A wet spring put many prevented-planting acres into buckwheat in Yates County. When do you #killontime? Terminate #covercrop now and collect insurance or wait till harvest and collect $620 a ton from the mill in town? A triticale winter cover can follow either option.

A buckwheat #covercrop is great for soil aggregation. Those fine roots reach the whole soil volume and secrete mucopolysaccharides. This plant is but five weeks old and ready for termination. These will decompose fast. A great value in a short time.

Cornell #soilhealth field day today in Seneca Falls. #NRCS' soil pit shows that zone tillage provides deep rooting even with a challenging clay subsoil. #covercrops maintain percolation pores and channels in the non-crop season.

A new report from @USDA_ERS on cover crop adoption ers.usda.gov/publications... shows that cover crop adoption is increasing in regions where there is enough water.
Table 6. % of farms using both conservation and #covercrops

Certain cover crops improve infiltration and internal drainage. This cornfield, despite drain tile and 2% slope, suffered from poor drainage this wet spring. No KHB4J.
The right cover crop would return more value than corn, especially if the next crop is grapes.

Filling open ground in late June and July with a buckwheat cover crop pays off. Buckwheat on the left, "bare ground" on the right. Lambsquarters grows well on vegetable farms! A good buckwheat stand results in zero weed seed rain. #killontime for no buckwheat seed rain either.

Winter-grain cover crops are about to start spring growth. Can slurry manure injection right now support higher biomass and N cycling next month? Here is a neighbor injecting corn stubble on a large scale. (See the hose snaking across the field.)

With #covercrops, it is important to #killontime. Most years, winter cold will kill oats and leave a nice protective cover during snowmelt and April showers. That worked this winter. Last spring the crowns were green and the oats regrew when it warmed up. Check to be sure the job is done.

What is the USDA equivalent as a message to the agricultural community?

In ag production, we try to maximize #soilhealth, eg through #covercrops. It is amazing to see Pleurocoronis pluriseta, a composite, with its roots in an undetectable crack in granite yet it gets enough water to grow in the Sonoran desert.

Radish is a popular early fall #covercrop for weed suppression, biomass and perforating head soil layers. This stand did not get a good start, mainly grass competition. It did not deliver on those management goals. For success: #faststart and #nogaps

Robocultivators will be valuable. But we need to develop #covercrop protocols that leave the soil in the necessary friable condition. A issue for Eastern soils.

For vegetables next year, this stand of triticale + AU Merit hairy vetch has great potential as a nitrogen source if terminated before stem elongation wrecks the C:N ratio. Early Sept planting provides enough fall growth for this management goal.

White mustard can be a good winter- killer cover crop. Despite flowering for over a month, it is not making seeds. Managers must #killontime, so the cover crop doesn’t become a weed itself. Some have high seed-production potential.

In US Northeast now is a good time to check for weed seedlings in the winter cover crop. There should be none. If they established, make a plan to kill them, don’t wait for CC termination. This beautiful phacelia stand turned out to be quite weedy. A freeze kills the phacelia and releases the weeds.

Here's a problem, though. It wasn't cold enough to kill the oat crowns. There are already new shoots despite the last-frost date being over three months away. It will take an intervention to kill these plant and get the seedbed quality the grower was looking for. Recalibrating recommendations. 3/3

Oats are a great #covercrop for providing winter cover for erosion control and weed suppression, and for being dead and decomposing by planting time. Here we see excellent weed suppression, no erosion from rain impact or running water. Frost has worked the surface soil. 2/3

Winter in western New York State was short and mild. It lasted from Jan 14 to Jan 21 min temp 5°F (-15°C). It was cold enough to kill the foliage of an oat cover crop. With oats, we count on winter kill after strong fall growth. 1/3