Mackane Vogel here, with this week’s cover crop connection. I had the opportunity to visit with Brandon, Minnesota farmer John Ledermann and check out his unique strategy for planting cereal rye and corn. 

“This is 2 rows of cereal rye and then here’s my clear row. So, I did this with the drill. And I guess the way I’ve got it, I am putting fertilizer down at the same time. So, you can figure, I run 22 inch rows, so, I got 3 rows — 2 rows of cereal rye and 1 without. And what I do is I kind of break my fertilizer like — it would be in 4 parts. So, 1 part would go here, 1 part would go here and then 2 parts would go here where the corn row is going. So then, the drill area again is frozen, but the drill kind of makes almost a little bit of a strip there, so, my theory is just get a little more fertilizer by the corn row, but hopefully not too much that I burn it. I shoot for 3 inches deep with this row, but you know, sometimes it is hard in the fall. You don’t always get that 3 inches.”

Ledermann says he’d like this strategy to be done on all of his corn acres, but time doesn’t always allow for it. This past season he was able to plant about a quarter of his corn acres using this strategy and he says that those acres were easier to plant despite the extra time it takes. That’s all for this week’s cover crop connection.