This week we’re headed to Lake Geneva, Wis. to catch up with Adam Lasch, AKA the Mad Scientist. Lasch is a first-generation farmer who’s never afraid to try something new.
As a young no-tiller without a lot of established infrastructure, he’s always digging into the science behind farming, and looking for ways to make 1 plus 1 equal 3.
On this edition of Cover Crop Strategies, brought to you by La Crosse Seed, we’ll share the intriguing results from Lasch’s experiments with interseeding, most notably green beans with corn silage.
We’ll also discuss how cover crops can be used to offset those skyrocketing input costs.
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by La Crosse Seed.
Solving the SOIL HEALTH Puzzle? La Crosse Seed Has You Covered.
La Crosse Seed has put together a leading conservation seed platform by offering respected cover crop and native seed brands, plus practical support along the way. Quality products, helpful tools and expert advice make La Crosse Seed a strong partner with the pieces you need to succeed in this growing market. Dealers: Learn more at soil1st.com, or call 800.356.SEED.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hello, and welcome to another addition of cover crop strategies podcast. I'm your host Noah Newman associate editor. Before we get started let's thank our sponsor. Solving these soil health puzzle lacrosse seed. As you covered cover crops are an important piece of future profit, but it takes work and it's puzzling. So lacrosse seed delivers quality soil. First cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. So whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local soil. First dealer lacrosse seed is ready to help learn more@soilfirst.com that's soil one St. Dot com or call 803 5 6 seed. This week. Our journey takes us to lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where we catch up with Adam Lasch, AKA the mad scientist. He's a first generation farmer. Who's never afraid to try something new. In fact, his motto in life is we have to try harder as a young note tiller with not a lot of established infrastructure. Adam's always digging into the science behind farming. He's always looking for ways to make one plus one equal three. So on this week's edition of cover crop strategies, we'll share the intriguing results from Adam's experiments with interceding, most notably green beans with corn silage. And we'll also discuss the key to using covers as a way to offset those skyrocketing input costs.
Noah Newman:
Joining us on the podcast today is Adam Lasch, a no tiller from lake Geneva. Adam, thanks for being here this morning. Let's start with your origin story. How long have you been farming? How'd you get into the game?
Adam Lasch:
I'm a first generation farmer. My wife and I started our farm. When we got married in 2011, there was no farm forced to come back to for me to come back to growing up through school, we did four H we had animals. I was always interested in growing things. We kind of ran around in my grandparents. They had some land. They grew nursery crop bedding plants, stuff like that. So we were always involved in ag, but we never, I never got to be the farmer. I wanted to be a farmer, you know, driving tractors, growing crops, all that. So got outta school, high school in 2003 went to short course, which is a university of Wisconsin Madison program, which is highly intensive on actual the business of ag farming high intensely. How do we do things got out of that and worked for some large green operations.
Adam Lasch:
I thought that'd be kind of cool. I got to see the other side of that with all of the, you know, work and tractor driving and nonstop huge. I, it basically taught me that I never wanna get that big . I was really involved. I really liked livestock. I love cattle. I love hogs. I love, I love raising livestock. And I went to work for a actually my wife's uncle at the time we were not dating. And he was feeding cattle and I, I, before I took the job, I said, I want you to teach me how to farm so that man has taught me everything. I, I know. And we've taken that and kind of refined it. We started picking up a little bit of land here, there, lots of cattle along the way, tried to, started to run some pastures.
Adam Lasch:
We actually got into the grazing side of it first. So forage has kind of been my focus, my entire adult life that led down to some crazy cover crop things. And we kind of expanded from there and, and just generally developed our whole philosophy on farming around that kinda, it's always a progression. It's a journey, not just a goal. So we bought our farm in 2011 and in 26 15, we had our welcomed our second under the world. And my wife's like, I really wanna stay home. You know, she she's been dairy. My wife grew up on 120 Cal dairy and she's like, I think we should start milking cows. And it's like, wow, okay, well, we have the land base. We don't have any dairy cows, but I can build a parlor. And that's what we did.
Adam Lasch:
So we started doing that. So dairy is our base operation. We have beef cattle, we've always had beef cattle. We use those to, as kind of the garbage cleaners to, to eat any feed that we can't feed the dairy cows. And there's some nice synergies with that. We've played around with pigs. We've, we've got out of that. Pigs are pig. Pigs are tough on your milking cows. And then yeah, we farm few hundred acres and I enjoy growing things. I enjoy the season. It's a little stressful now looking up the rain when it's may, May 2nd and we're cloudy and wet and we just hit another inch of rain yesterday. So
Noah Newman:
Yeah, it's been, it's been a rough stretch weather wise.
