LONDON, Ohio – Ohio State University Extension and the Ohio No-Till Council, in partnership with Cargill RegenConnect®, will present a Soil Health Field Day on Aug. 15 featuring leading experts and hands-on field demonstrations.

The free event will be at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center. Randall Reeder, executive director of the Ohio No-Till Council, gave a preview of some of the subject matter.

The keynote speaker is Paul Jasa, Extension engineer with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research will get peoples’ attention, Reeder said. Jasa manages a research farm using no-till and cover crops.

Jasa compared no-till corn without cover crops to no-till corn following a cover crop, Reeder said. They had drought conditions. They had a good cover crop but very little rain during the growing part of the year. However, the corn from the cover crop plot gave 60 bushels per acre more than the corn that did not have a cover crop.

“That’s one of the myths about cover crops – that cover crops use up a lot of water and therefore it can hurt the following crop,” Reeder said. “The comment on that, going back to last spring here in Ohio when we did have a dry spring. People let the cover crop grow before they planted corn or soybeans; the cover crops actually dried the ground out.”

It depends on the management of the cover crop, Reeder explained. Most years in Ohio we have too much water in the spring. So, one advantage of a cover crop is it dries out the soil. Jasa’s comment on this is, that the advantage isn’t in the spring as much as during the growing season. Farmers will have a mass of cover crop material lying on the ground.

“Think of it like a mulch, cover crop rye or whatever it is covering the ground,” Reeder explained. “In July and August when you get extremely hot, sunny, windy days drying out the ground, that cover crop material protects the soil. It’s like a blanket. It protects the ground from evaporating moisture and it also keeps it cooler.”

Another cover crop benefit is that in the event of a rain storm, instead of the water running off on the bare ground, that residue absorbs the rainfall, cushions it, and allows it to soak in. Cover crops reduce erosion.

Also at the field day, Dr. Alyssa Essman, from OSU, will talk about cover crop management and termination, that is, matching up herbicides with the cover crops, Reeder said.

“There’s a lot of cover crop failure because the person didn’t realize the carryover of herbicide that was in the soil,” Reeder said. “If you know you are going to use a certain cover crop after corn, then you have to know that whatever herbicide you used on the corn crop is not going to still be there in the ground and interfere with the cover crop germination.”

And how do cover crops and residue affect the absorption of rainwater? Jay and Ann Brandt will use a rainfall simulator and slake test to demonstrate the value of continuous no-till soil and the value of having a residue, whether from a cover crop or corn shocks.

When using cover crops it is important to select the correct one and use the correct planting rate and the correct timing. Jason Hartschuh, of OSU, will address those topics.

“He is going to be talking about cover crop selections and most of that will probably relate to after corn or after soybeans,” Reeder said. “The short answer to that is, after corn, unless you really use a short-season variety, the cover crop is going to be cereal rye. That is about the only thing you can expect to grow after late October. After soybeans, you have some other choices, and it is nice to have the soybeans harvested by Sept. 15 because there are some legumes you can choose from in a cover crop mix that is great for the corn harvest to follow.”

Cereal rye is typically seeded at 60 pounds per acre, which is the recommended rate, Reeder said. Work by the late Dave Brandt and others have cut that back to 30 pounds per acre, and as a cover crop it works fine, Reeder said.

“You don’t have to have the 60 pounds per acre,” he said. “There is a difference if you were growing something as a forage and you’re harvesting it as green chop to feed to dairy cows in the summer, then you want a high seeding rate because you want all the material you can get. But the point with the cereal rye example is that you get just about as much benefit from 30-pounds per acre as you do from 60.

“This is a fun fact,” Reeder said. “Dave Brandt always recommended mixing in one pound of sunflowers, this is after wheat because you get some sunflowers and it looks pretty, the neighbors, like it, and it makes you happy.”

Walnut Creek Seeds, which was David Brandt’s company, now operated by the Brandt family, provided seeds for seven plots at the Farm Science Review site. Presenters will use those seven plots of different cover crop mixes for demonstration at the field day.

The field day will close with a farmer panel discussion and time to interact with vendors. The event will be held at Molly Caren Agricultural Center, 135 Ohio-38, London, OH. It will be at the east end of the Farm Science Review exhibit area. There is a free lunch and an ice cream break. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m.