Most changes in farming practices come with a learning curve, and Andy Linder of Easton, Minn., has learned that, as he went all-in when he started using cover crops.

It is often recommended to start slow when adopting a new practice, but Linder dove in, as he planted 100 acres in a high-visibility field on the north end of Blue Earth, right along U.S. Highway 169. “It was a billboard right from the start,” he says.

That was the fall of 2015, when he planted cereal rye into soybeans that would be corn the following spring.

He defends his “dive-right-in” approach, rather than converting more slowly. “I’m not saying that’s the right way to do it, but the fastest way to learn is to dive right in,” he says. “I’ve heard people say to try it on a 40 or 100 [acres], and I get why they say that, but if you don’t do enough to hold yourself accountable, you can let it fail and then say, ‘Well, I tried.’ You didn’t try hard enough because you didn’t have to. If those 40 acres flop, well, big deal, we’ve got the other 800 to make up for it. … But if you do 800 of them, you’re going to make sure it works.”

From a management perspective, Linder and his dad, Don, learned that planting cereal rye into cornstalks to be soybeans the next year is better than planting cereal rye into soybeans to an upcoming corn crop. Andy was getting cost-share through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which required 130 pounds of rye per acre, “which is way too much,” he says. He followed that up with fall-applied hog manure with an applicator that created more soil disturbance than today’s equipment provides.

Related:Scouting can help evaluate cover crop investment

Don says that the following spring was like planting into a front lawn between the heavy rye crop and the soil disturbance of the manure application. “It was just a little too rough to plant,” Andy says. “We ended up working it twice, and it still wasn’t great.”

Now that they know how to manage cereal rye, it has become the staple cover crop in the operation, “primarily because it’s economically priced [and] it’s the most winter hardy,” Andy says. Another selling point to cereal rye is application flexibility — drilled, incorporated with some disturbance and even broadcast.

In the fall of 2015, the Linders put rye on every corn acre that would be planted into soybeans, so 2016 was the first farmwide no-till beans into rye, and today the operation is mostly no-till.

No perfect mix

Those are the main modes of application that the younger Linder uses in his AgroSolutions business, where he custom seeds cover crops in a 50-mile radius of Easton, and although he likes sticking with cereal rye, he will branch out to meet customers’ desires.

Related:Consider spring-planted cover crops

Cover crop mixes often are dependent on whether the grower is enrolled in a county or federal program, which may dictate a diverse mixture. “If the grower is getting funding from the county or feds, then it’s usually a mix because they like to see mixes, and it helps with the cost and application rates,” Andy says. “If it’s on my own dime, it’s going to be just rye only if we’re cornstalks going to beans. If we’re going to corn, we’re experimenting with drilling rye, but then adding a few other things.”

Some of those “other things,” Andy says, are winter camelina and hairy vetch, “which is a legume that we’re trying after soybean harvest that’s going to go to corn, so that way we have a legume in front of corn instead of so much grass.”

Sally Flis, director of sustainable ag programs for Nutrien Ag Solutions, says the makeup of a cover crop mix is largely dependent on the grower’s goals.

“There are different blends that are going to give the grower different outcomes. Do they want to add some nitrogen to the system and have some legumes in there? Are they just looking to hold soil in place and have something that grows quickly? Are they looking to break up some compaction because they’re no-till?” Flis says. “It really depends on what the goal of planting the cover crop is.”

Related:Best path to carbon credits for cattle farmers

She also stresses that farmers need to think ahead for agronomic considerations, such as what herbicides have been used that may be detrimental to the cover crop.

“Some growers mention that after using a specific product during the growing season, they can’t plant a cover crop,” Flis says. “In such cases, we need to think of alternative strategies to reduce soil erosion, such as adjusting crop rotation or other methods. It’s essential for growers to plan ahead, ideally a year before they intend to introduce a cover crop. They need to consider previous crop choices, future field activities like pesticide or nutrient applications, and clearly define their goals and desired outcomes for the cover crop.”

Cover crop interest growing

Growing season 2024 in some regions resulted in a lot of acres that did not get planted to row crops, but to protect the soil, farmers opted for cover crops. Do Flis and Linder envision this exposure may get more farmers on the bandwagon?

“It really depends on what they do next, how they terminate that cover crop,” Flis says. “This is a common discussion we get into around the carbon spaces. For instance, if you terminate the cover crop by tilling it in the spring, you’ll lose some carbon during the tilling process, despite having added carbon into the soil from the cover crop’s above-ground growth. On the other hand, if you avoid tilling, you’ll preserve more of that carbon. Ultimately, the benefits you gain from a cover crop are how you handle it post-growth.”

Linder is hopeful that farmers with cover crops study the results on the ’25 crop following the ’24 cover crop acres. He recalls that in 2013, southeastern Minnesota farmers had prevent-plant acres due to a May snowstorm but planted cover crops in late July and early August. “The next fall, there were numerous comments about, ‘My best corn crop was where I had the cover crop in that fallow year,’” he says. “And then they never go back to doing it again.”

With that in mind, Linder says farmers need to go into the adoption of cover crops with the right frame of mind.

“If your heart and your mind isn’t in it, I’d rather you not do it, because I’d rather you not do it than do it and go tell everybody how crappy it was because it didn’t work out for you,” he says. “If we’re going to do it, let’s try to make it work.”