Adam Lasch:
It has been incredibly rough stretch. I'm having flashbacks to 2019 where it was like, oh, we're never gonna get anything. You know, then last year was cry. It was a complete and polar opposite. So you gotta be flexible. You gotta enjoy, gotta enjoy it. The journey. Yeah.
Noah Newman:
Well you seem to always enjoy it. You have a great story and, and I've, I've heard you call the the mad scientist before. It seems like you're always experimenting with new things. Tell us what you you're doing right now with, with inner seating. I know you're getting into some, some new things there.
Adam Lasch:
So, so I have always been, I have never been afraid to track. Okay. So be being a first generation farmer capital has always been limited. We have had to buy or borrow everything. So we've had some help from neighbors on equipment. I've been given some opportunities to rent land. I've thankful for that because we, without good, without good people around us, we never would've been able to do what we're doing because of that. We've always had the philosophy of, Hey, we have to try harder. I don't have the big, the big paid for farm right now that I can just sit back on my haunches and just grow corn and soybeans. And do you know, do everything conventionally. I have never have been able to do that. So I've had to dig into the science behind farming, like what makes plants grow? How do we capture some, what do we do with all this? And as I went down that path, because I never had anybody telling me, well, that'll work,
Adam Lasch:
I've, I've been able to do a lot of innovative things. So yes, I've been called a man scientist. I do a lot of very innovative mix. I've tried like just tons of different crops over the years, that that I'm like, well, why can't we grow 'em here? And then you figure out why they can't or why they really grew well. So inner seating, we've been doing this since 2020. We tried broadcasting, some things clovers and grasses and, and brassicas had mixed results on that. We have very heavy clay oils. And once, once we started going, no-till our biological capital exploded. We started having much more earthworm populations, huge amounts of just life in the top couple inches of soil. So when we started broadcasting, that seed got eaten, we had to be very careful of that. I have a residue problem generally, but it's a lack of residue because we have, we're turning so much so fast.
Adam Lasch:
We kind of joke that you don't want to go out out at late at night and fall in the field because the earthworms will eat you. So we have, we have some incredible pictures of that back to the, the inner cropping. We went down the path. There's actually a YouTube video out there. If you search my name of, of what we were doing in 2017, which was innovative. My thought process was we got corn silage. Why can't we try and add things to the corn silage so that when we, us, that we can get closer to like the ideal TMR. So a little higher protein, little more digestibility shoot. And ultimately in turn, I'm hoping for a little higher milk production, maybe a little less mineral required that we have to purchase. So first generation farmer, I'm trying to figure out how do we get that free lunch with other things in the field now that has led down a totally to different than I originally thought we started interceding, spun, flowers, cowpeas field PEs, things like that.
Adam Lasch:
I was, my whole goal was to one plus one equals three. I wanted to figure out, okay, we have the warm season. Grasses are corn. That's the main portion that's gonna be where your most yield comes from now, what can I put with that? That will play nice with the corn without, without compromising the corn in any way that we can then harvest together. So we we've okay. When corns are warm season grass, we need some warm season legging. Well, theres comes to cowpeas. We played with lung beans. We played with the peas, or like, oh, that's a spring crop, but maybe we'll see what it'll do. It did really well. That has led us down an entirely different path. So, first couple years we did it. We were kinda disappointed. We, we saw good results, but it, we just didn't get that pop that we were really hoping for.
Adam Lasch:
All right, well, let's recalibrate. So then we started doing different timings and different playing with different row. Withs we've done some 60 inch corn. We've done some twin row stuff. We've, we've played around with a lot of that. See? So that's where the mad scientist comes from. So the last couple actually last spring, I was reading an article outta the UK from the UK farmers weekly. And they were talking about guys in Germany using green beans interceding with their Corno. And now they were talking specifically about like organic systems that are incredibly low in nitrogen I'm thinking, huh? I can do that here. So last year we, we were able to finally track down some green beans. It's not as easy to come by as, as we used to, but we made some really good connections. We're actually working with a company called pure line seeds based outta here, Wisconsin and Washington.
