Innovative Ways to Seed Cover Crops - Curtis Furr

i'm curtis fur and luck say it's 1968 to 2014 i was 10 years old and my dad and my grandfather started no-tilling the backside of a field somewhere that they didn't want the neighbors to see but I remember riding with and helping them took a John Deere grassland real and we planted a couple acres soybeans and it started long then and we went from there to sod planners and no-till planters and Nina way my box say I'm from North Carolina Stanly County and I'm also supervisor on the Stanley County Soil and Water Board well Stan the county is right in the heart of the Piedmont of North Carolina as you can see there - got it outlined in red like I say we progressed up to 12 rows instead of a 6-row no no tell grassland real also we were we've stepped up 15 inch rows projected crops are this year we're going around 500 acres a week 400 acres of corn 600 acres of beans and around 500 of cotton and a 100 acres of cover crop seed so we decided this year we were going to grow our own seeds so we've got crimson clover sued rye so to to Kaley and also we're trying a few acres of hairy vetch in winter piece don't know how they going to harvest we have have grown the crimson in other stuff before the crimson we wait to let's just pass the DOE stage in the head and we'll go in and desiccate it with some grim ox on to try to get it all to ripen at the same time so we can get in there and harvest it because a real hard thunderstorm in the right time it will knock every bit of the seeds about out of the head so let's say we grow wheat and our 15 inch corn I like my 15 inch corn because we are getting root mass over that whole acre of land also we shade the ground a whole lot quicker and taking advantage of all the new transits out there just another picture some of the corn later on in our soybeans we we plant oliver beans in 15 inch rows also drill soon and we do 100% no-till and 100% cover crop on our acres we also grow cotton and it is all 100% no telling what a curtain crop specially because cotton doesn't put out a new kind of residue you like corn and soybeans do corn cotton stalks like a you go to woods and break a stick off that's about how hard the cotton stalks are after they'd been bush hog and dried down they'll they pretty hard on their equipment crimson clover that's a field on but our neighbors like forced to grow it on their farm so they can take pictures and actually had a girl got married right inside of a field crimson clover and other pictures took out there so I didn't know it till after the fact I'll take it out of the rent next year just another up close picture there crimps and it is an awful pretty crop and there's just some rye there reason we like cover crops is for rosin control water filtration soil health and building our soil nutrients one of the neighbors farms close by there I took some pictures of it he don't so no cover crop but he goes in every year and he'll D sit down live on the first big rain it washes her back out same field it's a different angle this is a field we took on a few years back and it was the same way we went in and we leveled it leveled the whole field down with a turbo T or two like that and we sowed it and cover crop and keeping it so a lot of times these big heavy washout feels like this will double seed them just to get a real thick stand just another picture of a different angle of that same swagging or Swale in the field building our soil nutrients are our souls is just about you just see our forms you don't dig forward you found another form and that's one of the things that helped us out there as you see there is a turnip there we pulled it and found the earthworm right beside of it got a lot of poultry in our area so that means we've got a lot of poultry litter we take advantage of that too this is a poultry house that's neat and cleaning out you can see all the litter and the feathers there and we get the litter and spread it on our fields we put from 3 tons to 6 tons a year 6 tons on corn 3 turns on beans and cotton and sometimes our wheat crop will go in and put a three tonnes on there but fortunately we got enough chicken litter that we can coat every acre land we got and that that really helps build the soil health it as we are on cover crops I'm using a five-way mix I'm using rye at 30 pounds to the acre using crimson clover at 10 Australian winter peas at five hairy vetch at 5 and the tillage radishes at two and a half to three pounds as I said earlier we're our window so in these seeds is a little bit wider than they are in the northern states so we we try and we put them out when would foliate cotton we put them out soon as the corn comes off the field spreading them and then later on in the year we'll switch over and go to putting them in with a no-till drill but we can start this year we're going to play around with trying to put some own aerial and maybe some it may be the end of July before corn gets so big and tassel and we'll try some one thing about it this doing cover crops is you need to have an open mind and be willing to step out of your box and try new things pictures are right here in the crimson and like I say we use the winter peas and hairy vetch and the radishes to get our mix like we want it we made on some situations change our mix up Sun but we use a grinder mixer and pour two seeds in at the back or over them in the top but we use the mixer there and then run them over in a seat tender and use that to carry the seeds to the field other substitutes that we use if we don't want to use Rye is we dose and barley annual ryegrass and triticale lot of farmers in area tried to Rye and got in a lot of trouble trying to plant through it and they talked pretty bad about to me about it because I talked them into doing something they didn't like but they still they went to wheat or these other alternatives and they're still doing it so that's that's a plus one of the ways we put it out is with a John Deere sprayers like