This week we’re headed to Eastern IA, for a conversation about all things cover crops with Ryan Gibbs of Gibbsfield Farms. Ryan, and his wife Kristy, specialize in no-till cover crop and conservation farming practices.
Ryan says he’s learned a lot about soil biology over the past several months. On this edition of Cover Crop Strategies, brought to you by La Crosse Seed, find out how he’s making his soil healthier faster with diverse cover crop mixes. Ryan also explains why he’s completely gone away from using fungicides and insecticides on his farm. Plus, he shares valuable insight on what to expect when seeding covers for the first time.
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by La Crosse Seed.
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Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hello and welcome to another edition of Cover Crop Strategies podcast. I'm your host, Noah Newman, associate editor. Before we get started, let's thank our sponsor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse 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, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at soil1st.com. That's soil 1-S-T dot com or call 800-356-seed.
Noah Newman:
This week, we're paying a visit to Gibbsfield Farms in Eastern Iowa. Ryan Gibbs and his wife Kristy specialize in no-till cover crop and conservation farming practices. Ryan says he's learned a lot about soil biology over the past several months, and he's working towards making his soil healthier, faster with diverse cover crop mixes. He'll tell us why he's completely gone away from using insecticides and share some key advice on what to look for when you first start seeding covers. Without further ado, here's Ryan.
Ryan Gibbs:
All right. Yeah, Ryan Gibbs here. I run Gibbsfield farms and we also own Gibbsfield Ag LLC here in Eastern Iowa, about a half an hour straight west of the Mississippi from Dubuque. So right kind of in the center of the state, Northeast area. We raise hogs and cattle here. We got 2,400 head hog building. We got about 20 head of feeder cattle that we rotate pasture to pasture. We don't have a lot of pasture, but we rotate them and also rotate them on some 60 inch corn and cover crops. We are kind of getting into a market with that, raising them as natural raised. We're actively working on getting Regenerative Verified. They were out here last week doing some soil tests on our soil, on our different fields and stuff. We grow corn, soybeans. This year, we're dabbing into some buck wheat, trying to get into some specialty market with that.
Ryan Gibbs:
We also do a little bit of cereal rye. I sell cover crop seed also with Iowa Cover Crop, dealer for them. So kind of work closely with them, selling a lot of cover crop seed off for total application services with that. Farm a couple hundred acres here and then do a lot of custom planting, a little bit of custom harvesting, and then the seed application also. So a lot of stuff going on. Farm here with my wife Kristy and our two kids. We got two-year-old Kendrick and newborn Colette. That's a little about our operation, I guess.
Noah Newman:
Oh, you have to be a busy guy, especially with a newborn. Congratulations on that. And you were telling me you've been planting. You started planting last week, no-tilling beans into cereal rye. I'm assuming you're probably doing some of that this morning. I could see you sweating a little bit. So just tell us how that's going.
Ryan Gibbs:
So it's going really good so far. We started there on Saturday on some lighter soil that was drilled to cereal rye last fall. We actually pulled off our cereal rye crop. We put in, knifed in and hog manure in July, came in with [inaudible 00:03:23] grass, took that off in September, and then we seeded a multi-species, most of that winter killed, but we had cereal rye with it. So that's going into soybeans this year. We started on that field, knocked out 30 acres Saturday afternoon. Didn't get started till late, the soil conditions were kind of wet, so we wanted to wait as long as we could. And it was lighter so it worked out really good. No-till beans right into that. That cereal rye was about 18 inches tall. I drove by it here this morning. You can't even see the rows where the planter went.
Ryan Gibbs:
So we're going to let that go for a while yet. That's the last thing I'm worried about, hitting with herbicide, but I am going to be doing a little bit of roller crimping this year. So it's kind of our goal to plant them soybeans now with the cereal rye where it is, hopefully by the time we want to roller crimp that, our soybeans are still small, around that V1, V2 stage, and we're going to come in and roller crimp that rye right over top of it. We're not doing all of our acres this year [inaudible 00:04:19], just some.
