The Most Versatile Cover Crop: Buckwheat

Buckwheat is the most versatile cover crop. It grows fast, improves soil fertility, feeds beneficial insects, and goes to seed to feed livestock as well. Buckwheat is a wonderful cover crop that deserves a place in your cover cropping system.
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00:00 Introduction
00:40 Description of Buckwheat
01:53 Buckwheat Germination
02:18 Shading Soil and Smothering Weeds with Buckwheat
02:33 Dry Matter Production of Buckwheat
03:01 Buckwheat and Phosphorus
03:35 Buckwheat's Rapid Growth
03:52 Successive Crops of Buckwheat
04:39 Seeding Rates of and Planting Buckwheat
05:27 Buckwheat Cover Crop in the Garden
05:52 Buckwheat Summary

[@n.v.b2]

Buckwheat is a super food, a delicious grain for human consumption. It's gluten free and highest in protein out of all grains. People in the US are not very familiar with that wonderful grain. I will be trying to grow white buckwheat is our dry dessert of Nevada, zone 7b.

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

very true

[@josephtreadlightly5686]

I would love to get 2 to 3 crops of Buckwheat in a year. But 4 springs in a row we had no rain. This last winter in MN in my location we had 90" of snow. It disappeared with 4 straight days in the 90's & ran off into a low area. I was able to pump that into an area on the property that I call the sponge. In that area that gets alot of sun it only took 6 weeks to dry up after the 2 weeks it took to move the excess water there. I was looking to get multiple crops of Buckwheat a year but all I got was 3 crops in 4 yrs. I plan to broadcast seed next year late in April since i had quite a few tall plants go to seed. In another area I knocked it down after planting some rape & kale but after a rainy week in August we've been dry & hot for a month. In that area on the perimeter it seemed to grow the best. I crimped the interior but weed wipped the perimeter & it wasn't that hard. I have sandy soil with a good p.h. Can't till cuz I'm trying to build up bio-mass & I don't want the areas to fill up with pigweed & lambs-quarters. With April rain I could get a good stand & I would let it go to seed so i could get 2 crops a year if it got 🔥 & dry in July. Just need some consistency for once. Take care.

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

That is years of tough weather patterns. Sorghum Sudangrass could is more drought tolerant and can build more organic matter quickly in my experience. In MN you may not get as much production as I do in MS, but it will still improves soil dramatically. It’s also a bit cheaper than buckwheat. Once OM improves, water holding capacity should help you mitigate some of the dry spells.

[@josephtreadlightly5686]

@@DowdleFamilyFarms I bought a 🪣 with Egyptian Wheat/Dwarf Sorghum/Sorghum Sudangrass for next year. I will also have Volunteer Buckwheat coming up in there. If I finally get rain in April & May it's going to be epic. We r expected to get a fair amount of snow like last winter so that should help. I never want to see a stretch of 90's in April again, it was like a shock to hour body & it created a mess for months to come. We had 3 years of mosquito eggs hatch @ one time 😫 !

[@josephtreadlightly5686]

I watched a video that I think was in Nebraska. It was a bowhunt for a nice typical buck. Just to the one side of a field they had a big irrigation system setup. They had beans planted in this field but they had a Sorghum/Buckwheat mix on the perimeter. It sure was a great looking transition. Since I am going to have that Volunteer Buckwheat coming up I just might add a little more Buckwheat seed & put that tub I mentioned around the perimeter. To the south of that area where I pumped the water out of that area in late April there is 5'tall grass in that low area. I don't want that creeping to the north anymore than it has. 😕

[@jerrybates5766]

A nice reminder they put in a patch at the nearby university and it was really nice to look at a good asset for horrible soil

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Thats really neat. What university is this?

[@jerrybates5766]

@@DowdleFamilyFarms DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Thats great to know and v dry encouraging that Universities are promoting some of the practices as well.

[@SJ-gj7mx]

Very good video. Excellent

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Thank you very much!

[@thepolycerateblacksheep]

another video to take notes from or save. I am again grateful you provide all the facts and numbers one would otherwise have to search for. everything i wanted to know before planting buckwheat as a quick cover for a newly dug up swale you already covered. that maybe gives me just enough time to plant diverse bushes and root crop by hand before winter so erosion could be prevented. i am also in somewhat heavy clay and wasn't sure if it would work for that.

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

It should work well for you. We have some additional videos in buckwheat that talk about grazing it with livestock, growing it for wildlife, and growing a second crop of it without having to plant it.

[@thepolycerateblacksheep]

tank you!@@DowdleFamilyFarms

[@certifiedhoarder]

I put some buckwheat into every cover crop mix besides my overwintered plantings. Chickens and goats get the seed heads. My guess on the reason it solubilizes phosphorus better is something to do with a bacteria specific to buckwheat thats somehow good at breaking down phosphate. Look into James F White's work on rhizophagy cycle.

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Buckwheat is outstanding! Most research articles that I have read indicate that the buckwheat root exudates produce a mild acid that breaks of the rock phosphates, making the phosphorus more available for buckwheat and other crops. That said, the science is not my specialty. I’m just glad that it makes phosphorus more plant available!

