 So, we are about halfway through this prevent plant and it's been a really prevent plant webinar series. It's been really good. I'm glad we're doing it because it's giving us a lot of ideas. We have a couple more remaining and we do post all this information on the NDSU Solar Health webpage. We have a prevent plant tab that, or button that you can push from the homepage to take you to all the information we've been posting. So, it's a good resource if there's something you need to go back and listen to or get information that you need to get. But, you know, I think when it comes down to using cover crops on prevent plant, one of the most important things is to pick your goal, identify what your goal is, and a lot of cases we know on prevent plants it's going to be to manage water, but at the same time you're managing water you may want to do things like break compaction or catch nitrogen or build nitrogen in the soil, improve the seed bed, obviously reduce erosion, manage weeds. So identifying those goals is really helpful to picking the mixes that you're going to use and how you're going to manage those cover crop mixes. When you pick your mix, I just have kind of some tips on things that we've been learning and seeing. I pick most of my mixes based on the root structure because I like to think about do I need something deep rooted, shallow rooted, fibrous roots, you know, thick roots that can break up compaction, but, you know, really fibrous roots are also very good for repairing roots and compaction, but really thinking about what you want to do in that soil and you can pick based on the root structure. And also the above ground biomass, what are you comfortable having in your fields by the time we go into winter? One tip is that if you have canola in rotation, do not use brass because like rape seed turnips are radish because of they can be host for club root, so just make sure you're aware of that. And there are also other cover crops that are host for things like soybeans and nematode. And we have a list of those different species on the Prevent Plant webpage, so you can check it out. It's in a table format and it's easy to understand. So if you have really bad SCN problems, make sure you're avoiding those cover crop species which are host. Same with if you're concerned about club root, which it sounds like you should be in the northeast corner if you're growing canola, make sure you stay away from the radish turnips and rape seeds. If you're going to look at, this is a PP field from last year that was going to be grazed after September 1st when they pushed up the date. I think we don't anticipate that happening this year just because so many states got crops planted. So probably November 1st we'll stay the date for grazing. But this is a really great field to have peas, radish turnips, it was meant to be grazed, having a legume in there is also mycorrhizal. So for example, if you're going to corn in 2021 on a field, don't do just radish and turnip. Neither of those cover crops have mycorrhizal associations, so that means you can have phosphorus deficiency in your corn the following year. So adding in a grass or a legume can be really good to avoid issues with phosphorus the following year in corn. So I know it seems like radish and turnip would be a great way to do it because you could broadcast a small seed, but add something else into it because you'll have issues in your corn the following year. As I've seen, this was not a PP field, but it was a full season mix from last year. On a high water table, sandy soil was also going to be grazed. Sorghum is an excellent warm season option. Marisol really likes sorghum and sorghum Sudan because of the high water use, but you can see that sorghum does get very tall and there is a lot of biomass, but it's a great way to use moisture. You can always terminate it if you're getting uncomfortable with the growth. But sorghum will freeze at the first sign of frost. I think even a prediction of frost in the forecast, sorghum just whips out and freezes. So it does terminate earlier than some of the other cover crops. But using two pounds in acre is enough in a mix, so you don't need any more than two pounds. You could bump it up a little bit if you want some water, some more water use, but usually two pounds is just about right for a mix with other species. I wanted to show you some of the things that we've done on some small plots. I think this was in 2014. And these are areas where we had some cover crop, different cover crop mixes that were seeded. And we had this light blue line, which is where we left it bare. And we just kind of managed the weeds throughout the season and left it bare. So we had water use by just having a cover crop mix out there and the benefits. This most diverse mix actually used the most moisture evenly through the profile. And in that one, we had cereal rye, dwarfessics, rape seeds, some sugar beets, sunflower, pea, and flax. And all the cover crop mixes dried the soil profile out, a more diverse mix. I think you're getting different root structures into the soil and possibly drying out the soil more efficiently. But look at what happens on a bare soil. So if you're just going to manage or prevent plant field with tillage, you evaporate moisture from the surface, but you never get rid of this bulge of moisture down at 5 inches or 10 inches, wherever that water is just being held that's creating such these soils that are basically putting underneath the dry surface. So it's really, I'm glad you guys are here on this call because it means that you're thinking about managing the moisture in a different way than just using tillage and where it really isn't efficient at drying the profile out. Also for nitrogen uptake, it's really good. You can see all the cover crop mixes here on the left-hand side have captured some of the nitrate in, whereas leaving it bare leaves that nitrate in the soil available to leach. So it's a great way to capture. We don't know when that becomes available, but it's captured at least in the system. This is what some of these diverse mixes look like after they've frozen and this was in December. So you can see that this is really not very different from something like I think this is barley in that field from barley stubble. So if you have concerns about all the biomass and the residue really breaks down quite well. And these are almost just like little styrofoam radish that just break apart in your hand. They're not tough. They're not difficult. So this is really not that much of an issue to seed into the following year. One of the worst things that you could do is go in and work up a cover crop after it's grown for a full season. You see how all the radish and turnip were just brought to the surface. They don't decompose as well when they're tilled at the end of the season and left on the surface to actually decompose better in the soil. So don't get nervous at the end of the year until it just leave it in the soil, let it decompose and then direct seed into it the following year. There's a lot of questions about whether to use a mix or a monoculture. So here on the left we have a very diverse full season mix and on the right we have more of a monoculture. There may be a few other things in here but predominantly it's a grass. And it's good to think about what you need to do in that field and how you're going to manage it. So if you have a lot of weed pressure in a field and you feel like you're going to need to spray something for broadleafs throughout the growing season then seed just a grass and manage it that way. Get some competition but leave yourself an opportunity to spray a herbicide. If you're looking at your field is pretty clean and you want