According to Jamie Patton, soil health coordinator for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Wisconsin, 2024 has been a strange and challenging year for farmers, particularly in Wisconsin and most of the Upper Midwest.

“The Wisconsin Climatology Office identified this as the third-wettest January to August on record in the state,” Patton said during a recent Professional Dairy Producers Dairy Signal webinar. “By the end of August, we were 7 inches above what we normally would be for moisture.” Wisconsin typically receives 38 to 40 inches of rain in a year.

Weather challenges

“This year has been a real challenge from a soil health perspective,” Patton said. “We started off the season with torrential rains. Because a lot of farmers were not able to get their crops in in a normal time period and we were getting all this rain, we saw a lot of erosion. If we didn’t have cover crops in place, that pounding rain compacted that soil surface. We had crusts on a lot of these soils.”

In addition to eroding and crusting soils, Patton said the excessive rain also stretched the corn planting season into July in northern Wisconsin.

“Those who could get into their fields were doing so when the soils were wet,” Patton noted. “I’m always preaching, ‘Don’t traffic your soils when they are wet.’ If you can see lug marks and footprints, don’t go in, but we were pushed this year because it never stopped raining.”

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As a result, she said there is a lot of soil compaction in fields. Because plants didn’t have to fight for water, their roots are quite shallow.

From wet to dry

Since Sept. 1, little rain has fallen across much of Wisconsin and the Midwest.

“We’re seeing the repercussions of compacted soil and shallow roots now that it is abnormally dry — almost drought conditions,” Patton said. “Plants are not able to get the water they need.”

All of this will lead to both challenges and opportunities in 2025, Patton said.

As farmers finish harvesting corn silage and soybeans this fall, they need to be thinking about planting cover crops. “Cover crops will produce root systems and are going to help feed and heal the soil,” she explained.

Patton said fall is also time to spread manure, and manure and cover crops go well together. Cover crops can be seeded and manure can be spread into November, she said. Which should be done first?

“If I had my way,” Patton said, “I’d love to see cover crops planted first because I want them to get their roots growing down deep in the soil. Then after that cover crop is 2 to 3 inches tall, come in with an injector and apply manure into the cereal rye that you planted. We’ll see a little disturbance, but these nutrients are going to help that plant recover, and we will hardly be able to see what we have done after a couple of weeks.”

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Hedge options with cereal rye

Patton said cereal rye is a great cover crop. “Cereal rye will germinate down to almost freezing temperatures into November,” she explained. “Farmers can use a drill, but they can also consider using new technology such as a drone to seed cover crops.”

To increase your options next spring, Patton suggested consider boosting the seeding rate on cereal rye from 40 to 60 pounds per acre to 80 to 100 pounds per acre on at least some of your cover crops.

“Next spring, I will have the option to terminate that cover crop or, if I need the feed because my alfalfa winter-killed, I can harvest the cover crop in mid-May for feed for my cows, heifers or beef, and then plant corn for silage,” she said.