Ryan Gibbs:
We're giving it a try, had neighbor that bought a roller crimper. So we're going to give it a try and do that. So we hammered away a corn yesterday, worked really good. No-till on that, just some soybean stubble that is planted to cereal rye, hairy vetch, and clover. The vetch and clover is both nodulating. It's not a lot, but there's little nodules. So they are producing nitrogen for us. Field conditions are great. Everything's been working really good. Equipment's been running good, had one minor breakdown, 15 minute fix with a $400 part.
Noah Newman:
Oh, wow. Expensive. Glad to hear you got that fixed. You were also telling me you're going away from using fungicide and eliminating all insecticides. Tell us a little bit about that decision and what's going into that.
Ryan Gibbs:
So in the last year, I got a chance to meet a lot of very intelligent people who are doing some really neat stuff on their farms and having some pretty good success with it. I started learning more about the soil biology and what we're actually doing when we're putting some of this stuff on. I own a microscope, took some microscope classes. And like I said, I met some very intelligent people that have been helping me along the way with this. Zach Wright, Ryan Noss, Kyle Schnell. There's a whole list of them, just really good people, farmers and lab owners and lab technicians. And they've been helping me out with this, learn about our fungi and bacteria to ratio. So look at our soils and what we're doing when we're putting these products on. So the soil is kind of your foundation of your plant, obviously. It's kind of like the foundation of your house.
Ryan Gibbs:
You start with a good foundation, the house is going to stand. Start with a weak foundation, and you're constantly putting Band-Aids on it to keep the house up. Well, it's the same way with your corn and your bean plant. We build up that soil and make it healthy. Then you don't have to throw all these Band-Aids on it to keep it healthy and keep it standing. So what a fungicide does is it prevents the fungus from growing on the plant. It stops the growth of it. It's basically like putting a Band-Aid on your plant. So we can build up our fungi and our bacterias in our soil, that plant is more resistant to them diseases. So by putting that fungicide down, I hear guys and I was in the same boat. I was a guy who put down two, sometimes three applications of fungicide back when I was really trying to push things on my corn grower's corn that I've got in the contest.
Ryan Gibbs:
And so what we do is we put the fungicide on and then we harvest our corn and then we whine and complain because, well, the cornstalks won't break down. We got all this residue. It won't break down. Well, why is it not breaking down? Fungi eats carbon and eats a source. It needs something to eat such as your cornstalks, wood chips, grass clippings. That's consumed by fungi. Well, when you spray a fungicide on a corn plant, you kill off all the fungi, you have nothing to break it down into the soil. So we're stuck with all this residue that won't break down. Well, now, we got to hit it with tillage. It's the only option. Got to till it. So I hear these guys saying that, "Well, I can't no-till, because I got too much residue." Well, let's step back a minute and look at the whole picture.
Ryan Gibbs:
So last year, we went completely away from fungicide. We learned about some of this stuff here. The first part of July, said, "You know what? We don't need fungicides. We're going to build our soil health better." We were still unable to grow a 252 bushel corn for the corn grower's contest. That was no-till, corn on corn with no fungicide. We cut back on our insecticide last year by over 50%. We were running some stuff in-furrow and that is it. And we cut that back by 50%. And honestly, I wish I wouldn't put it in. The bugs are the next big thing. You got to realize for every bug, there's good bug, there's a bad bug. It's a predator-prey relationship. When you put an insecticide down, you're not just targeting one bug, you're going to kill them all. Everything it's touched and every bug is going to die from that insecticide.
Ryan Gibbs:
If we can bring in the beneficials, then guess what? They're going to keep the bad ones in check. Is there still going to be some bad ones out there? Absolutely. But if we can keep them in check, that's a whole new ballgame, bringing in them beneficial bugs to fight off the bad ones. And that's where the insecticides, I never liked working with them to begin with, anything that's got that, messes with the nervous system of a living creature is probably not good for humans to be around. That's what an insecticide does. It targets the nervous system to kill off that bug and stop it from living. So we went completely away from that this year. We were actually running chiton. So it's a natural product that comes from fish, hard shell fish. And I believe it's also found in some hard shell bugs.
