Planting Soybeans Green Into Cereal Rye Cover Crop - Practical Cover Croppers

Learn the why and how of planting soybeans into a green cereal rye cover crop from Practical Farmers of Iowa members! This video includes interviews with Rachel Amundson of Osage, Iowa; Nathan Anderson of Aurelia, Iowa; Jon Bakehouse of Hastings, Iowa; Nick Smith of Epworth, Iowa; and Will Cannon of Prairie City, Iowa. Keep an eye out for more videos in this series, which will focus on everything from the basics of cover cropping to more advanced topics like relay cropping, roller crimping and diverse rotations.
This project is supported by The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research. Any reference to specific products or technology does not constitute or imply an endorsement by FFAR for those products or technology.
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number NR216114XXXXG003.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, any reference to specific brands or types of products or services does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for those products or services. USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

[@bnjmnwtt]

We’ve found that we get a more robust corn plant when we plant into the green rye. The population of the biota in the soil is at such a level that when the corn plant germinates, that biota just flocks to those root hairs and helps feed that crop…then we terminate the rye We would take the previous corn crop off as silage. We’d plant the rye about a month after the field has been empty (due to work load, that’s the earliest we were able to get to it). The rye would take all the compaction that the trucks caused out over winter. The soil was so ‘mellow’ the following spring that deep til wasn’t necessary.

[@maixuanngoc6463]

Hi, I find your solution very interesting, but what kind of herbicide killed the rye but not the bean?

[@maciejbacal5562]

I'm from Europe, so no experience with spraying cover crops, but my guess is they're spraying Roundup, and the soy is "Roundup Ready".