you see here and a pendulum spreader the picture to you right there you see the looks like a tube coming out the bottom of the spreader and that's the pendulum it goes left to right at a high rate of speed and it throws the see we found that using this works better than a spin spreader unless a single spin spreader because we got someone had a lot of trouble with it wanting to throw out the Rye maybe farther out than the small seeds and we were getting streaks in the field but the double spreaders with spreaders with the to spin spreads work great but the pendulum spreader we run it with a hydraulic motor with the ring run motor run kit that they use these in the tobacco part of North Carolina to use to go in and cut the top side of the cotton so the sprayer is already equipped with a way to run the hydraulic motor and that's what real good force some of the other ways some of other farmers are using spin spreaders and are mixing their seeds as they go is they've mounted a auger at the bottom of their spreader here that's attached to the spreader and put a bearing there top and you see there they just poured the seeds in and didn't try to make as far as they wasn't mixed that just poured a wheat in or rye and then little cramps in and everything else and started to machine up and you see how it mixed it it keeps it mixed during the operation but we've not had no issues with looking like it settled out or anything so we still this mixing it with the grinder mixer and then using it some of the other neighbors in the county there have used these spreaders like this on the front of their 4700 series John Deere sprayers running it with a just two gas five horsepower gas horizontal motor and that's one of the fails this is another one he also if you notice at the top of that spreader there they mounted them all burying it to keep the seeds mixed and we using it when we go in and to foliate cotton so while we do foliate and cotton with putting our cover crops out at some time like the last part of September 1st of October these seeds are being spread and they're again talking about at the beginning our wind is so much wider we can go in and spread it and get along now talk about the foliate and cotton we spray it and not believes off of it and open the bowls with the seeds of be on the ground and then in about three or four days the leaves will fall off cover those seeds and they'll germinate if we've got good moisture we've had pretty good luck doing that they've been a few times we didn't have the moisture and didn't get quite as good a stand as would like to a head but we still got the opportunity to go back in and take a no-till drill and hit the spots where we didn't get a good stand just another picture there of that spreader like I said two other alternatives we have is a John Deere no-till drill I like that because they don't go in and rip the soil up to start erosion because we were like setting to pick piedmont we're real rolling and we try to not tear it and the more soil and we can help this was a field it was in soybeans wasn't able to get in it and put anything in on top so we would drill them this was early beans that come off like the middle October so we're still got a good winter there to get cover crops out here also we have this took spreader trip and drove over to soybean fields if they good and wet and had pretty good luck doing that we just just had to take each year as it comes and and you moisture level to make some of these things work we've also took a herd spreader like this one on the back of a tractor and pull it pull a Phillips hair right behind it the way this work the seeds fell right in front of those spiked teeth and the spike teeth work soil up no more than a half-inch that really works great but you got to wait like this field particularly this was probably the middle of November and we were actually sowing wheat here to take the green instead of a cover crop but we have soaked cotton Cup cover crop behind cotton with this system and got along fairly well just some pictures of the cover crops after we've sowed them the right-hand picture there that those two stalks there to the left you see is cotton and it does it looks like a you just stuck a stick in the ground but the kind of to the left bottom there you see is some radishes coming some others is clover some hairy vetch there here's pictures from [ __ ] crimson clover and the Rye coming through just later on this is about probably the third week of April when this picture was - we were just fixing to go in and lay it down and kill it our radishes there you see those they were real good also we put actually got that one to pull it but you see what a hold it left in the ground for aeration so a lot of folks talk about in southeast they have to rip their souls because they have hard pans I've argued with them that they can say these radishes and turnips and stuff and get away from telling the souls the way we roll our cover crops down is we've got a tractor with saddle tanks on it I got a 30-foot color Packer that we roll the the cover crop down it seems that the rails stay down pretty good after you roll it and stay Mady to the ground and we try to roll in the same direction that we're going to be planting and our spray bar we mounted a spray bar on the color Packer and our spray tips is 20 inches apart and they're around 20 inches off the ground and we're putting a minimum of 20 gallons of water today at about 50 pounds pressure so we're getting a real good cover until as you see there on the ground behind that color Packer there's a lot of biomass there on the ground and you see how to tips or mounted a right behind the color Packer where it's rolled it down it actually if it tries to stand back up its got it sprayed before it tries to come back up and stand up we'd a lot of times more lay down it'll try to come back up but rolling it like this you get a real good kill just another picture of a side view there the color Packer and that's a picture