Double-cropping with corn to increase total yields and soil fertility

CONCEPTIONS Beef cow-calf newsletter                Sept-Oct  2024

Mark Curry          (989) 984- 7027    Route services and sales

Sue Palen             (989) 277- 0480    Office manager/  “Cattle Visions”  orders coordinator

Greg Palen           (989) 277- 6031    “Byron”  Certified Seed specialist/  AI technique refreshers

Mich Livestock Service, Inc     “For the Best n Bulls”     “For High Energy Forages”
110 N Main St   (PO Box 661)   Ovid,  MI  48866                    phone (989) 834- 2661
         website: www.michiganlivestock.com          email to: greg@michiganlivestock.com

You may have seen the leaders in the  “free circulation” (advertiser funded)  farm magazines;  “cover crops may depress yields in following grain crop”…    The study quoted was paid for by a chemical (herbicide and fertilizer) company,  so “consider the source”.    NRCS has been pushing the cover crop (green manure) concepts for years, for the benefits:   increased organic matter,  increased rainfall capture,  less soil compaction,  breaking pest cycles in year after year corn or soybeans,  feed to soil biology over winter (increasing nutrient transport from soil into the root zone).

What holds us back?

Animal and Plant geneticists have a common failing; in making decisions from data the easiest route to yield gets taken, rather than the most efficient (cost effective) pathway.   In row crops, this has meant choose longer day varieties.  Planting early  in spring, then harvesting later in fall, means insufficient time to grow that second crop (or winter cover crop) and get the full benefit.   It also means seeding into the time of year when weed pressure is greatest, thus ever-higher spraying costs.

Two best choices

Cereal Rye  is known to require the least fall growing time before killing frosts,  so under typical crop management is the “green manure” many farmers use.   Recent crop yields, however, show that Winter Triticale is more likely to produce a second income stream (it can be made into baleage or left to harvest as feed grain) and it can be harvested within a time window wherein corn can still produce a full crop!  

Grow your own nitrogen reliably    

Lots of corn producers had in the past broadcast an annual clover at harvest time, hoping for a bit of nitrogen fixation and spring plant survival so that a “plowdown” of clover would feed the new corn crop through its germination and sprouting.

Trouble is, annual clovers (for example, Dixie red clover) might only have 10% of the fall seedings regrow in the spring after a hard winter.   This allowed weeds to start up and draw down the nitrogen intended for the corn.

Byron Seeds has been studying all the clover varieties around the world and now recommends  Majestic Crimson Clover  for this purpose.     It puts its roots down securely in the fall, fixing nitrogen into the soil as it grows, and trials show it up to 75% winter survival.    For you that means more “free” nitrogen and spring weed suppression, plus added spring nitrogen fixation until you terminate it to plant.

Lake City (MSU) experiment station years ago did a multi-year study of broadcast clovers and found you could get from 50 to 200 units of nitrogen released over the following two crop years.   What would that amount of nitrogen cost to buy?   But in addition, you avoid the compaction that chemical nitrogen application causes—you get the added organic matter/ water holding capacity from the extensive root system of any clover.      The total benefit greatly exceeds the cost of seeding it.