In early June I had the chance to visit some of my family and friends while also going on a few work-related visits throughout Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. This gave me the unique opportunity to learn more about the rich agricultural history in and around the area where I grew up.

Georgetown, Del., no-tiller Jay Baxter was planning on conducting a cover crop experiment with oats, but when Mother Nature got in the way, he quickly pivoted to another idea for a different type of cover crop experiment. 

Finding a way to make a solid ROI on cover crops (and no-till) is the key to making these practices more widespread.

Winter peas can be a great addition to a cover crop mix for many growers, but the cost of these seeds can be high and the return on investment doesn’t always pay off. USDA plant research geneticist Lisa Kissing Kucek is in Madison, Wis., at the forage research center where she and other researchers have been breeding winter peas for 7 years in a nationwide cover crop breeding network to study spring vigor, winter vigor, biomass and other benefits of various cover crop species.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by GS3 Quality Seed, Washington State University agronomist Andrew McGuire discusses his extensive research on the pros and cons of using cover crop mixtures vs. monocultures.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by GS3 Quality Seed, we travel to Jay Baxter’s farm in Georgetown, Del., and talk to him about cover crop seeding and termination methods, his opinion on multi-species cover crop mixes, the rich history of his family farm and much more.

Mackane Vogel here with this week’s Cover Crop Connection. As you can see we are at the birthplace of the tillage radish, yes I am on Steve Groff’s farm in Holtwood, Pennsylvania and speaking of which, we’re going to toss it off to Steve right now for some cover crop action.

Steve Groff shares the story of how Franke Dijkstra and the 1995 National No-Tillage Conference sparked an idea that eventually led him to develop the first roller crimper in the U.S.

On this edition of the Cover Crop Connection, associate editor Mackane Vogel pays a visit to Jay Baxter’s farm in Georgetown, Del. The no-tiller takes us to one of his fields and shows how multiple cover crops species, including hairy vetch, buckwheat and winter annuals, are helping his soils retain moisture during a dry stretch.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by GS3 Quality Seed, Penn State University graduate student Megan Czekaj, discusses her research on best practices for applying residual herbicides when planting green. Her project focuses on cereal rye in soybean systems and delves into termination timing, cover crop biomass levels and lots more.