Adam Lasch:
And my thought process on using the, the vegetable crops is one of the problems with the downsides with, with cowpeas is when we put 'em in there, we don't get quite as much yield. We get, no, almost no fruiting, there's no pods or anything. And the digestibility is just not as good as we were hoping. So, and now we had to go, okay, well cowpeas are out. I think the reason for that is we're just not warm enough. We don't get hot enough here. I'm right next to lake Michigan. We're 35 miles away from lake Michigan. So we have that big body of water. We just, we don't get enough heat for what those crops like. So back to the, the green beans, the pool beans, we're, we're going, okay. They're a vegetable crop. They've already been selected for fresh yield. Okay. Fresh yield.
Adam Lasch:
Okay. Well they're human food crop. So digestibility is not gonna be an issue. Okay. Also because they're a food crop. There's no, antit nutritionals. So you start playing with soybeans and you can get some enzymes that interact with, with protein synthesis and protein digestion in the cow. So it's like, all right. It's so we're, we're kind of going down this path. Well, okay. What about the cost? Cost is not as bad as I was expecting. It's actually lower than a lot of the high rate cow P ones. So that was good. So I'm starting to put it together. Okay. Now, how do we physically do this? How do we time our rates? How do we get our corn populations and hybrids? That'll play nice with having energy. We played around with that last year. We're, we're doing different timings. What we've found is hybrids that are more flexy, tend to be better.
Adam Lasch:
We don't want, we gotta have enough sunlight to drive. We've given enough sunlight to drive the photosynthesis necessary for the co for the beans to actually grow. Okay. I think a lot of guys fall flat with inner seating, as they're planting, hybrid's too thick for the conditions, and then they never get the cover crop to grow. And, and part of that is, you know, latitude and everything that goes into depth. So back to the inner seating, the cover crop, we last year was a, just a first year. We put it in late, just as a experiment. So enough things there that this year we're expanding it to about 30 acres. Give or take, if I can check down a little bit more seed, we should be fine. We're also gonna play around with doing solid seeded crop that we will, we will mow and chop of just the beans.
Adam Lasch:
We wanna see that. So, so what are we trying to accomplish with that crop? I want more lycine and more protein in our corn village, because with the price of inputs today, you know, nitrogen fertilizers, a buck, 13, a pound for a U ammonias over a 1700 a ton the inputs are expensive. We can no longer use that crutch. The opportunity there is, especially on the cover crop side, is that we can get really creative with legging seeds that used to be really kind of cost prohibitive. You know, if 19 50 cents a pound and you're gonna go spend 30 bucks an acre on a legging crop doesn't work, or it just didn't didn't pencil as, as easily today, totally different world, which gets me really excited for the future because we can, I don't think nitrogen price are gonna come down anytime soon so we can really get creative.
Adam Lasch:
Also on the feed side, soybean meal is expensive. So what, what can we do to grow our own proteins? And I think a lot of dairying guys, if you have livestock cover croppings, no, no, no brainer on this because we need to produce what we can, the farm. It used to be the old days you grew the basics, you bought the supplements and it just worked. Those days are gone. I really, I really believe it. They're just gone at least for the foreseeable future. And we need to become more self sufficient and utilize what our land can produce. And U the basis of that is soil, water, and sunlight. And we have to get to do a better job in it. Agriculture of capturing that sunlight.
Noah:
Yeah. I mean, you answered a lot of the questions I had, but you know, some people, it sounds like there's a hesitancy to use cover crops because they might think it's not financially viable, but you clearly have found ways to make it profitable.
Adam Lasch:
If you have livestock, you have to, you, there's no reason not to use cover crops. I mean, it's, it, it is feed that you can, you can figure out a cover crop that can fit into your rotation somewhere. You may have to be more flexible as far as timings, or when you get your soybean crop or your late season corn size planet or harvested. But if you have some flexibility in your livestock business, you're gonna be a little anyway, because we're not like the crop guys that, that have a much more specific thing. We're, we're, we're trying to feed CR livestock all the time. And don't, I mean, I haven't even talked about the grazing side of it. If you have a contiguous piece, the grazing is another option that just, just opens the world of possibilities. So guys that are the ones that I see are the most nervous and the hardest to get it into the, the cover crop.
