Dusted

We had cover crops flown on today onto a bean field and a corn field. We fly them on now, before the crops are harvested, so the cover crop can get started growing this fall.

We’re flying on annual rye grass. It should get a start growing this fall, lie dormant over the winter, and then start growing again in the spring. We’ll kill it with herbicides before planting next spring.

There are lots of reasons for doing this.

• The rye grass will prevent erosion, keeping our soil on our farm and out of the rivers.
• The cover crop will take up nutrients from the soil, the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers we apply. Those nutrients will be kept in the plant and not run off or leach away.
• The cover crop will convert those nutrients into organic matter. That organic matter is readily available to nourish our cash crops and helps build the structure of our soil, making it a better environment for growing crops.
• The roots of the cover crop also build the soil structure, breaking up compacted soil and making channels for cash crop roots to move through the soil

All sounds great, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t everyone do it? Why isn’t every field covered with something growing all the time?

All those benefits are somewhat intangible, it’s hard to put a dollar value on them. On the other, it is very easy to put a dollar value on the cost of planting cover crops. It is very expensive to plant them, on the order of 30 dollars an acre to fly them on. It’s hard to justify an actual 30 dollar an acre cost against some very nice sounding benefits.

We’re just dabbling in cover crops now, but I’m hoping we can convince ourselves they’re worth it.

Scott Farms of Pierceton flew them on for us. They were flying 3 planes today in our neighborhood, doing around 3000 acres here before moving on to Huntington county in the afternoon. They look like a NASCAR pit crew when the planes come in for more seed.

The big bags of seed weigh 2000 pounds each. They load one of those bags into the seed tender truck getting ready for when a plane comes back.

A plane comes roaring in and as it swings around to point back down the runaway they roll up with the truck to fill the plane with seed. In a matter of a couple of minutes they fill the plane with 2000 pounds of seed. If the plane needs fuel they are pumping fuel in at the same time. And then off the plane goes. 2000 pounds of seed will do around 80 acres.

We sat on my porch and watched the pilot spread seed on the corn field beside my house.

Does the plane look low and close in that picture? It was!

When the pilot did the end rows he came right up over my house.

Owen was not impressed.