How should you choose cover crops? First, determine a goal for using the cover crops. What do you want to do? Once the goal is identified, then it's time to think about the current crop and next crop ...

I am often asked this question: "Is using only cereal rye as a cover crop enough or do I need more diversity?" My answer is, "It depends on what you are trying to do with that cover crop." One goal of ...

Three Mitchell County farmers, who are using relay cropping, are seeing success with the use of soybeans. In 2018, farmers Adam Norby, Alec Amundson and Steve Norby decided to run a 10-acre test plot ...

U. of I. natural resources and environmental sciences researcher Lowell Gentry and his colleagues found that an intensive three-year crop-rotation system reduced nitrate pollution runoff by 50% ...

Incorporating cover crops with tillage reportedly results in increased cover crop decomposition rates and increased mineralization of nutrients from cover crop biomass. Multiple studies have reported ...

AMES, Iowa – In most of Iowa’s fields, three out of every four acres, farmers rotate annually between planting corn and soybeans. Barely any fields see soybeans year after year, a practice discouraged ...

When Don Morse began growing cover crops, one of his main goals was to tackle the growing populations of marestail (horseweed) and waterhemp that defied traditional control measures. “I can give you a ...

A nine-year study comparing a typical two-year corn and soybean rotation with a more intensive three-year rotation involving corn, cereal rye, soybean and winter wheat found that the three-year system ...