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…
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Dual Purpose Cover and Forage Crop Mixes – Above and below ground there’s more than meets the eye!
Genevieve Slocum The need for soil building, erosion control and nutrient scavenging doesn’t end with the onset of warm weather; if anything, it only accelerates. It’s an opportunity to be seized, especially since warm season annuals establish quickly, fill gaps in the rotation, tolerate drought and other challenging conditions, and produce large amounts of forage…
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…
Alfalfa Features
“King’s puts the research behind their products and I could always trust that they would provide the best seeds available for my customers in my area.” -Terry Ingram Dairyman & Kings Dealer, Brandy Station, VA Kingfisher Enhancer II Enhancer has been a strong alfalfa for many years. It continues to show solid yields in…
Intentional Management: Matching Needs With Resources
By Jonathan Rupert, Smith Seeds A number of years ago, I had the privilege of visiting one of the many cattle ranches operated by Lykes Brothers in Florida. If you’re not familiar with the name, Lykes is one of the top five largest cow-calf operations in the nation with over 600,000 acres of pasture, orchards…
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…
Corn and Soybean Herbicides and Rotation to Cover Crops
By Bill Curran and Dwight Lingenfelter, Penn State Extension With silage harvest well underway and corn grain and soybean not far behind, a number of farmers are considering cover crop establishment this fall. Remember that some herbicides can persist and potentially influence successful cover crop establishment. Both the 2015/16 Agronomy Guide (Table 1.10-6) and the…
Taking a look at remedies for no-till’s side effects
The push to adopt no-till and its impact on farm ecosystems and watersheds has created a massive transformation over recent decades – including some effects we hadn’t prepared for. With a nationwide trend into no-till agriculture since 2000, 1/3 of US crops are now planted without tillage or with only minimal tillage. The Chesapeake…
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