Ryan Gibbs:
So it helps the fungal walls and cell walls' structure plus it helps to deter insects from the seed. At least that's what I've been reading and from the folks I've talked to. So we put that in-furrow, we did leave check strips in every single field. We had it flagged, we're going to be doing root digs, we're going to be monitoring it all season long. So that's kind of where we're going with that. Chiton helps your fungi, it helps your soil, it doesn't kill off stuff. I'm a liver, not a dier. I'd rather see more stuff living than try to kill off everything and try to control everything. So that's kind of the route that I went. We planted our corn grower's yield contest corn yesterday. We were running some of that in-furrow, we're dabbing with compost extract. It's [inaudible 00:09:38]. It's something that a lot of farmers have probably never heard of, or if they have, they've seen it on small scale, with five gallon buckets and 55 gallon drums.
Ryan Gibbs:
That's another thing I learned through Kyle Schnell, farmer down by Newton that I'm working with. And also with Zach Wright with Living Soils Compost Labs, they've been teaching us a lot of this stuff, making compost extract, basically taking the compost and screening it and pulling off all the biology from that compost. And what I mean by compost is a good quality, earthy smelling compost. We're using Johnson-Su bioreactors to make a fungal dominant compost and basically putting beneficial biology, right in-furrow, building that soil biology to release nutrients naturally. We got all these nutrients and fertilizer out there, but so much of it is tied up. That's kind of what we're doing with that. I mean, I could go on a long time getting it a little bit more depth about that, but I mean, that might be something for another day. There's a lot to learn there.
Noah Newman:
For sure. And so would you say when you first started using cover crops, was that one of the biggest reasons you started using them? Just to improve the overall soil health? Or what would you say?
Ryan Gibbs:
Yes. First thing was soil health and soil runoff was the big thing. I got clay hills here. I got hilly ground. I farm [inaudible 00:10:53] bottom ground, and I farm clay hills. You can make a lap around my 86x186 acre field. And within that one lap, you will hit beach sand, black peat dirt, and you will hit the heaviest blue clay you see. So we got a lot of different soil varieties. It shows on my hydraulic downforce map with my planter. It's amazing. It goes from green to red. So there's spots where we have less than 50 pounds of downforce. There's other spots we got 500 pounds, just to keep that planter. And we've only been no-tilling for about three years on this farm. My other ground has been four years. I've got one little field that is a first year no-till, it's a small three acre field we run cattle on for some reason. I always plant it to corn.
Ryan Gibbs:
But yeah, that was a major thing with cover crops, is building that soil health and holding the water. So we don't have runoff. Because we do have hills. I did see runoff when I used to chisel plow. I'll admit I was a chisel plower. I'd hit it with field finisher at least once, I ran anhydrous, I did all that stuff. And I've went away from that. And the more I learn about what we're doing with our biology and our soil and how the nutrients are released to the plants, I went farther away from that stuff. This year, we're not using any commercial fertilizer, just strictly hog manure, which is very beneficial. It's got a lot of nutrients in it. And with the price of fertilizer, I already got almost 200 pounds of N out there.
Ryan Gibbs:
Why do I need to buy N when I can try to release what we have in the soil? So cover crops help with that. On my corn ground, I planted hairy vetch and balansa clover, both [inaudible 00:12:24] nitrogen. I also did seed some cereal rye with that. I like the cereal rye for the wheat control. You just got to not let it get out of hand because it is a high carbon nitrogen ratio crop to cover crop, so it will pull nitrogen from that corn plant. Corn does not like competition. Any competition at all and it just spits and sputters out and it struggles and it doesn't like it. Soybeans, plant it in cereal rye, don't even worry about it. Spray it when you got time, let it go for a month, then spray it. It'll be fine. Yeah, that was kind of my big thing with cover crops.
Ryan Gibbs:
Building that soil health up is huge. Anytime you keep living roots in the soil, there's biology happening underneath the soil. You drive down the road, you see a field that's chisel plowed or even a field that's just sitting fallow with no cover crop [inaudible 00:13:10] no-till field. There is very little to no biology happening in that soil. There's nothing going on. There's no party. Throw some cover crops out there, you have roots growing. Even if that cereal rye is one inch tall in the fall and it snows, then roots went in the ground. There's still something happening all winter long beneath that snow. There's nutrients being mineralized, there's earthworms working.