[@davidsoloninka7742]

I'm going to give BW a try for my honey bees.

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Nice

[@gssines]

I'd love to grow buckwheat, but found I need a deer solution or I'm wasting my time and money. The first time I planted, I naively thought the deer would wait to eat the seed after it had flowered for the bees. But the deer here in western Maryland started hammering the young tender greens not long after emergence. Severely stunted the growth of the entire field, but I have to say the bees were all over what little did manage to flower. Let me know if you have a deer solution I'm unaware of. I can't afford to fence my half acre. :)

[@tashaheesch532]

We row crop in NE corner of South Dakota. This year I am adding buckwheat to our rye + turnip mix. We broadcast N and the cover crop in corn around V4-V7. Our idea is to add diversity, om, and attract beneficial bugs for soybeans the next year. Plus we graze cornstalks so maybe the cows can eat the what is left of the forage. We find out this fall! Thanks for the video

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Thats really interesting. I don’t row crop so I’m really interested in using cover crops in row crops. Does the rye compete with the corn for nutrients? What about soil moisture? You are in a really dry area of the county. I guess that by the time the rye and turnips sprout, they are shaded by the corn? I have so many questions!

[@emli_subfiltz9561]

What is it Scintific name? Is it Fagopyrum sp?

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

Yes. Fagopyrum esculentum

[@stevebrown6793]

1st year/try at buckwheat . Planted 1st of May, disk the soil and throw and rolled it before a rain .Took a week or more to come up . Month later its flowered maybe 6" tall and only about 10% of the seeds came up . Not much of cover or any help , what went wrong ? NE AR . Cover crop , was wanting to plant afall crop in it .

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

I’m sure that there are other ways of planting it, but I usually lightly disk the soil and then disk over it again or leave in the furrows created by the disc. I used to use a tiller to cover the buckwheat up, but would only lightly till. Ive never rolled it before, so I don’t have much experience there. However, I would think that it may be planted too deep. 6 Inches of growth before flowering is not unusual if the soil isn’t very fertile. It will still do its work in bring up phosphorus though. How fertile is the ground where you planted it? What’s its history? Pasture, garden, row crop land?

[@stevebrown6793]

@@DowdleFamilyFarms Had a soil test done last year and it came back great , food plot

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

@@stevebrown6793 did your soil test give you any indication of what the organic matter of your soil was? Where I’ve grown cover crops before, especially my summer mix, I have really good results without adding any other fertility. Plants tend to be short and thin even with added fertilizer in my new fields.

[@stevebrown6793]

@@DowdleFamilyFarms I still had the test and it does not show the organic matter . Only shows CEC ( ECEC ) Don't know what that means ? It's at 12 cmolc/kg

[@TexasIndiafarm]

Where do you buy cheap buckwheat. Amazon says $14 for 1 pound

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

There were some vendors on Amazon that sold it in 5 and 10 pound sets a little cheaper per pound. You will have to buy a 50 lb bag for it to be much cheaper. Local farm supply stores are the place to go. Mine orders it for me and it ranges from 40-60$ per 50lb bag. Shipping is what is so prohibitively expensive if you order it online.

[@liljoe8952]

What are your thoughts on tillage???

[@liljoe8952]

Found that most sustainable operations are advocates for no-till. Do you plow only in areas that haven’t been farmed? Or after every harvest? Don’t you loose a good bit of moisture along with destroy soil structure???

[@DowdleFamilyFarms]

I just recorded a video updating people on this field and addressing this topic. Ideally, we would not till at all. It destroys soil structure, and can help oxidize organic matter. However, there are times when we need a little soil disturbance to get our cover crops to grow. On a 150 acre pasture livestock farm, a no till drill will not pay for itself. What we typically do is disc or till the top inch or so of soil, just enough to give the seed a little cover for moisture and allow the roots to begin growing. Otherwise we cannot grow much other than weeds. In pig paddocks where we have grown cover crops before, we can often seed the crops before we move the pigs off the paddock and get really good germination rates. However, it failed miserably in this field over the winter. We are still sorting out these challenges. Warm season cover crops can do a whole lot more good for the soil than a 1-2 inch deep discing or tilling that it may take to plant those cover crops will destroy. Minimal soil disturbance is key. We are disturbing the soil as little as possible. Unfortunately, in these paddocks it is taking a little discing to start the process. By the way, thank you for the curious questioning, rather than accusatory comments we get sometimes!

[@liljoe8952]

Just wondering what your thoughts were, great video, very informative as always.

[@johac7637]

I've found the tillage is a very misunderstood word, even frost heaves are tillage, as is hooves from stock, that said, I use a harrow, to scatter the foliar left overs, and disturb the soil enough for seed coverage, it also covers ever so slightly the organics, I find the earth worms love the disturbance and integrated feed for them. So tillage isn't a magic fix, nor is no till.

[@liljoe8952]

@@johac7637 ahhh thank you. I’ve been reading “Dirt to Soil” by Gabe Brown. Haven’t finished it yet, just had mentioned he hadn’t plowed since 1994. Switched to “no till” methods. Wasn’t sure what all that meant.