to do a diverse mix, then go for it but always start with a clean field. Don't seed cover crops into weeds because you'll just get cover crops and weeds. So this is another diverse mix, 28 pounds an acre seeding rate, radish turnips, sunflower oats and peas, 20 bucks an acre. So I think this is definitely an option. It's in kind of the right price range but you can adjust the price ranges for what you're willing to spend on these acres. But take care of all your roots, your ditching, anything you need to do prior to seeding a cover crop and just start with a weed-free field. Here is cereal rye, 40 to 50 pound per acre rate, 10 bucks an acre. Rye, if it doesn't overwinter, so if you don't seed it in the fall with it overwintering it doesn't vernalize. So it'll stay very low to the ground and provide a nice cover. So it's a great option for seeding early. You'll get enough biomass but not too much and certainly it's not gonna head out during if it's seeded in the spring or mid-summer. I have a lot of tips down here. If you're gonna use grasses, consider a mix of grasses like oats and barley. Cereal rye or winter rye is not an issue just to seed by itself because you wouldn't have an opportunity to take it as a cash crop. But I don't know if insurance would be concerned about having just oats because there's potential you could take it for grain. But you could just mix it up with some oats and barley. I guess that's a discussion with your insurance provider. If you have a cover crop in the field and it's starting to head out, say you have just oats and it's starting to head out and you may want to terminate it. You could also do that so you don't have the seed production. It also made, it would change the residue that you have in that field. Once it heads out it gets kind of straw-like but if it's still kind of vegetative then it may be easier to plant into. But don't be scared to terminate it if you feel like the soil is gonna get too dry and not replenish for next year. Say we just go into a drought or something like that but there's lots of ways to manage it. And then also this is something I learned from Andrew Friskop when I had a question about what grass cover crop you could use prior to wheat or barley the following year. And Andrew was saying that oats are more favorable if you're gonna use those on 2020 PP before 2021 wheat or barley crop because they're not as good of a hosted scab and there may be some root rods that are possible but he thought that oats is a relatively low risk for a grass prior to going to wheat or to barley. So that was kind of where we're getting new information each time that we include other specialists in the discussion. So that's just to get the ideas flowing. We could certainly, if anyone wants to, I see a question already here from Fletch. Is there a sterile sorghum variety that we would not worry about receding? Marisa, that is a good question for you. Not that I know, I don't think so. I never heard of sterile rye. I don't know name, have you heard of that? I don't think so. I think it's a sterile sorghum variety. Well, sorghum, a lot of the varieties are photoperial sensitive since it's a short day plant. So it's not that they're sterile, it's just in this long days environment they're just on flower or flower so late they never produce seed. But a sterility would be that just doesn't support sterile. I don't think we have something like that. If somebody knows, just let me know. Let's see, we've got another question here. What are some good mixes to plant on 2020 PP and planning for corn in 2021? So that would definitely be a scenario where you don't wanna just use radish and turnips. Like I mentioned before, you'd want something mycorrhizal in there which could be a legume, a grass, flax is also pretty mycorrhizal. I've heard of issues if you have peas in that field prior to corn that some of that residue can get kind of wrapped around some of the row cleaners and things like that the following year. So you may wanna stay, if you use peas you might wanna plant them offset from where the rows are gonna plant your corn so that they don't get caught up in your equipment. But you could, it's a great opportunity to build some nitrogen in that soil or increase efficiency of your microbes in that soil by having a legume. I think Marisol, you've done work where you need 60 days of fixation on a legume to get some nitrogen benefits, is that right? So you definitely would have that in the situation. Yeah, the thing is legumes are really good scavengers. So any nitrogen you already have, the legume first is going to use a nitrogen. So if you have really deficient soil they might start fixing nitrogen right away. But if you have nitrogen in the soil, especially if you're in the PP and you already have fertilizer and you have a lot of nitrogen, the legume is just gonna take up the nitrogen, the free nitrogen. Nitrogen fixation is a process that requires a lot of energy for the plants. So if there's nitrogen available it's not gonna do it. And so that's why most legumes take time to start using nitrogen in the soil, the legume first. And so it's about 60 days that we've seen but we've seen it earlier too. Some peas can start fixing in about 30 days, about inch two. But like I said, it's going to depend on available nitrogen on the soil when nitrogen fixation kicks in. And I think if the grass that you may include in that I think oats, I feel like that residue is easier to plant into you. With corn you may, I don't know if you have access to a strip till machine or something like that but you may consider doing some strip till into it. But I would stay away from anything that's gonna overwinter on those fields, specifically rye. I don't think I would include that because you're not gonna want anything growing the next year when you're going to corn. So I don't know, Dave, is that helpful? Is that just, I think you could include a legume. I don't think it's beneficial but I would choose some residue that you're gonna be comfortable planting into something like a oat residue and you could put radish in there. I don't usually recommend turnips unless you're gonna graze it because radish and turnip kind of do the same thing and it's just easier to have radish in the system than it is turnip. It winter kills better I think than turnip does. Chris has a question before wheat or barley, would you suggest a forage oats or a grain-based oats or either will work just fine? I think it depends upon the purpose. If one would want to graze then forage oats would work better but otherwise to be honest with you both are fine and oftentimes I've heard from a lot of producers that they have some seed oats or barley in their bins. So if they are not particularly grazing, planting to graze, that should be fine. Let's see. Oh, Greg mate. Greg, did you wanna ask a question? Let's see, I asked to see one here. Thoughts on beer-seemed clover since PP could be very early this year in Balanza. Marisa, you know more about clovers than anybody. Yeah, well, we've tried clovers in different situations and somehow up in here they don't do very well. So every time we've tried, I guess you can put them in a mix but clovers are very sensitive to competition so you have other plants in it like you have sorghum or melids. It's not gonna do very well. For some reason the clovers here grow very, very slow. The only one I've seen there, that's a little bit better a mix of this red clover and then it might survive from next year. But every time, I've planned the same Balanza crimson and I just haven't been very impressed. I'm not sure if we're doing all wrong or what, I've tried several times and it hasn't worked but you can always try and put some in your mix