Adam Lasch:
So we, we are a cover crop seed dealer. We, we work with a company called Puerto Creek seed. So I get to see a lot of different operations and that has helped me fine tune my operation, cuz it's great. I can get, go get on lots of different soil types. And one of the common themes that I've, I've noticed dealing with all of the customers that we have to deal with and we still get phone calls all over the country is how do I make it work on my place? Okay. So, so a lot of it is that little bit of fear. I shouldn't, I don't know if I'd call it fear, but that trepidation of what if it doesn't work, what am I, you know, what am I trying to do? So what we've noticed is that guys that are a little bit hesitant, they may only dip their toe in part way.
Adam Lasch:
And that part way, what we say is if you're sitting on the fence, you, all you end up with is, is a sore crotch. So you gotta get off and figure out, okay, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna step into this, take one small part of your farm, the worst part of your farm, step into it, and then let it go whole hog. You know, you gotta be fully committed into doing the covers. And part of that is coming up with your goal. You have to figure out exactly what you're hoping to do. One of the nice things with, with starting down that cover crop path is especially if it's a crappy piece of dirt, you can see the results a faster than on a really good piece of ground. You know? So we, we have ways. It is a truly a mindset change. You have to, you have to really want to make it work.
Noah Newman:
We'll get back to the podcast in just a second, but let's once again, thank our sponsor, solving these soil health puzzle. The across seed has you covered crops, our an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and it's puzzling sometimes lacrosse seed delivers quality soil, first cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local soil. First dealer lacrosse seed is ready to help learn more@soilfirst.com. That's soil onet.com or call 803, 5 6 seed. And now back to the podcast.
Noah Newman:
So when you first started with cover crops, do you remember your, your first journey with it? Which ones did you first start using?
Adam Lasch:
So, so I used to started kind of like that, that same thing. I, I don't just the man scientist thing, I don't jump in part way. So first year outta the gate, we didn't just do cereal ride. We did serial ride, Harry VA and a heavy rate of Harry. So talk about a learning curve planting into that. I don't know if you know anything about Harry VA, but Harry VA is a line. It's a, a very string, beautiful, great nitrogen producer, excellent root structure, just a great cover crop. It can be kind of a challenge for some guys to deal with, especially in the spring and planting. So, but I'm looking at Ry. I know it's a heavy nitrogen feeder and, and a good on our heavy place soils. And I'm like, well, I'm not gonna just do Ry. Let's throw some hair, prevent there and planted into that cover crop the next spring. And I'm, I, I, I came home. I was so mad. I told my wife, you married an idiot.
You, you married, you married an idiot. And she's like, oh, settle down, settle down. I said, we're not gonna have crop. I said, the, the neighbors are gonna think we're just stupid. I mean, why are we doing this? Cause I was planting into a green cover crop. I didn't even kill it off ahead of time. We planted full green into it. And it worked out really well. Wow. First year outta the gate, the neighbor old guy that I rent the ground from, he still farmed some. He he kind of came up to me after, after getting done planting and I had sprayed off the cover and he kinda like put his arm around my shoulder and was like, are you sure you're old? Okay. Like, do you think that's gonna work? And it was a, it was kind of crazy cuz it's like, he knew we'd do a lot of no-till.
Adam Lasch:
The piece rented me was we got a lot of the neighbors water. So he, he wanted the limited tillage on there so that we could keep some of the soil back and he kinda, you know, he could tell Adam, are you, are you sure? You know what you're doing? Like, it was really, really fun. This guy's been farming for 50 years and very conventional though. And you know, all of a sudden the corn came out and we had a stand. Okay. That looks pretty good. And then a little bit later, you know, through the summer, it's like, wow, that that's really looking good. You know why? And then towards the end, when we were chopping silage off the field, he's bringing his, his buddies over from up north that are, look at what this guy's doing. You know, look at this corn, he's driving around the field, we're chopping, you know, showing some of his friends, you know what they're doing, what this crazy guy's doing. And that was some validation. That was, that was that's what kept me motivated. I think part of that is it's nice to have a little bit of appreciation for what you're trying to do.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. That had to give you a lot of confidence moving forward too.
Adam Lasch:
It did. Yeah. And then can I tell you the flip side of that now? Yeah. So it, in 2021, we had kind of built this last year kind of built on that we're doing heavier covers more thicker stands more species, more, more, more, more, more, and we're in a wet area. Like I said, heavy place, all is wet. I'm building for wet cuz that's what we've been dealing with for the last five years, you know? And 2021 comes in and I'm like, huh, I, I wind up a neighbor's roller a good friend's ruler. It's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let my covers grow as long as possible. We're gonna build those nutrients. We're taking cuttings and samples and wow, we're watching the fertilizer value go up in these, in these covers, it's getting dry. And Adam's like, ah, it'll rain. It always rains.