Ryan Gibbs:
Earthworms are the best livestock any farmer can have and they're free. And you don't have to go feed them every day. You don't have to haul their manure. They reproduce by themselves in the soil. They spread their manure in the soil. And worm castings, I learned this the other day, have a pH of seven. It's a neutral pH. Well, that helps to keep your soils in balance with your pH level. We all put on lime, pH is low, got to put some lime on to bring it up. Well, high pH soils, plenty of earthworms will help to bring some of that pH back down to keep that soil healthy. So living roots on the ground keeps that biology, keeps microbes working, releasing nutrients, recycling stuff, just like it's supposed to happen.
Noah Newman:
And when you talk about application methods, I thought this was interesting. I know you told me you don't do it anymore, but you used to use a drone, a sprayer, spreader drone, just... That's pretty unique. Kind of give us the background on that and what was it like using a drone to get the job done?
Ryan Gibbs:
Yeah, the last three years, I used a drone for application, whether it be spraying or spreading seed. It was a DJI MG-1P. Contractor with Rantizo out of Iowa city. So I did that. I did custom application, did a lot of test plots for seed dealers and stuff, putting down fungicides and foliar stuff. And I did fungicide on my own farm on corn ground and cereal rye and stuff. And yeah, it worked really good. It has its place. It's not for everything. If you've got a 40 acre field, but there's a little hill in it and it goes over that hill and it loses line of sight, it can't spray it. You're going to have to set up in a different spot because of the line of sight. The remote has to be able to see the drone.
Ryan Gibbs:
I live in hilly country. So some of these fields, it might be an 80 acre field you might have to set up four or five times to spray and move throughout different... Up and down the waterways into the high part of the road or wherever so the remote could see the drone. And I even had a trailer with a platform on it that I would stand on. So it was fairly labor intensive, it held two and a half gallons per acre. So our application rate is kind of limited with where we specialized in fungicides, some foliar stuff, because we did a little bit of herbicide application, burned cucumber worked really good for and whatnot. We also used it to apply cover crop seed. Very limited on cover crop seed when it comes to applying it because of the weight. We could only carry about 20 to 22 pounds of seed.
Ryan Gibbs:
So if you want to put on 50 pounds per acre, cereal rye per acre, you were only going to do about three to four acres an hour. You get into doing clovers where you could put down six pounds per acre, you could knock out 14 to 20 acres an hour, depending on field size and shape. And it worked fairly good. So small seeds with lower seed rates, it worked awesome. Why did I go away from using the drone? I had it three years, now, we are upgrading to the T30s. Financial upgrade to spend that money on it and it requires a little bit more licensing and regulation with it. I'm a one man show. I run my farming operation, my grain operation, I run my livestock, my cattle, my hogs, I have a cover crop seed business, an application. I can only do so much in a day's time.
Ryan Gibbs:
The cover crop seed business has just exploded for me over the last year. I mean, sales have skyrocketed and I'm predicting to even double, triple, quadruple what I did last year. I love doing the cover crop stuff more than working with the chemicals and spraying with the drone. I thought instead of investing that money in a drone and trying to chase that, let's specialize in the cover crop stuff, do a better job at that instead of trying to be spread out so far. I mean, when you have 24 hours a day and you're trying to run 26, it gets to be a lot. I like to spend time with my kids. We like to go for rides on the side-by-side. You only get one chance to raise them, so let's try to do it right.
Ryan Gibbs:
I like cover crop stuff, we decided to pursue that. I got one phone call and I can get a drone guy here if I need to. I know plenty of them that have the T30s. My brother upgraded to the T30. He's doing a lot of work with the DNR up in Wisconsin, doing specialty spraying. He upgraded to the T30. It's got an eight gallon tank. You're a lot more efficient with it. It is a huge drone. If you got to move it, it's like a small helicopter. It's big. Yeah, I just figured I would specialize in what I'm doing. I enjoyed doing the drone stuff, but hey, let's do what's making us decent money and what we enjoy to do with life. So that's kind of what my passion was, was the cover crop stuff. And I look ahead to the future and in 10 years, I see probably 90% of the acres being covered with something.
Noah Newman:
No kidding.