and try to see how that's, but I'm not, we don't have the good results or science-based information to recommend these clovers for PP. For PP you want something to use a lot of water and those are usually the grasses like sorghum or melids that they're gonna go fast and use a lot of water. Do you know cost-wise and maybe Chris knows cost-wise difference between beer, same Balanza and red clover? I don't know if anyone has tested them, it seemed different. That would be nice information, but we've tried several times and we get very little, the stands are poor and they, well maybe it could be too that you need to inoculate me for sure, because I don't think we have the right sodium for those clovers here, but we've inoculated them and still hasn't been that great. I'm not, you know, there's something we don't know yet why the clovers don't do well, could be very heavy soils, I'm not sure. So as far as our choice for our legging, probably P's would be the number one choice. We choose P's because they're cheap and we know it works. A lot of people, there's a lot of availability for field P's. You wanna buy a 4-HP, 4-HP will put a lot more biomass and will probably fix more nitrogen than the field P, but you know, but it costs more too. So you have to balance both. The same with fava beans, fava beans are great, I really like them because they fix a lot of nitrogen, but the seed is expensive for a mix. So it's all balancing, you know, what do you want if you're gonna raise it or not? Like we've been saying, I am have saying many times, it's your choice, depending on your operation. You know your farm, your soils, that are much better than we know because we're not there, so you are the one that can decide what really works for you. And you can always do some tests, if you know, do a strip or something and see how it works on your soils and your condition. Like if you wanna try some Bersin or some Lanza or other legumes, you know, you can always do buy some seed and do a strip or a section, just don't go on your whole farm with something you don't know how it's gonna work. That's good advice. And here, Chris is saying that it's roughly a buck a pound for the clovers and Bersin clover is more expensive than mammoth red or medium red. So if you need to reduce costs and then going with the red clovers sounds like a good choice. Yeah, like I said, red clover is useful for us. So we've had it around a lot before the other clovers for colicrops and generally that's much better than the other ones. And I think it's because it's more adapted to than used for forage before. The only thing, red clovers in general, like a lot of water. So that's another reason we don't grow so many clovers for forages either because they like rain and that's not something we have too much of. Some years we do, but clovers like water. Okay, let's see, what benefits does Flax bring to PP when planning for 2021 corn or soybeans? I like Flax in general. I think it's a nice species to include in a mix. I feel like it's not difficult to manage. And I like, also I've seen some really neat Flax growing with peas, where the peas will attach to the Flax and they'll stay upright. And it's kind of a cool system that way. As far as, I mean, we talk about Flax being very mycorrhizal and a good before corn. And it certainly is mycorrhizal, but there are a lot of other species that are too. So don't get hung up on that being, including Flax just to have mycorrhizal in there to prime that soil for corn. So corn uses mycorrhizal associations to gather phosphorus. So you wanna prime that soil and make sure it's there before corn. But I think I think you could certainly include Flax. I think it's a great option to have in there with a grass and maybe with something, with a deep taproot or something too. One thing, a consideration, and like I really like Flax too, is if you're gonna graze it, be careful because if it has too much seed, if you got a lot of Flax, and it goes to seed, which you might because it's fast, right? It can cause problems. You can't have, because the seeds have too much fat and that stops the rumen from functioning. So you have to watch it. You have a big percentage of Flax with seeds and you're gonna graze so you could cause problems. So you have to watch for that if grazing is what you're going to do. You're not gonna have the grazing, no worries, but if you plan to graze, watch for that. Then here's a question on how many pounds of oats would you use in a mix? I hate these pounds questions because I never know. It depends, that's a good answer, it depends. I think that's where you can get some really, you know, on the grasses and things like that, that's where you can get some great advice from the seed company where you purchase. I don't know, we've got Colin and Chris on here. If you guys either of you wanna make a recommendation on pounds of oats in a mix. I could only say that for example, I've entered your recommendation, Marisol, and on its own, oats seeding rate for say 60 pounds per acre. So say in the mix, if you wanna have 30% oats, you just take 30% of 60 pounds, which will be, I'm not very good at math, so I'm just gonna quickly do it. So say 18 pounds, for example. So I think what people need to do is to, based on their objectives, pick the crop species, take their full seeding rates, and then for example, some crops are not, they do not compete well, some suppress other crops growth, so then go with the best percent of that crop in the mix, and then multiply it with the full seeding rate, and then you'll get the seeding rate. Perfect. Then we've got a question, this is a good one for you, and what do you find works best in saline areas? Oats, barley, sugar beet, the only catch is sugar beet is not really very, very good at competing with others, so you wanna have a higher percentage of sugar beet in that mix, and in sweet clover I found as a legume, it's more salt tolerant than say peas, or I've only tried sweet clover on saline area, so I cannot speak about bursting clover, red clover, but sweet clover, and I could actually quickly tell you guys what mix I use, so say for example, and then you could go very simple too, you don't have to have four species, if you wanna have a cost down, I would just put either barley or oats with sugar beets, and I personally would go with 60% sugar beets in the mix, 40% barley or oats, so that's just a two way mix. If you wanna be a little bit more diverse, you could add sweet clover, and if you wanna be really diverse, then you could have four, like both barley, oats, sweet clover, and sugar beet. So in that mix, I had barley and oats at 20% in the mix, sweet clover 20% and sugar beet 40%. I just wanted to have more sugar beet seed because they don't compete well. So these four crops to me are the best, sweet clover is not as salt tolerant as the other three, but among legume, that's slightly more salt tolerant, so you have an option. I also wanna make a point, Abby, we talked about residue, so if we have a balanced cover crop mix where there is a legume or crops with more N, that would balance the CN ratio and that would help break down the residue during the winter or fall or early spring. If we have only a cover crop mix, which have high carbon crops, that will take longer and it may create problems in terms of managing residue. Naeem, I just wanna add you're right, the other clover are super susceptible to salinity. Actually red clover is used as a susceptible check when in breeding proteins for a faffa, they just put a red clover strip and so to check for salinity because they'll die with pretty much any salinity and I don't know the other ones, but I'm pretty sure that it makes sense that they're very susceptible to. The