Adam Lasch:
We never not had it rain after planting. So I'm planting into big covers in may rolling them down. I spray 'em off first roll 'em down and there's no water. We're not getting any water. Why are we not getting any water? It always rains. Oh, there's raining the forecast. We'll be fine. No way rain. I've never seen it. Not rain for six weeks after we planted ordinarily I wouldn't worry because you know, with, with the building, the soil health, we've had no troubles. We've been able to really capture a lot of the benefit. You know, the friability the, the, the, just the plants nice and everything just holds you up and you get all those benefits. It's not raining. It's not raining. My big, cover's taking a lot of water. I mean, I'm pulling 7,200 pounds of dry matter off this. I've used a lot of water already.
Adam Lasch:
Oh crap. So I started getting nervous about the first week of June looking out there. And I think what we had happened is we used up so much moisture in that top couple actually the top profile of the water, the neighbors that actually did a little bit of tillage, I think sealed off the capillary action. We had all this big straw out there that acted like a straw. And we were getting 90 degree days with lots of wind. And we just desiccated the, the, the top three inches of soil. We right where those little corns, these were coming. And I had to relearn a lot of what I thought I knew about that. We had, we had probably a three inch mat of that and we got a two 10th rain and I'm like, oh great.
Adam Lasch:
Didn't even get to the soil surface. It, it got locked up in that, in that in that batch. So one of the things I would caution everybody is you're gonna have to be flexible because I thought I knew it all as far as planting into big covers. And then mother nature said I got another lesson to teach ya. . And, and so, so now we've had to be much more flexible. And the, the old saying in farming is you're always farming for last year because that's what we know. And now the beauty of the cover crops is we, we, we can be flexible, but you, you have to never sit on your laurels because you, you are going to have to relearn every thing every so often. And flexibility is key. Mental flexibility is key cause it was, it last year was more stressful than 2019. Wow. In case 2019, we had 60 inches of rain when we normally have about 35 or 38, we had double amount of rain. And last year was one of the drys dryer than even 2012. So it was like one extreme to the other.
Noah Newman:
Talk about a rollercoaster ride.
Adam Lasch:
It is,
Noah Newman:
It is talking about your forage mix. What covers do you use and, and how do you measure success with that system?
Adam Lasch:
So, alright. So my old cover cropping philosophy is certain things plants grow better together and certain plants grow better at certain times of the year. So we're always watching the weather trying to figure out, okay, what kind of season are we having? Like this year, it's cold and wet right now, it's cold. I don't wanna have a warm season cover in the ground right now, which I mean, we're not gonna anyway because it's not the end of June and we don't have enough soil temp to do it. So, so looking at my cover crop philosophy, it's what can I grow for the conditions we have, where we are expected to have right now? So, so one of the things that we just did last week is we planted peas and barley on some dryer type land that we have about 10 or 11 miles from home.
Adam Lasch:
Why did I plant peas and barley when corn is seven, seven bucks off the combine next fall, cause this piece of ground is not that good. I've got quite a bit of quite a bit of batch leftover from last year. It was soybean crop last year. So we didn't use all of our, our nutrients that we had there. And looking at the conditions we have, these and barley in the ground today are growing. We put corn or we have to wait for corn to grow it. It's gonna be weeks. So at this point I wanna capture whatever some is there is gonna be hitting that, that ground that'll gimme some a chance to stretch our rotation. That's another important part of cover cropping that I think gets overlooked a lot of times is we're introducing species that can help break up our cover crop cycles, but we need to stretch out that rotation too.
Adam Lasch:
So we're trying to get different crops into the mix. So specific crops, I'm gonna drop a cover crop that I need for forage. What are my intended goals for it? When is it gonna be growing? What kind of land is it gonna be growing on? And what other inputs do we need to make that a success? So when I, when I'm looking for building a cover crop, what am I trying to do with it? Am I gonna use it to feed heifers that lead lower nutrients? And I just want raw tonnage. Are we looking at trying to build super digestible fiber cause in a livestock operation, generally highly digestible fiber. So dairy quality, fiber, highly digestible, high sugar, that is the most expensive for feed stuff you can come up with. So we wanna produce as much of that on the farm as we can.
