Summer Cover Crops, Even When it’s Dry
Ray’s Crazy Mix, a diverse summer annual cover crop mix What if it’s a dry summer? Will cover crops tie up the soil moisture for your cash crop? In most cover cropping scenarios, you will find the opposite. Unless you are using the cover crop in a manner that would normally be considered competitive…
Western New York Crop Alert 6-15-13: Water Water Everywhere & Emergency Forage Plantings
From Mike Stanyard, Cornell Cooperative Extension: Water, Water, Everywhere From 4 to 7 inches of water has fallen in most of WNY since June 6. This has resulted in ponded Flooded corn field and flooded fields that might result in some crop loss. How long can corn and soybeans survive under water? Answers vary but…
Build Good Soils with Forage
You may have thought that planting a cover crop and leaving it alone until termination and planting of the cash crop is the best way to get all the soil benefits of the ground cover. Cover crops by themselves certainly improve soil biodiversity, soil organic matter levels (which influence tilth and moisture capacity), nutrient…
Harvesting Sunlight, Feeding No-Till Soils
Published in No-till Farmer By Martha Mintz first posted on January 9, 2015 | Posted in No-Till 101 Jim Harbach and Schrack Farms Partnership is using a diverse no-till, cover-crop system to build up organic-matter levels in rocky limestone soils. Our farm perplexed our crop advisor, Gerard Troisi. He consults with many farms in our area…
Bring in the Bees: Farmscaping With Pollinator Mixes
Why draw more insects to the field? Most row crop fields are acres upon acres of monoculture. If these crops are grown to bloom stage, they will provide food for vitally important pollinators for a very short time, and the single plant species creates food for limited insect species. You can use mixes of flowering…
Seeing Soil Health
King’s AgriSeeds Inc. recently cohosted a soil health field day at Eli Weaver’s Meadow View farm. He’s one of our local dealers, based in Leola, Lancaster County, PA, and devotes several acres to product research. The day was a perfect integrated training opportunity, because it featured Ray Archuleta of the USDA-NRCS speaking on the importance…
Monitoring First Cutting Harvest Timing
By Joe Lawrence, Cornell University First cutting can represent a significant portion of your total hay crop for the year and has the potential to be very high quality feed if harvested at the correct timing. To help you monitor that timing there are tools available. Monitoring Programs Several Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) teams statewide…
Tool Predicts How Forage Will Feed; TTNDFD
Original article published by Hay and Forage Grower, Fae Holin Figuring out how well or poorly a silage or hay will feed – before dairy cows do – has always been a challenge for producers, nutritionists and forage-analysis labs. But a relatively new tool, called total-tract NDF digestibility (TTNDFD), seems to be accurately estimating forage…
2013 Forage Analysis Winners
A big ‘Thanks’ to all Kings customers who submitted forage samples for the first ever PA Forage Analysis Competition. Kings had multiple top finishers and as well as winners in multiple categories. The Pennsylvania Dairy Summit Forage Analysis Competition is hosted by the Penn State Extension Dairy Team, Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania, Dairy Business…
First Cutting Quality Summary for New York Producers
From Cornell University Cooperative Extension, for our customers in New York and Northern states We have begun monitoring of 1st cutting for quality this year. If you are not familiar with our procedures we use alfalfa height to predict Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF) for alfalfa, alfalfa/grass mixed and grass stands. Alfalfa height has proven to…
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