sweet clover is one of the, it is more... It is a little bit, it's not the best one. No, that's better. Yeah. So you could use a faffa too, a faffa is... Actually sweet clover is more salt tolerant than elfalfa. Yeah, it is, but you can, some people once they buy the alfalfa, the salt clover and alfalfas, which they're not super tolerant, they're better than the regular one. I have my... I like to ask people when they say that, I like to ask them up to what EC level? Well, there's a company that has to mention, they say up to four EC, they'll do... That's my observation too, a four. A four and yeah, that's... But they're better, you know, regular self-affiried, they won't take even two, but a salt clover and they're up to four. And I've seen studies where they have red clover and susceptible varieties and I could see the difference on the salt clover and to be a little better. I got some pictures, I might send you where you can see the difference between a salt clover and a non-salt clover and on a saline stick. Okay, yep, that would be wonderful. Yeah. And so it sounds like, you know, Fletch is saying I'm here too, the annual sweet clover is hard to find. And so maybe swapping out something like that with a faffa would be an option. And if you want it to establish, I guess. I don't know, is the seed companies know that? Is a sweet clover hard to find? Seed clover seed, I don't know that. I never had a problem with sweet clover seed, personally speaking, so far. Colin or Chris, do you have any problem sourcing sweet clover seed? And you guys are welcome to unmute too if you want, you don't have to just type in the chat box. Yeah. Sweet clover seed is available. So I see a question back here that I want to, oh, and you'll see. I wanna get back to this question because this is one for Joe. If seeding cover crops early in July, should weeds be terminated mid June or closer to when seeding? Cover crop insurance would allow seeding so many days after last seeding date with your regular drill. July, sorry, I'm not, I don't know all these things. But yeah, Joe, herbicide applications, when do you terminate? And also what effect does that have on some of the cover crops? Yeah, good question. A lot of it will somewhat depend on what weeds are there. So if it's, you know, if you're in a no-toe system and there's a lot of winter annual weeds that you find problematic every year, there's a good chance of they're gonna go to seed in between now and early July. So in that case, if you wanna reduce the seed bank of those weeds in future years, the earlier the better. Otherwise, if it's mainly summer annual weeds, I mean, they won't really go to seed between now and then, but they will also be growing. And so if they're relatively easy to control, if it's glyphosate susceptible for the most part and you're just gonna use something like roundup for your termination, then you can wait, they're gonna use up some of that water as well on those acres. More difficult to control weeds if they're growing fast and then they're gonna be more difficult to control if they're bigger. So again, earlier the better. And the other thing will really depend on what if any residual herbicides, even ones we don't typically think of having residual like 2,4-D, which does have some, you'd have a high risk of injury to some crops if you wait until right before planting. That being said, we get these questions every year, whether it's PP or otherwise, of spray something like two or three ounces of dicamba, how long until I can plant this? That's kind of always a depends, but in general crop labels are more conservative than something that's not technically crops, such as cover crops. So, you could have a little bit of injury, but otherwise the covers here probably wouldn't go out of it. Looks like you're thinking about AIMs. So yeah, in that case, wouldn't really have residual. Also periquad as well, another great option. If weeds are larger by waiting a couple of weeks, periquad would be my choice of rain, just based on weed size. But certainly if you're in a position to wait, and you have the options too, I don't see too much of an issue with waiting. Like I said, nothing else, the weeds will ease up some of that water. And the question is with Kosha, well, that's a good couple of week window there for Kosha to grow. So, my preference would be to get out there as soon as possible to control Kosha when it's smaller, just the bigger it gets, the more difficult it'll be. Again, it's gonna depend on particular driver weeds in the field, could be more of a field by field basis on what's best. That's kind of some general comments that I have. So, Joe, we had that question earlier about where they had cereal rye that was growing through this year and that field is gonna be PP and they have some drownouts. I mean, I suppose broadcasting radish in some of those drown out areas would handle some of the weed pressures or what would you recommend for that? Maybe a herbicide pass over it to control weeds in those drown out areas? It'll depend on how drown out they are. If it's still wet, then there's, you know, there may not be a whole lot of weeds there at the moment. Anyways, whether it may even weeds and now it's underwater depending on how much rain there was. In general, I haven't seen enough good data on radish competition with weeds to be confident in making that recommendation of a radish. I mean, it'll be some competition but there's certainly more competitive species. And in that case, if it's a drown out area that somehow doesn't have standing water right now then herbicide would be a decent choice for those areas. Especially if you have a small four wheeler sprayer that you can get around those areas pretty easily. Do you know of any cover crops that could be broadcast in those areas that would be more competitive or I suppose it all depends on what you have in the rest of the field too? It does. And I don't know depending on how wet it is which ones would be competitive in a wet environment versus dry as far as the cover crops? You know, Abby, if those areas are consistently that every year and people wanna have a traffic ability I would suggest that just plant a perennial grass mix. And again, when I talk about perennials not all perennials are salt tolerant. Some are very salt tolerant, some are not. But if salinity is not an issue they could go and plant any perennial, just keep it mowed and they will have. I can tell you this, here at the center we have this perennial mix growing on one of the lowest areas, one of the most saline sodic areas and good land over people till and it's like a mud puddle off the rain. But when you drive on the grass you're just driving on the paved road. So if that's the option you cannot really plant those grasses when there is a standing water, seed will not germinate so you will have to wait for a good time. But once they germinate and establish they will use up a lot of water and they will provide the traffic ability and they're perennials so you don't need to replant them. Let's see, we have another question that came up here. PP ground that is salty and wet that is going to corn in 2021 had thoughts on using radish, turnip, sunflower, barley or rye mix. But I'm concerned that the barley or rye would have to be terminated too early to get the full benefit of the others. Okay, so radish, turnip, sunflower, barley or rye. Just my thought on a mix, what are your thoughts? I also have intentions of spreading P and K needs for the corn the same time as spreading the cover crop seed just to keep the cost down and pay for one application so any thoughts or concerns on that? Well, number one, if it is a salty ground I would not put turnip and radish there. That's