By Stephanie McLain

In a world where you can find almost anything and everything with a few simple clicks on the computer. it’s sometimes nice to skip the searching and go directly to a website that has the information you need. Rely on someone else who has already done the research for you.

Here is a list of useful resources. They’re not all websites. Some involve learning about cover crops the old-fashioned way — by doing some digging and investigating on your own.

1. Midwest Cover Crops Council. Find the MCCC website and app at mccc.msu.edu. The website is a receptacle for all cover crop information. A lot of this information was collected and developed through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education website. Now the website is bundled up into a handy app that can be installed on your smartphone. If you are less technical, there is a book from SARE called “Managing Cover Crops Profitably” that has much of the same information.

2. “Managing Cover Crops Profitably.” This is a book developed by SARE. You can order a hard copy through its website or download a free Adobe file: Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd Edition. While at the SARE website, be sure to check out all the great webinars, videos and interactive information they’ve developed or posted from events such as “Our Farms, Our Future.”

3. Purdue Pocket Field Guides. Always keep these field guides with you. They can help determine crop growth stages, identify crop diseases, calculate growing degree days and estimate yields. There is a Corn and Soybean Field Guide, a Wheat Field Guide and a Cover Crop Field Guide. Go to the Purdue Crop Diagnostic Training and Research Center website at and look for publications. These pocket field guides have also been developed into apps for Android and iOS phones.

4. Cover Crop Innovators. If you’re looking for an online mentoring group that is very active, seek out Steve Groff’s Cover Crop Innovators group. Groff hosts live webinars every week on current topics. Once you’re a member, you can participate in the live events as well as go back and listen to an archive of nearly two years’ worth of webinars.

5. Shovel or spade. If you’re anything like me, you can only do so much online research before you need to get outside and learn in the field. Invest in a shovel or spade. You can read and watch videos about building healthy soil until you’re blue in the face, but you won’t learn where your fields are in terms of soil health until you really get to know them. Look in the soil; use all your senses. Look at the soil structure. Count earthworms. You learn more when you get out of your truck and get into the field.

6. Soil thermometer. A soil thermometer is useful in the spring and eye-opening in the summer. That’s when high temperatures can cause unprotected fields to have soil temperatures over 100 degrees F. A soil thermometer will help you document these things. 

McLain is a soil health specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. She writes on behalf of the Indiana Conservation Partnership.