With spring grains nearing harvest, now is a good time to try a longer season cover crop cocktail to hold moisture, build soil and fix nitrogen for next year’s row crops.

Adding a diverse cover after wheat or oats gives nitrogen-fixing legumes ample time to fix large amounts of nitrogen, 100 pounds or more, and allows most summer annuals a good growth period before frost.

Cool-season components of the mix germinate, then remain dormant until more favorable conditions occur in the fall and will continue to grow late into winter and throughout the spring until termination.

Cocktails should include grasses, broadleaves, legumes and brassicas to maximize the soil health benefit; adding a mixture of cool and warm season species further improves soil structure.

These cocktails are economical too, by providing time for legumes to fix nitrogen these mixes can make $50 in nitrogen per acre or more.

Other benefits include improved soil structure, giving you the ability to hold more water and scavenge nutrients, nitrogen mainly, but many micronutrients can be scavenged and made available to next year’s crop.

Herbicide applications should be reduced as well, having a cover to smother winter and spring annuals will eliminate one spray pass in the spring and good residual cover will provide suppression until most crops canopy over.

[naviga:h3]Cover crop walk[/naviga:h3]

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Beaver County Conservation District are planning an evening cover crop walk in Fombell later in August and I will have more information later in the month as we finalize our plans.

[naviga:h3]Grazing field day[/naviga:h3]

Registration is also open for our adaptive grazing field day on July 30 in Darlington, Beaver County.

This field day will look at improving a rotational grazing system by moving animals a minimum of once per day, as well as tall grass and high stock density grazing.

By implementing systems like this you significantly increase pasture production and withstand dry weather conditions.

Those interested can contact our office.

Andy Gaver is a conservationist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Butler County.