number one point. Number second point, barley is good. And again, when we say salty, I mean, corn is not really a salt tolerant crop either. So if you're able to grow corn there I would assume your soil EC is at most three, three and a half, for example. So you may be able to plant rye and barley too. And applying fertilizer this year for next year's crop, I don't know. I don't deal with fertility, but I've worked in Pakistan for a fertilizer company. I don't know how much of that phosphorus would be available next year to corn. You may wanna save some money and application cost, but if you have some phosphorus is fixed in your soil it's just, I would definitely consult Dave friends and our people like him on this, but I would question that. And if fertility people say this is okay, then I would do that. So I think, so if it's really wet, I'm guessing the whole field isn't salty. They're probably patches or if it's really wet, then having some sorghum in there might be a good fit because it can use a lot of moisture. And I've done that before on some, where I have a saline headland, but then the rest of the field is kind of okay. And I'll put sorghum in there just to use a lot of moisture because the field that we're working with where we've done that is just so wet all the time. And we really wanted to dry it out. So sorghum was a good fit for that. Yeah, I can't, you know, radish and turnip, I mean, yeah, they're not super salt tolerant, but they may grow in other areas that are not affected by salts. And in that case, I would maybe, you know, I think you could use both in a mix. I'd be concerned on that field. It's good thing you're going to corn next year. If you were going to go to soybean or something, I would leave, definitely leave the turnips out because those will get stuck on your, anything that over winters will get stuck on your equipment. I've had some luck with Dorifesics rapeseed in some of those areas too. And maybe you would just do Dorifesics instead of the turnips. And so radish, Dorifesics, sunflower, barley, and that may be a good fit. But if you have canola in rotation, I don't know if you're in canola country, Lucas, but if you do, I would not, I would stay away from brassicas in general just because of the club root issues. And I can certainly, I can ask, we can ask Dave about the PNK needs and broadcasting that, unless somebody that's on this call has some experience with that and whether the cover crops would take that up. For root crops, Abby, beets can also be better. If you want it, if you cannot have turnip and radish and beets last call, I got clarification for Marisol. So sugar beet has no, it's not a house for club root. So you have a good option. It's very salt tolerant. So if you want to have a root crop, that would be a good option too. I'll see another question on Fletchy like annual ryegrass, which you say we don't recommend, which is correct because Joe does not like it. Yeah, I've seen it work in some areas, but honestly, yeah, annual ryegrass could be great, but I think you for sure need some cattle in there to help manage it. And I can't recommend it just because Joe will punch me in the face. So I won't recommend annual ryegrass. But you have a question about Japanese millet supplying oxygen to roots and low and tight soils. Green cover crops mentions this. I don't know, Marisol, what do you think? I need you to throw that one to me. I don't have any information that's, and I don't know if there's science-based information that does that. Japanese millet, I like it because it grows more than other millets. Stolar produces more biomass, it's a good forage, but it supplies oxygen to roots. I don't know, I never heard of that. And like all the grasses, it has a fibers rooting system, but supplying oxygen, I never heard of that before. So I don't know where, if there is a science paper that says that I'd love to see it. The only way soils get oxygen is through the porous space. If you improve the porous space, that comes from soil particle aggregation. Some plants have roots which create channels for water and air to move, but that's gonna take some time to plant statically do not supply. Plant roots respire, they take oxygen, whatever is already there in the soil. Okay, let's see, we got another question. I used oats, barley, millet, and winter rye last year. It got haid and the rye got about 18 inches tall before planting soybeans this year. The rye was on the thin side and did not cause problems. I sprayed it off right after planting, the soybeans are doing well. Oh, that's great, that's a nice mix and yeah, it's kind of amazing. I don't know if there's, Joe, do you know of any work on stands of rye and weed competition? I mean, do thin stands do just as well as thick stands or do we need to adjust our seeding rates for that? Not anything in the weed science literature at least. Several of my colleagues and also myself are kind of working on questions like that in the upcoming years. But nothing replicated on, especially, we would probably put it on a very weedy patch to really tease out any differences. Yeah, nothing I'm aware of except for anecdotal stuff, which I try not to put anecdotal stuff too much until I have better answers. Yeah, that's kind of where I've gotten, I had a voicemail from Steve's Winger up at Carrington about some of the competition in his stands of rye with weeds. And it's just kind of observation stuff right now, but that's good, I'm glad in this situation that that rye did over winter and you got some use out of it in the spring for planting beans into it. So now my question for Greg, who put that in there was, some of the fields I had rye in it, they were still just really wet underneath and I don't know if you experienced that on your fields or if the rye got rooted down deep enough where it was using a lot of that lower moisture in the profile? Well, I unmuted here if that's okay. Ah, that's great, thank you. So yeah, I did use some of that moisture and right next to the water, the sluice, they still wasn't great, but away from that 20 feet out and beyond, it seemed like the soil was pretty friendly for planting. So that was good. But I did have some areas that didn't get hayed and that wasn't as friendly because there was a lot of trash there for the planter to try and get through and it did not dry out quite as nice there. So do you think would there be anything in that mix then that like say you couldn't hay it or that wasn't something you were gonna do that you would have dropped out, that you feel like had more biomass than some of the others? I liked the biomass. I thought it was pretty good that way. I noticed in my salty areas, I didn't get a lot of millet and outgrowth or rye for that matter, it was mostly just kind of the barley. And some of those areas didn't even get hayed because of that, they were pretty wet last fall when it came time for doing that also and they got left. But like I said, the barley was about the only component that really did well there. That's good. Marisol, would you, you know, in these mixes, so I tend to, I'll just go for a lot of the cool season grasses. Do you think including, you know, that millet component or warm season grass is pretty critical for prevent plant situations? Yeah. Well, I always for PP, I think you have to have something that moves water. You know, as a researcher doing PP, so millet, I'm gonna do that much faster than the cool season grasses like barley or oats, that's during the summer. Now, winter rye is good in the mix because you want it to move water in the spring, right? If you still have a lot of excess water in the spring. So, but during the summer, when you wanna try to get off, smash water out of the soil