Adam Lasch:
So and then is it gonna be a summer cover or say later in the, into the fall and where does it fit into our rotation? So right now we're, we're looking at some doing some warm season mixes in another couple weeks right now we're, we're focusing on the cool seasons that we could take off after that. We'll switch to the warm seasons, which we're talking about for warm seasons, I'm trying to target. What's the, what's the most efficient growth we can get for the conditions. So generally, you know, that's, that's based on heat and light. So C four S would be to the sorghum, sorghum sedans, pro mill, stuff like that, even corns into the summer. Those are your Mo those sea four grass that are most efficient. We're gonna throw the, throw the leggings with it, the cow and such among beans and try and, and build raw tonnage comes from that in the fall.
Adam Lasch:
My favorite, my favorite fall cover crop ever is after wheat comes off. If you can put in a small grain, so spring peas or small, like small grains, like spring trip, spring wheat, spring oats, spring barley spring peas, maybe throw some lentils. And then some of Nebraska crops in there, we are finding that we are pulling the most tons of the digestible forage off in the fall, which is counterintuitive because you think, oh man, spring, you know, we got our corn silage as a base, but we need to add something to it. So we've got our, our alfalfas and our hay crops that we use for, for little diversity in the system, little trying to produce some high protein. But as far as that digestible forage coming off after we, that is a huge upper opportunities for dairies. You let that frost hit it once those plants mobilize those sugars we're pulling two and a half ton of dry matter in 60 days off of a, basically a wasted an opportunity crop that, that, you know, may cost you 40, 50 bucks an acre to put in for seed and maybe another 50 for nitrogen.
Adam Lasch:
But the forge coming off of there is so digestible, fresh cow, just do incredibly well on it. So that's, that's kind of what we're targeting
Noah:
Do you have to be careful with chemicals in terms of an herbicide program or
Adam Lasch:
We very much do so I don't use a lot of the same chemicals on lot of our, our normal cropping neighbors do they're going with the authorities and, and heavy high use of residuals we've had to back that off, cuz a lot of those aren't labeled for forge crops and or the timings are such, you know, we're always trying to seed down some mouth out every year, kinda got away from that for a while. We're going back to it. We have to be very cognizant of what the, what we were selling milk. We're selling a food product. We, we need to be very cognizant of what we're using. I like outlook quite a bit. That's a grass service side and it able for a lot of the vegetable type crops actually. So we'll use some sharpen. We'll use some, some sharpen as ahead of the corn silage and outlook.
Adam Lasch:
So verdict which is the combo product of that in the fall, you know, say, say we have to burn down a wheat crop or, or whatever. We'll use some two, four D we do use some Roundup cuz I just haven't found anything better. Some guys have talked about using Paraquat, but I'm not gonna use anything with the skulling crossbones on it myself. Try to, the nice thing with covers is because we're not doing a lot of the full with tillage. We don't have to have the super high rates to kill everything cuz we're not turning up those seeds. So the residuals I'm, I'm a little less worried about, we do put 'em out there. We have tried to get 'em and that has kind of been us. You know, we were going down to quite low rates kind of found that middle of the road tends to be the best to stay away from the extremes kinda more middle of the road.
Noah Newman:
Well, your t-shirt says lash solutions and I know you, you kind of touched on this earlier, but what, what are some solutions that you're finding to offset the input prices that just seem to be skyrocketing these days
Adam Lasch:
So that the, their last solutions last livestock and land solutions. So that that's what we've had to come up with our entire time is how are we gonna come up with this, a solution to this problem? That's why we named it that cause it seemed like we were having to come up with a lot of weird solutions. The beauty right now going forward IC is as nitrogen prices for large prices are not gonna come down for quite a while. So I, I follow up a lot of media I'm on Twitter. Adam, Adam, one, if you wanted to follow me there, we, we follow a lot of the different looking ahead on a lot of things we have to, I'm a first generation farmer. We gotta, we kind of try and, you know, stay ahead of the curve here. We can't, we can't sit.
