for it to get completely dry. That's another good thing and there are moments where you still maybe violate that rule a little bit and that's fine.

It's just know you need to check your planter and if you don't have a thick stand of cover crops, it may actually be just fine, but certainly things to consider. Soybeans, I think are a lot more forgiving as far as handling the heavier residue. Still don't want to get crazy heavy, but I think planting green in there. If you feel comfortable maybe even terminating a little bit after planting. It could be at planting or it could be even a few days after.

I think again, starting off with if you're fairly conservative on this, still stew for that two weeks ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. You don't get quite maybe as much of the weed management benefit by having that residue kind of melding down a little bit, but it'll be easy planting and you still get lots of benefits up from there, that mulching effect and the scavenging of nutrients over the winter and stuff that crop did. And so I think that's earlier termination as you feel comfortable. Later termination, I think is fine.

Again, soybeans, I feel like are a little more bold with soybeans about later termination than than maybe what I would corn, especially early on. From there, I've heard growers doing just about anything and everything. Anything is possible. Those are just kinda the safe zones I would steer people to as they're building up their comfort.

Sure. And what about I know a lot of people talk about moisture concerns too when it comes to terminating.

Can you speak to that a little bit? Like how it might be better or worse to terminate early or late depending on how the spring is going in terms of the weather and moisture?

Sure. I think this is one of the things that really takes a little bit of I guess you'd say faith in the weather. I don't know how you want to say it, but you have to have some forethought into what you feel the weather is going to bring. How I would determine this? Look at your current soil moisture.

This could be looking at we do different drought maps is one thing, especially this past spring is fairly dry. Just just take a shovel and even dig and see how wet is it even, not just the two or three inches, but even maybe a foot down, get an idea of that. And then look at there are some decent, overall long range forecasts, with the different weather patterns that tend to be somewhat on target for maybe say the next month, like, is it going to be tend to be wetter or drier? And it's not going to give you a prescriptive, it's going to rain so much on this date, but it's going to give is our tendency, our weather pattern shift going to be towards the dry side or is it going be towards the wet side? If you're going to terminate a couple of concepts to keep in mind, an actively growing cover crop is actually sucking water up out of the soil. If you have grains and clovers that are young and actively growing, they're transpiring, they're pulling moisture up out of the soil and they're actually acting as a drying effect to that soil. But as soon as you kill them and especially if you kill them and then they lay over, whether it be you lay them over with a roller or if they just fall over or get thick, then they're all of a sudden they're insulating and they're kind of holding that moisture in. That can be good whenever it's really dry. It can be bad, when it's really wet. There are times I've had this season, we've had ups and downs in rainfall and I had a couple of growers at field days come up to me and say especially on some fields, so knowing your soil types, another part, do you have decent drainage or the soil is very poorly drained to start with?

They came and say we had a whole bunch of rye. It picked up a lot of residual nitrogen. It grew really crazy. We should have terminated early. We missed our chance and then it got wet and then it actually lodged and laid over on its own. It's like to have never never dried out. That does happen and your goal in that case if you saw that coming, would it be better to terminate it early if you're on the wet or if you were trying to get in, it kind of depends on your growth stage and you want to look at how much biomass you have out there. If it's just grow like you can just look at it and see it is just caught on to some nitrogen from somewhere and it is growing like crazy, like this looks kind of jungle like, think about the weather patterns and try to gauge that. There's no perfect recipe though. It turns almost into a feeling and intuition you have with some experience.

You had a lot of really good points there. Nathan I just have one more question for you and this is regarding pest issues. Are there any pest issues? Are there gonna be changes or increases in the different pests you might have if you are implementing cover crops? Is that a large concern or is that more of kind of a secondary concern?

Certainly you do have what we call a green bridge sometimes which is good for our soil microorganisms. They're feeding and building the health of our soil because they have living roots to live off of all the time. The bad part is there's a few of those bad guys lurking in the leaves that are some of our pest predators, whether it be the cutworms or fill in the blank with a few of those things that can hide in there. And the biggest thing I think is just you need to be vigilant, be out in your field and scout things. At this early in the season after planting, it's not just the pickup cab scouting.

You need to get out and at least set your foot in the fields somewhat. Drone technology can be great if you have someone that has one, you can take some pictures. You may not be able to get the finer details, but you pick up on like patterns if you can see areas where you're not getting stand on certain areas of the field. But certainly get down, look at the plants, watch for any, do you have cutworm? Are you seeing young corn plants cut off at the soil?

Are you noticing any activity insects, holes and leaves, etcetera? The biggest thing like on some of the cutworm other thing, maybe be prepared to potentially put on an insecticide spray potentially. But most of the time, the majority of seasons, this isn't, it's not a major issue, not yield limiting or warranting any thresholds to spray, but it's something you want to be certainly aware of and not just plant it and then completely kind of walk away from it and be like, okay, well, it'll come up soon and know that you can get some things that come in and whether or not it's directly to the cover crop sometimes it harbors them. Sometimes the cover crop harbors some good guys too. Slugs are often come up in soybeans.

Slugs are just a tough one and like many other things they are, some when there's a bad year for slugs, it's a bad year. Other times you can see slugs in fields and, it doesn't really, you'll see a few, but they aren't really damaging anything. That's sporadic. It's not as if you see one slug in your field, need to like stop everything and figure out some plan. There's lot of things that are kind of hard to diagnose, but certainly if anything be vigilant, watch what's going on. Beyond the slugs, think you'll get, I feel like it's one out of maybe every ten years you get, a lot of reported issues 10, maybe eight or ten years. Then sometimes you get, you lose a little bit of stay in, but nothing that really matters. The other eight years, everything works just fine. You don't have any of those early season pest issues. It's something just I think just to be scouting for, vigilant on, and being knowledgeable about and not just kind of assume that everything is, it'll be fine until you can see it six inches tall.

Right. Yeah. You don't know until you know, right? And you won't know until you scout. So I think that's really, really good advice.

Well Nathan, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you meeting with me and talking about all this. Think a lot of people will get a lot of information out of our conversation. So thanks again.

No, I'm happy to do it anytime.