as possible, millet and sorghum is what I like to see there because that's what's gonna move water. Remember the water moves through the roots of the plant, through the plant to the air you know, what we lose through evaporation directly from the soil to the air is minimal compared to where the plants can move. That's why a soil without plants takes a long time to dry, right? And then it moves soles up too. So I think having a crops and move water fast is key for PP ground. Did I answer the question? Yeah, no, that's good. Because I sometimes I forget about including a millet and there's something else, especially on PP and that is a good point. Are there any, I mean, we have all these cool season broadleaf plants that we use in a mix. Are there any warm season broadleaf that you would recommend if somebody wanted a little more diversity and something warm season in there? Well, you know, of the warm seasons say you want, if you're gonna have a cold season, they move some water or those that produce a lot of amas and one would be sunflower. You know, you don't wanna put too much in the mix but you wanna have some sunflowers with a deep, deep root will move water. The other one that works, but it works only if you inoculate it, it would be sandhemp. Sandhemp can grow a lot in the heat of the summer but it needs to be inoculated with the right risovium otherwise it's just gonna turn yellow and they won't do much. So those two I like to see. I know sandhemp is kind of expensive and that's why we don't use them much. But I think here throwing maybe a bound of sunflower into the mix, it will help to move some. And I've seen several of you already are considering sunflower and I know I am, I'll recommend that too. Just don't wanna go with too many of them but if you wanna put some of them, I think that'll help with water. Perfect, so you've got a mix here of using Sorghum, sugar beet, sunflower mix. What would be a good seeding rate and how many pounds each? The really one wants us to do the other, do the seeding rate. Marisol, I was going through your list and on its own you recommended Sorghum-Sodan grass, 30 pounds per acre. And sugar beets, we have played with that, five to eight pounds per acre on its own. Would you agree with that? On its own, yeah. But I don't recommend playing monocultures but if you're just gonna plan that. Well, I'm just taking that as a basis to. A base, yeah. And then, sunflowers, what would be on its own seeding rate, for example? I don't know. Because I was thinking to answer his question, I would put 40 to 50% sugar beet in that mix and if we say eight pounds per acre, multiplied by say 50%, that would be four pounds of sugar beet seed. And if there's a 25% Sorghum in this, 30 pounds of Sorghum on its own multiplied by 25%, that would be seven and a half pounds. I don't know what would be the full seeding rate for if anybody could answer that, then we could just say 25% sunflower because you mentioned you don't want to have too much sunflower. So 50% beets. Yeah, I think for certain species, the percentage rate works but not for all of them. Okay, I think some of them, like sunflower, you don't want to put more than one or two pounds and it doesn't matter the percentage you want. It's because you just don't want, it's not really a good cover crop and especially you're not great so you don't want too many because of the fat problem, just like with products. And the same, I think some of the smaller seeds too, you don't want to divide the percentage because if something has a rate of five pounds, you divide it by 25, but you're gonna end up with too little. So the size of the plants doesn't really match the percentage of size of the seeds, right? So that's why I think in sunflower, when I see it mixed, we should put one pound or less. Usually sugar beet, I don't know much about sugar beet because I don't know if there is cheap sugar beet available to you, but the sugar beet seed is an expensive thing to put in there unless you found these multi germ, old, sugary varieties. But I don't know, is there sugar beet for cover crops available? There is not at a price of a sugar beet crop because I would recommend to use coated, monogerm, expensive seed, that would be too expensive. So that's why I don't know a name. I know you like sugar beet and I like it too, especially for salinity, but I don't know the availability. Is any of the seed companies here can say there's any, if there is sugar beet, the cover crop type or monogerm, old varieties, not the certified varieties for crop. Do you guys sell any sugar beet that is not for the crop? Yeah. Do you know a name who provides sugar beet? I have bought a mix from Agassiz. I bought it from Reward Seeds. I bought them from Pulse USA. I've never had a time when I was told that that was not available. Is that seed then on the mixes that you have is a multi germ, the old varieties? See, I don't know much about that. It's just, I just wondered about the cost of sugar be seed. But my guess is you're gonna put lower rates too, like not maybe more than two pounds. And with Sorghum too, with Sorghum, Sorghum you have to watch it because Sorghum can become very competitive and pretty much mother everything else on the mix. If you're putting the mixes because you want all the plants to be there, right? Not to put it in, never seen them. And we've seen, we have a student doing a thesis on this and with more than two pounds per acre of Sorghum, you're gonna cost so much competition. Even with that, all in all the mixes, we end up with 70% of the biomass was Sorghum, right? So in a lot of people put five or 10 pounds, you put five pounds of Sorghum, so you're gonna get a Sorghum. So in these BP mixtures, if diversity is what you want, you gotta really watch the rates of this competitive species. So for Sorghum, I don't like much more than two pounds per acre if you want the rest of the species be there. And that's kind of, I guess I have this like two, it's a two pound rule of thumb and it doesn't work for everything, but it seems like a lot of different cover crop species it kind of works with. So, you know, radish and turnip, you wouldn't want more than two pounds. You know, some flowers probably not more than two pounds. Sorghum not more than two pounds. And I'm trying to think of what else, you know, you'd want, probably flax would be less than two pounds for sure. I don't know, I guess I've seen too many fields where they get five to six pounds of things like radish and turnip and you know, one field I saw had like five pounds of radish, five pounds of turnip. And it was just, it was, then none of them grew. I mean, there was way too, there was just too much there and it was all kind of yellow and, you know, just it didn't, it was expensive, I'm sure, you know, five pounds of each of those gets kind of costly. But that's where too, if you're looking at a mix and you want to reduce the cost, you just reduce some of the seeding rates too, you know, some of those, you want good coverage but you can play around with the seeding rates to reduce the cost as well. Let's see, Lucas also asked, what kind of sorghum, grain or forage, no intentions of hanging or grazing? Well, like if you're just using the sorghum, try to find it like a sorghum to the end type and most of, yeah, it's not, I wouldn't use a grain one because the grain sorghum is very short and it will produce seed and you get a lot of seed on the ground and so you use a forage type, sorghum to the end, private or just straight forage sorghum because those are the ones that are gonna move a lot of the water out of the soil. I wouldn't put a grain sorghum for PP. Good deal. Thoughts on vetches? I can tell you, I'm not a huge fan of hairy