Finally Cover Crops Planted

Finally on Saturday I got my cover crops planted. The peas were harvested later in July. I disked the field twice to kill all the weeds and was ready to plant the cover crops the first weekend in August just before Farmfest. However the Coop did not have an operator for the airflow because everyone was busy spraying fungicides on corn and soybeans. They had a spinner fertilizer spreader set up to spread cover crop seed but they had farmers lined up to seed cover crops on Prevented Plant acres.

Saturday was the first day I had time with Farmfest, Goodhue, Dakota and Steele County Fairs plus the Minnesota State Fair. I would liked to have had the cover crops planted a while ago but sometimes things don't work out. You just do the best that you can! In the picture I am lifting the bags of cover crops high enough with the 4020 and loader to open and dump them into the spreader. I spread 2 bushels an acre of oats and 1.3 pounds of radishes.

After spreading the seed on the soil surface I used the tandem disk to cover the seed and wait for a rain to get good germination. The forecast is for rain so may be I will get lucky? Before I spread the cover crop seed my neighbor injected liquid manure from a swine nursery. The cover crops will use the available nitrogen from the manure and tie it up in the residue. Then next spring the residue will decompose and release the nitrogen for next years corn crop.