Dakota Farmer

Turnips, cowpeas, hairy vetch and others make a soil-building cocktail.

January 25, 2007

1 Min Read

Gabe Brown is pumping up the green in his fields.

The Bismarck, N.D., farmer is planting cover crops after harvesting corn, wheat, and other traditional grain crops.

The cover crops include turnips, rye, fieldpeas cowpeas, leafy oats, lupins and hairy vetch. They can be planted individually or as a cocktail mix.

He chops the cover crops for haylage and feeds them cattle. Sometimes, he turns his cows out to graze them.

Cover cropping is like double-cropping. But instead of producing a cash grain on the second crop, Brown is using a cover crop a source of extra feed and more profit.

Cover crops also feed the soil. Their roots add organic matter to soil.

"We have been able to double organic matter in most fields and triple in some fields," says Brown, who converted to no-till more than 10 years ago.

Cover crops produce large amounts of forage if they get enough moisture.

If it is dry, and the cover crops don't sprout, Brown doesn't worry. Most cover crop seed isn't expensive.

"I like to have the seed in the ground rather than in a storage bin," he says. "You never know what might happen."

Last spring he harvested a bumper crop of hairy vetch/triticale before it turned hot and dry in June.

Dakota farmers can produce a lot more crop on less moisture than they think, says Brown, who spoke at the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District's "Soil Health Workshop" in Bismarck Tuesday.

"This is the future of agriculture," he says.

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