vetch. I don't think I keep that a secret. Common vetch I've used before and it's been okay. I think there are better legumes. Honestly, I like peas better than vetches. I, yeah, I just, I never use hairy vetch so that's what I do stay away from. Yeah, we, the problems with hairy vetch is sometimes over winters and if you're over winters then it produces seed. If you get a vetch to go seed, you'll never get rid of the seeding vetch the rest of your life because once it has dormancy and so if a plant produces seed, you always see it almost every year and it can be a problem with, and Joe might say more about this because vetches crawl, you know, they have these tendrils so they crawl up the plants like sunflowers or wheat and they're difficult to control. So that's the main reason we don't like it. Like Abby says, you can get all the benefits you need from a legume from a pea. So you don't really need the hairy vetch. I know a lot of people use it that it can become a wheat problem. And I don't know if it's because it's hard to control because of the seed on my seed, Joe, maybe you can say that, but I've seen fields where they have hairy vetch and once they had it, every year you'll see plants with hairy vetch coming up. Yeah, it's got a hard seed code and dormancy issues and that's why if it over winters one year and goes to seed then it's a problem in that field for future years. So my preference would be something else, especially if you're, you know, saying that you can get the same benefits agronomically or toilet health-wise as peas, then I'd certainly try to stay away from vetch just for that reason, you know. So I see another question here on Tefgrass, broadcasting at a 12 pound per acre rate or with an air drill at 10 pounds per acre, putting it on ground that wasn't able to get planted due to wetness and they plan to hay it for cattle. You know, the one thing I know about Tefgrass and the farmers that I've worked at that I've grown at, basically it needs to be seeded into basically a basketball court. So it needs a very hard soil, it needs to be very shallow. What do they use? Like a brilliant seeder, is that the type of seeder that you'd use? And you pretty much have to put it on the surface. Tefgrass is so small seed that it needs, that you put it just, I don't know, half an inch deep and it won't come up. Now, it is a great grass as a quality for forage and that's why people like it. It's one of the preferred forages for like horses too. It's excellent digestibility quality, it's really nice. But again, for me, for like a PP, I think especially you put it in a mix, it's a waste because it won't compete with anything. So you put Tefgrass in a mix, we made it ourselves, you never see that. I've seen farmers that put Tefgrass in a mix and we couldn't never find one plant of Tefgrass. And so it's not that cheap of a seed either. And so I think if your purpose is haying, you want a high quality hay or forage for grazing, Tef is a great choice for that. But you have to be aware that you need to establish it on really well prepared seedbed and very shallow to make it. Farmers are already growing Tef, they kind of master how to do it and they can get a good establishment every year. I haven't been able to do that. Every time I think out of five times I try only one came up, probably put it to the, I don't know, it's cattle, seedbed and whatever. I think it's a great forage. It's one of the best quality, the form season quality forages that we have. So I've got another question. We're going to broadcast a bushel of cereal rye and incorporate it. When would be the best time to do this and not get competition from weeds before freeze up? So Joe, any thoughts on that? I guess, again, with the weeds you're dealing with. So we do have a rye table in the weed guide. So that would all be products labeled for rye that was going to seed. So they're safe enough to use those. Again, it's broadly for wheat pressure. We have options there, but I think as far as the timing of cereal rye, for me would be more about the overwintering issue. If you planted too early and it tillers too much, do you potentially lose stand over winter? If that's your goal? Yeah, from the weeds side, it's just cereal rye. I'm not terribly worried about it unless you're put it in a field with some major wild over foxtail issues with resistance. And if those are the weeds and later the better since they germinate earlier in the season. Is this on ground that was 2019 corn that's going to be harvested? And then putting the rye out there after harvested and you can unmute yourself too, if you want. If you want to talk about it. Yeah, 2019 corn, okay. So I guess once you get the corn off, then probably some good herbicide passes. I know I just saw an article about how some of the weeds in 2019 standing corn, hoping not to spray. I think it was just an article in Ag Week that Greg LaPlante was talking about some of the weed pressures coming up in 2019 corn that hasn't been harvested yet. I don't know, Joe, do you have some thoughts on that or are there's not a lot of canopy to compete? No, so weeds are growing there. I mean, I don't know what it is when you harvest corn and stand a chance to rip a lot of the weeds out with your tires. If the rye is going to be incorporated, then I guess that would depend if you're already going to cultivate once, you hit it before and then incorporate or the incorporation will also, should uproot some of the smaller weeds. It really depends on what weeds are there and how well-established they are. Okay, so one tillage pass will be done before spreading the rye and then working again. In that case, the weeds are there should be more or less okay as far as control and it'll just be whatever weeds would potentially come up afterwards. And like I said, we do have some options if it's straight cereal or rye. So would we have, so say if you're seeding cereal or rye mid-summer, I mean, I'm guessing because it's a cool season, it's going to be a little slower to grow. Is it going to be as competitive with the weeds at that point, or would it be better to put something else there that a warm season that would grow faster and then come back in with a rye and seed it into that? One comment, sorry, go ahead, Joe. Oh, fine, if it's solely weed suppression then the more competition, the better. And so, but I'm guessing this is already, it's already 2019 corn prevent plant this year and I want to put minimal amount of money and effort into that field. And so, yeah, I'm guessing here, the idea is just to get the rye in and then hopefully leave it. It will be less competitive, but like I said, this point of it's later in the year, I'd probably weeds would be the more prevalent ones growing quickly in those areas and we have options for those if the sprayer pass did have to be made. Perfect. So, Abby, I wanted to come in on Lucas's question about what should be the seeding rate for oats on its own. It could be 40 to 50 pounds if it's just a cover crop, but I just wanted to tell him and other people that if he planted oats, and I'm quoting the guide, there's a handbook for cover crop and PP acres, if he planted that after the late planting period and if he harvested those oats for grain, he could still get 35% of his PP payments. So the key thing is he has to plant the oats after the late planting periods. So generally, if your last planting date, final planting date, you know, once that comes, then you have to wait for the late planting period and it ranges from 15 to 25 days depending upon the crop and the county. Well, it looks like he's asking too some questions about what else could go in with the oats and I guess it would depend on your 2021 crop. That's what you're