As corn and soybean come out of the fields, it’s time to think about planting cover crops. Cover crops offer many benefits to cash crop systems. They can improve soil health and long-term resiliency, suppress weeds, reduce soil and nutrient losses, and provide nitrogen to your subsequent cash crop. However, it is important to remember that not all cover crop species and varieties are created equal. Just like planting a maturity group 0 soybean in Tennessee is not going to maximize your yield, planting a cover crop species or variety that is not regionally adapted is not going to maximize your benefits.
Which cover crop species/varieties will maximize benefits in a Tennessee production system? Over the past two years, we have conducted cover crop variety trials in Tennessee to help answer that question. The latest results from 2020-2021 can be found here. Pdf and excel files from all years are available at https://search.utcrops.com/cover-crops. Continue reading
In the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to walk several excellent fields that will likely be defoliated in September and many of our later planted acres have narrowed the maturity gap despite the weather continuing to fall below our 30 year average for heat unit accumulation. On farm visits throughout this summer, I often found myself repeating the old verbiage about ‘cotton knowing how long it has left in the season’- half to provide a positive outlook on the crop, and half to convince myself that some of this top crop had a chance. We still have a ways to go, but in the last few weeks, that saying about cotton knowing where it is in the season again appears to be true. In this blog, I share a few last-minute management thoughts, make a few comments about defoliating some of our earliest cotton, and highlight a field day coming up next Monday, Sept. 13th in Fayette County.
Over the past few weeks, several have reported poor retention in an area just northwest of Jackson. I’ve spent several days walking some of the impacted fields- this crosses multiple growers and a substantial number of acres- and the cause is becoming more clear. The adjacent image is characteristic of retention and growth noted within the impacted area. In this blog, I attempt to describe the mechanisms that drive environmental shed, our current hypothesis on the cause of poor retention in the area just north of Jackson, and the decisions you’ll need to make if you see this on one of your farms.