of it about a week after it was burnt down as you see in about the middle of the right-hand side of that picture there - cotton stop standing there buck I said Walla go there this like a just a stick stuck in the ground and after it'd been bush hog they real sharp and we have had lots trouble with flat tires I new guy in the last sessions time vitamin soybeans doubles out here but I'll take the soybeans over to cotton stalks any day because it's pretty tough on but like say there's the keel we get we've been using remarks on with a mixture - for day in a doc Kamba and if we don't want to use the doc cam band 2 4 D will we use the mock Sanh in something like a harmony in that family there's a cross-section of a cobra cut it will cut it the way I've got the coders mounted on this planner we're using frame mounted holders that's mounted on the frame of the the planter will put longer pale little arms on the planter and push that unit back and put a unit mounted cleaner those are yet cleaners there and they seem to be done a pretty good job and one planter we're done two setbacks instead of buying the longer arms and as you see they're just a picture the road cleaner but right there's what it'll do it's those do a real good job as you can see we planted the same direction that we rolled it and that works good but it will like you see it in that other picture right there you see it kept that and moved it right out of the way and still planted it it planted a cut it right crossways but you got let it get did that locks the doubts about ten or twelve days after it had been sprayed and it was beginning to deteriorate a whole lot the kinsey planter you see it up front don't do quite as good a job at the same time planting with the John Deere planter because the road cleaners are mounted in front of the decoder instead of behind so we have to wait to about two weeks or 22 days after we spray it to let that Ryan stuff get desiccated a little bit more as you see on that tractor there we got saddle tanks on it and we're using it for a pop-up fertilizing further there with a totally tubular we putting that in furrow width seed and then behind we put our nitrogen right beside the row and that way we we trying to put everything as close to the plan as we can get it without burning it this is a picture of me in 1980 planting with a tractor and standing rye we just at that time we didn't roll it down you can barely see me in the middle of the picture there at a tractor with a red buggy top that's before everybody graduated to tractor with a cab on it this is a feeling Stan Lee County to feel on the left was had a vertical tillage ran over it before the cotton was planted the field on the right was planted in a cover crop this is just a picture of it later on in the season you can see how much difference the cover crop made filling the left is cover crop fill on the right was same picture but again cover crop on your right and vertical tillage on your left outside temperature that day was 105 as you see there's a picture of no cover you see that grounds just plumb bare and under the cover crop there it was 85 degrees under those cotton stalks so that made a real believer out of a lot of folks that's just a picture of some more cotton with the heavy residue under it this was a picture of a 2012 crop that uh that particular field there run about three bales today Kerr and I contributed a lot of that to the good heavy cover crop farmers seemed like in that area was telling me they were getting thirteen hundred pounds to 1350 and Locke said that went right at fifteen hundred pound just some more pictures there is you not never seen a cotton crop that white bloom there came out like this morning if you look kind of you see the purple blooms in there that was a yesterday's bloom and it pollinated and dried up they'll turn red and then purple the second day see there's the red when that was the two days ago but anyway just another picture there's some cover crop the residue you here's a picture of that same feel that I showed you all goat it run about three bales that's some more out of there just I don't know is anybody in here grow cotton I didn't figure didn't be too many from the south her period it's it's a good crop it takes a lot of maintenance we we wind up spraying as many as driving through it eight times spray and it depends on how much water we get and how much growth regulators we have to put on in our insect pressure a lot of times we can piggyback a lot of that together and save a crop I was out waiting on the boys that taking some pictures and that particular bowl that I put that quarter on you can kind of get an idea it was about a baseball sized Bowl and not ever seated cotton picker in Max and there's a picture of one and we put our cotton in modules the gin comes and picks it up and no words it ain't like you put it in the bin and then have to get it out so we done with it when we pull the tarp over it it's better than having to pull grain out of a being but after we get through our crops we get we pour our soil samples we're using grid sampling and trying to solve sample every of the year to keep an eye on what our soils is doing and this closing that we've come a long way from the bottom left-hand corner there from following a mule where we at today two of the RTK in global position and stuff we using we live in a time technology's come a long way and it's actually farming's phone the way we got things to better ways of do it now you

Channel: SARE Outreach

Views: 42,964

Rating: 4.8461537 out of 5

Keywords: research and education, Soil Quality, SARE Outreach, stewardship, cover crop, sustainable, sustainable agriculture, Soil Management, organic, USDA, farming, agriculture, SARE, farm, local food, Crop Diversification, Cover Crops, research, Nutrient Management, on farm research, grants, Soil, Crop, sustainable ag, Soil Conservation, ag, soil health

Id: cQ_WN90HFcI

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 12 2014