Ryan Gibbs:
Some type of cover crop. So, I mean, I look at where it was 10 years ago, and there wasn't hardly nothing. And now, you look at our neighborhood, there's cover crop everywhere, but there's a lot of acres to [inaudible 00:18:38].
Noah Newman:
We'll get back to the podcast in just a moment, but once again, let's thank our sponsor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse 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, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at soil1st.com, that's soil 1-S-T dot com or call 800-356-seed. And now, back to the podcast.
Noah Newman:
Specifically, when it comes to your business, you said sales have tripled, quadrupled. Just in your estimation, why do you think that is? Why do you think more and more people are using cover crops?
Ryan Gibbs:
Well, I think originally, when it started, guys are saying, "Hey, the government's going to pay me 15 bucks an acre, seed only costs 10. I can put it on. Let's do it. The government's going to pay for it anyways." Well, it's more than just, well, the government's going to help me pay for it. If there was no government subsidies for it, I would still cover every single acre that I farm with cover crop, because the benefit that it gets me is unbelievable. And that's where I try to tell people about this. I don't necessarily go to a farm and try to sell seed. I go to a farm and say, "Hey, here's your options for cover crop. What do you want to do with it? What's your goal? Do you want to graze it? Do you want to use it for herbicide as a herbicide program? Cereal rye is great weed suppression for soybeans. It's been proven. It's been shown over the years. Legumes such as clovers and vetch produce nitrogen in the soil for an upcoming corn crop. It's been shown. It's been proven."
Ryan Gibbs:
I show people how they can make you money, not just well, plant it because the government's going to pay you some money anyways. Yeah, that's a bonus. They'll help. And now, there's carbon programs out there too. I will say I am not actively involved in any carbon programs. So I'm just throwing that out there. I've looked into numerous ones. I just don't feel comfortable yet signing up for any, but that might change this year. I don't know. But there's a lot more benefits to it, especially with the price of fertilizer so high right now. If you can use a cover crop to... A cover crop that might cost you 15 bucks an acre, but it scavenges 30 pounds of nitrogen for you.
Ryan Gibbs:
Last I checked, a pound of nitrogen was around a $1.40 to a $1.60 in actual pound in our area. Pretty significant cost savings there. Weed suppression, that's the first one I seen on my farm for my savings. Last year alone, I cut back by over 40% on my herbicide. I sprayed my corn. I didn't even come back and spray it again. I went out and scouted the field, there was a little weed here or there, nothing that was going to concern me. The corn was about a day away from [inaudible 00:21:44]. Didn't even do a second pass of spray. I went to buy my chemicals this year, I had a whole pile of chemical left over from last year. And look at what the price of chemicals have done. Right there, paid for the cover crop seed two times over. So that's the benefit. I mean, soil erosion with the... If you're paying $20,000 an acre for ground, and you're losing a 10th of an inch a year from wind and erosion, it's pretty easy to pencil the cost of a cover crop there.
Ryan Gibbs:
Water infiltration is huge. Look at these guys out west in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota that haven't gotten rain. And when they do, it rains four inches. We got to be able to get that water to go into the soil and stay there. So water retention, soil structure. I mean, the list can go on and on. And I can just take a piece of paper and I write on it for a guy, here's how it will pay for itself. And I'm here to help you. Anybody can sell seed, but if I can give them the knowledge on the way, here's my phone number, my phone is on 24 hours a day. You got questions, call. Even if you don't do business with me, call me, I'll answer your question. If not, text me. I'll try to get back to you.
Ryan Gibbs:
I try to help people, even the people I don't do business with or that are thinking about it. Just here's the knowledge, we had a field day this winter, a winter day is what I called it. Guys aren't busy yet. I did a slideshow presentation on pictures, data, things that I've seen throughout the year, my numbers on where we're at with stuff and just gave folks the data. Here's how it's paying for itself. Here's what we're seeing in our operation. Here's what I'm seeing in other operations. Don't be afraid to try it on a few acres if you're nervous. Do that back five or 10 acres, nobody's going to see anyways.
Noah Newman:
And so at Gibbsfield Ag, you sell the seeds. Do you also help people apply them? Do you offer application services as well?
