Winter camelina is a winter-hardy brassica that is gaining traction in the Midwest as a cover crop ahead of corn or as an oilseed relay crop. Central Iowa farmer Mark Oehlerking recently used glyphosate to terminate his first ever winter camelina cover crop the second week of May, shortly after planting corn into it.

Interseeding cover crops produces greater biomass than drilling covers after harvest, and in rotations where corn follows corn, late fall application of manure sustains or improves yield compared to spring-applied fertilizer, according to this University of Minnesota study.

Choosing a summer forage can be confusing because there are six different types of major summer annual forage grasses. These include: sudangrass, sorghum-sudan hybrids, forage sorghum (which we often call cane or sorgo), foxtail millet, pearl millet and teff. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

A new cover crop, Nuseed Carinata, set to launch this fall in the south, should pique the interest of farmers looking to boost their bottom line in between main food crops. Nuseed is targeting Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and the Carolinas for its debut in the U.S.

Over the past decade, fall cover crop adoption has grown in the U.S., according to data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).