Adam Lasch:
I, so I see going forward producing our own nitrogen. I think the guys that are using rye ahead of corn, I would, I'm gonna start rethinking that. I think we got other co tool a cover in the toolbox that we can use. Harry VA winter peas. We've had luck with winter peas, but you gotta get 'em planted deep. I think you gotta stay flexible on your timings. You know, if you don't get a cover on a field in the fall, let's look at ways we can get it Clover or something on it in spring, you know one new cover crop we're gonna play around is some tickling VA I've heard mixed results on it. Seed cost is kind of high, but we're, we're playing with it. So I think you have to have some, some flexibility. And I realize if you're a 4,000 acre crop farmer, you're limited on time.
Adam Lasch:
I get that. But I think there's gonna be huge opportunities for producing your own own nitrogen, you know, and even phosphorus and potassium potash, because last year, what we learned with the cover, we did some strategic fertilization. In early April last year it was dry, but it was still cold. We hadn't planted any crop when those soils are so cold, there is very little biological nitrogen fixation happening. So we went out and we, we had a, a ride grass cover crop field. And we did, we put down a hundred units and little bit of gypsum, calcium sulfate and a hundred pounds. And on a spring crop is a lot we were looking for, well, maybe we can take it for forage. We did a strip trial between that and no, and the same mix, but no nitrogen. When we went to cut it mid April or mid-May the, we did some clippings and we did some analysis.
Adam Lasch:
The dry matter difference was we had 72 pounds, 7,200 pounds of dry matter. So three and a half ton on the stuff we strategically fertilized the stuff that we didn't fertilize next to it. We had 1300 pounds of dry matter. So quite a big difference. Then when we sent those samples in the piece with the fertilizer, we had it done and did all the calculations. It had 238 pounds of nitrogen in that cover crop. It had 209 pounds of potash equivalent. It had 15 pounds of phosphorus, 70 pounds of calcium. It also had a thousand pounds of sugar per eight. So we can start, we can feed that crop. So one of this was one of the learning curves. I'm thinking when I planted the corn in that field, I just laid it down. I'm thinking I have everything here right now to produce a 250 bushel corn crop piece of cake, as long as I get the water.
Adam Lasch:
So that was the big learning curve. But guys, I think if we can do some strategic realization, especially trying to capture that let's grow the cover crop, you know, to, to produce the, the biomass. We can, we can use a lot of the, the, these covers to sequester and bring up our, and make more available for ledger that's in our ground. And I think that's gonna be absolutely critical, you know, cause I don't know how long these good prices on crops are gonna last, but I know they're not gonna last some point they're gonna change and we're gonna have to be much more creative going forward. We have opportunity now let's build that factory. Let's build that biological capital, which is something I'd like to touch on too. Let's build that biological capital, that bank account that we can draw on when time's go the other way.
Noah Newman:
Gotcha. Well, Adam, we're sitting here on the a Monday morning. I'm sure you have a busy week ahead. Before we let you go back to your laboratory any, anything else you wanna add or touch on?
Adam Lasch:
I would just tell guys figure out what you're trying to accomplish and then, then start thinking about it. You have to be all in on this. I mean it it's, it's very easy right now to just prices are good if you have every, you think bought and you're kind of in your system, it's really easy to just take the easy win. I think the guys that are gonna get really far ahead in the next few years are gonna be the ones that are super flexible and are willing to experiment because with when with ultimate volatility comes ultimate opportunity and we're there we are. I mean the, the world right now is an absolute, just volatile mess. And I think those guys that can be and girls that can be very flexible going forward are gonna own it.
Noah Newman:
Well, if someone's listening to this and they wanna get in touch with you and kind of pick your brain a little bit, how can they get ahold of you just check you out on Twitter or what
Adam Lasch:
Our Twitter is one it's at LA Adam. One another way is you can email us at lash solutions, L a S C H S O L UT I O N S gmail.com and track us down that way. Send us an email and I, I would love to be able to get some more green beans and some, and some dairy farmers' hands especially this year, just to try and learn some moreinformation going forward because I think, I think I think this is gonna be a wonderful opportunity going forward.
Noah Newman:
Thanks again to Adam Lasch for joining us on this week's edition of cover crop strategies. And once again, let's thank our sponsor solving these soil health puzzle lacrosse seed has you covered cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and it's puzzling at times, lacrosse seed delivers quality soil, first cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. So whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips, or find a local soil. First dealer lacrosse seed is ready to help learn more@soilfirst.com that's soil onet.com or call 803 5 6 seed. Thanks for listening. And remember for all things cover crops, head to cover crop strategies.com.
Post a comment
Report Abusive Comment