Ryan Gibbs:
[inaudible 00:23:36]. Yeah. So we have planes lined up summer, early fall for aerial application that we can do. We do blends, seed mixes, or just like cereal rye, something simple. We also have a 30 foot grain drill. So we do grain drilling services also. So those are kind of our two options. We do have access to be able to get a drone in if somebody wants to do drone application. So that's another one. We have different ways to do it. Trying to keep it a complete turnkey form for someone because that's half of it is, "Well, I bought this seed, but I only farm 100 acres and I don't have a grain drill. I really don't want to fly it on, but how am I going to get it applied? The neighbor doesn't have a grain drill."
Ryan Gibbs:
So I got one. I'll sell you the seed and I can apply it for you. Try to offer a complete turn. Keep it simple for folks. People like stuff easy. Try not to complicate it, keep it as simple as possible. Here's the seed tag, here's the bill for it. Bring this to the NRCS. That's all you need.
Noah Newman:
You seem like a guy who's always learning and trying out new things. Is there anything new, a new species, new cover crop species or anything you're trying or you've tried recently?
Ryan Gibbs:
Yeah. So this last year, we tried hairy vetch and balansa clover. We've never tried those two on our farm. We're up to three to four species right now. I want to get way more than that. That is my goal. I want to keep adding them species because every different seed of cover crop, every different species puts off different root exudates in the soil and they talk to each other and they build up different spots, different parts of your soil. So the more species we can get out there, the more things that are going to be going on at the party. So I want to try to build more species. The biggest thing for me is I like winter-hardiness. I want that to come back in the spring. We live in Eastern Iowa. We're not as far south. I'm trying to get stuff out there that's going to get established in the fall.
Ryan Gibbs:
Now, this year, I went to all short season hybrids. 99 day corn, I got 2315 on my beans. I want to be able to get out there and harvest it as early as possible. And I'll take this quote from Rick Clark, which a lot of folks are familiar with him, "Next year's crop success depends on this fall's cover crop, getting it applied, getting it established." And I firmly believe that after seeing it the last two years, yes, the most important thing is getting it on in the fall. I mean, cereal rye, it don't matter if it's November 25th and the ground is almost frozen. Go out there and spread it with a fertilizer spreader. I can guarantee you it'll come back in the spring. I've done it on my farm. There's snow on the ground. Go out and spread cover crop seed in December, it'll grow in the spring. Don't worry about it.
Ryan Gibbs:
Even things like that. But for me, yeah, getting it applied early, we're dabbing it. I want to get into more clovers is my big thing. I'd love to get into a few more clovers. I want stuff that's going to produce nitrogen. I'm probably going to throw in some camelina this year, just as another species to get in there. It's a small seed. Doesn't require a lot of seeds per acre. I am going to push the vetch a lot harder, especially hairy vetch, because it is winter-hardy. It did come up this spring for us, but we didn't seed it very heavy last fall. Just things like that, I guess. If I can get in another two or three or four more species this year, I'd be happy. Get it up to five or six different species of plant. I'll see the benefit and fertilizer return next year.
Noah Newman:
Which one has been the biggest nitrogen producers? Hairy vetch?
Ryan Gibbs:
After digging up roots about a week ago with my little one and looking for... We were looking for earthworms with the little one. We're looking for earthworms and the hairy vetch had a lot of nodules on it already. And it was only eight inches tall, six to eight inches. Just, it was short. I'm like, "Well, let's dig it up and see what we got." My God, it's nodulating. I thought it was going to have to get bigger than that to start producing nodules. But it's produced some nitrogen. That's kind of the one that I'm really pushing. I like the vetch.
Noah Newman:
So you kind of touched on this earlier, but what would be your biggest advice to someone who's looking to get started with cover crop usage? Would it just be to start small? Is that your biggest piece of advice?
Ryan Gibbs:
Yes. Start small, work with somebody who is willing to share knowledge and teach you how to do it. Don't just go and find a seed salesman that sells you some seed. Find somebody who has the knowledge. Facebook has a group called Everything Cover Crops. Lot of good knowledge on there. People don't really bash people too bad. You share a question, people are willing to give you answers. Now, you got to realize people live throughout the country. So what worked in Southern Iowa might not work in Minnesota. You got to try to connect yourself with people in the area. What I found out was the folks that no-till and cover crop are very willing to share information. It's a different group of folks that just want other people to learn.
Ryan Gibbs:
I got a neighbor that's done it for 10, 15 years. When I went and talked to him about doing it. I said, "Your crops always look better than mine. What are you doing? I see what you do. Teach me what you're doing." And he was more than willing to share his information with me on what he was doing. He goes, "Nobody asks." He goes, "If you want to know what I'm doing, anybody can come and ask me. I don't care. I'll share what I'm doing." And so that's the big thing. Work with a seed salesman or another farmer that can give you information. You're going to make mistakes, so talk to these guys because they'll tell you their mistakes. I'll tell people what I've done that did not work. Don't let that cereal rye go to head and be four or five foot tall and then plant corn into it with no upfront nitrogen. Your high carbon nitrogen ratio, your corn's going to suffer.
Ryan Gibbs:
I've seen it done, I've heard guys nightmare stories where guys just went planted cereal rye, and, "It'll be fine. We'll just plant corn into it. Good to go." And they've never asked questions and they didn't have their planter quite set up right, didn't do enough fertilizer up front. Talk to folks, find out what does and doesn't work. And that's the big thing. If you can work with a good seed salesperson, look on the... YouTube. Oh, my God. The amount of YouTube videos I watch is unbelievable. You ask me what my degree is, I'll tell you YouTube University. And some of those, you do have to take with a grain of salt, but there's a lot of good ones out there. We've all heard of Gabe brown and Understanding Ag. A lot of good information.
Ryan Gibbs:
You might have to take it with a grain of salt, but I figure if he lives in North Dakota and he can make it work, I can make it work in Iowa, okay, because he's a lot farther north than me. So it works for him, I can make it work. A lot of good ones out there. Elaine Ingham with microscope and soil biology. The soil biology is a huge thing. That's something we're really dabbing into hard this year. No commercial fertilizer, just augmenter and we're running biological in-furrow. We're going to give it a try. We left check strips in every field. We're going to find out what's going on. That's the big thing. Find someone, look for information, don't be afraid to ask questions.
Noah Newman:
There's no such thing as a stupid question, moral of the story. This has been a great conversation. Before we let you go, anything else you want our listeners to know about you or Gibbsfield Ag LLC, or...
Ryan Gibbs:
Like I tell folks, find someone to work with that's got some good knowledge, try to find an agronomist that knows about soil biology. A lot of agronomists just want to sell fertilizer and seed. Find yourself an agronomist that knows about fungi to bacteria ratios in the soil. Do soil testing, do any test. There's a PFLA test that you can do to find soil fungi to bacteria ratios. And there's also a test that came out with its total nutrient digestion that'll help you to understand how many nutrients you actually have out there. It's a new one we're doing this year with our Regen verification test. So we're going to find out how much potash phosphate we actually have out there that's not being released. Work with an agronomist that's willing to learn this with you and that can teach you stuff. Look for information, ask questions.
Ryan Gibbs:
I got a website, gibbsfieldag.com. I am starting a YouTube channel. It's called Gibbsfield Agriculture. I do not have any videos posted yet. I have been making videos all winter long and this summer. Planter set up, cover crop stuff, spreading manure on cover crop. That's a big thing. Livestock guys say I have livestock. I can't plant cover crop. I say, "Watch me." I went out and spread cover crop seed last fall. I hauled manure on and all winter long. Guess what? Greened right up. It grew right through the manure. It can be done. And I got videos that I'm going to share to show people how to do that. So we're going to start working on uploading videos here, trying to keep it on a weekly basis, teaching people about stuff like this. And just trying to put that information out there. It can be done. And I've got folks that I've talked to that says, "It won't work on my operation." It will. You live a mile from me and I'm making it work. It'll work on your operation.
Noah Newman:
All right, Ryan Gibbs, I appreciate the time. And good luck. We'll have to check back in later this year. Thanks for joining us.
Ryan Gibbs:
You bet. Hey, anytime.
Noah Newman:
And before we go, let's thank our sponsor once again. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse 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, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at soil1st.com. That's soil 1-S-T dot com or call 800-356-seed. It was great to have you with us once again. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, for all things cover crops, go to covercropstrategies.com.
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