gonna have out there because we certainly don't wanna recommend anything that would cause an issue in the following year's crop. Let's see, let's see, follow up with also on PP ground going to soybeans next year, thinking of using just straight barley and how many pounds did you put on there? So I worked with a farmer down south who was doing the same thing. He had barley on some PP ground last year and he was going into soybeans this year and I'm trying to think of how much he put out there. He had some stuff in the mix though too. I think he did put some peas in there and actually on the ground where he had the peas where they established well. He said that the residue was so much better that barley residue was really mellow and easy to plant into where he had some of the peas growing versus just where he had the barley stands and the peas he put them too deep or something like that, they didn't grow in some areas. So it may be worth it depending on cost and what you wanna spend to throw something in there like that that may help with some of that residue. I don't know if your system's no-till or full-tillage or what you're used to planting into but it may be an option to throw something else in there like that. Let's see, we have another question here. I have a whole field of dry beans that were not harvested. I plan to use a salford and perhaps roll it and seed a cover crop since that would be okay with crop insurance. I could broadcast something with it. I'm thinking radish and agrass so disease pressure would be less. Pea replacement I guess. So if you're gonna broadcast doing large seeds like peas are not a good fit. I mean pea seeds, large sunflower seed, anything that's a large seed, if you're gonna broadcast it and then lightly incorporate it, I think that you maybe wanna stay away from some of those larger seeds. So salford wouldn't get any more than two inches deep as far as running that tillage or that vertical tillage. What are you going to on that field in next year? So the dry beans weren't harvested. So I'm guessing in some of those dry beans you probably had some shatter too and so you're gonna get some volunteers coming back with the dry beans. I get all volunteers unless they rotted over the winter. Okay, so then in that case, you already have your legume as part of the mix, right? I mean, you're gonna have the volunteer dry beans. I think that's what he made meant by pea replacement I guess. Oh, okay. So yeah, so broadcasting something with it, roll it and seed a cover. So then I guess, yeah, maybe that's all you need. I guess depending on unless you're concerned about disease carry over having dry beans last year and then having dry beans as a cover crop this year. You may for coverage just, could you broadcast something like oats or something off, gosh, your seeding rate would have, you'd be filling that bin all the time if you're using something out of salford where you're broadcasting at the same time. So you probably want a smaller seed. But I would put a grass with it just for the coverage, I think. And also too, I just really like fibrous roots. You know, I don't think of dry beans as having really great root systems, but I think of stuff like, like Aaron Day when he's talking about compaction and building soil structure and managing some of the compaction from the ruts this past year in fields that oats are really one of the best options. You know, we talk a lot about the radish and how that breaks up compaction, but fibrous roots can be just as good for that and also using moisture. So I would maybe try, I'd try to broadcast something like your grass with that to come up with your volunteer dry beans. It's my gut instinct, but I don't know if anybody else has some thoughts on that. I actually agree with you. So yeah, so if you can create a system on that, I don't know if you have a, some kind of box or something on that salford where you can broadcast a cover crop seed at the same time you're running the salford if you're just going to run over and broadcast first and then run the salford, but no separate pass. So I guess it just depends on how often you want to fill the seed box. Yeah, I can see not wanting to do a bunch of passes this year. You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense on some of this ground to double up on things if you can do it all in one pass. So then yeah, I guess I would just try to choose a small seed. I don't know if there's some grass seeds that are smaller than others. So I could fill the no-till drill and lock them, lock them in air and broadcast perhaps since it's not a normal seeding for crop insurance purposes. Yeah, I suppose you guys have some constraints with crop insurance as well. But yeah, that's what I would do, especially I would think, you know, too with some, I don't know if having back-to-back dry beans would create more disease pressures in those fields too. But trying to get something else in there to make it a little bit more of a diverse mix, just adding some kind of grass. And you probably could put a radish out there too. And I think you kind of stay away from turnips just because of the having the dry beans. I want to stay away from turnips. So. It'd probably be good to write that one down to ask Markel his thoughts. Cause I don't think you're the only person that has fields of dry beans out there that are going to be volunteering and using as a cover. But yeah, I would try to get a grass in there just because I think you're going to get more roots and you're going to get better moisture use. But we could certainly talk about it later too. I think if this is who I think it is, I think you have my phone number so you can give me a call and we can talk about it. So yeah, the Southford would fill in the sprayer wets a little bit. Yeah, and I think that's like, you know, I mean, even in these no-till systems, when you have ruts and things like that, you've got to repair them. Otherwise you're going to be dealing with them the next however many years. So I don't think there's, you know, I would take care of the ruts with the light pass with the Southford or something and create a good seed bed and really set yourself up well for next year. So you've got about 10 minutes left on this call. I don't know if there's any other burning questions. I'm really excited about this chat box. You guys have asked a ton of questions over here. So thank you for doing that. Well, we do have an opportunity too for, we have this new podcast series starting on Monday called Soil Sense Field Check. And it's basically a question and answer type thing. So we've got the first couple of episodes filled up with questions being asked and then we find the specialist to answer it. So it's really easy if you go to ndfieldcheck.com. You can record a question just like you're leaving a voicemail. And then we'll take that question and I find the different specialist to answer the question. So like the first one, Joe's answering a question that was put out there about weed control and using cover crops. And then the next week is Andrew Friskups can answer a question about some of the disease transfer between cover crops and cash crops. So if you have questions that you wanna ask, certainly record them there. And even if they don't make the episode, I will find somebody to answer that question for you. Oh, Adam, Adam just put in the chat box hint to cover crop seed companies do more mixes without turnip. So that's, I think that's a good tip. I'm not a huge fan of turnip unless you're gonna graze it. And I know you're not getting cows anytime soon, Adam. So no turnips. So yeah, I mean, we'll be, we have two more weeks of this. So if there are things you think of between now and next week, hop back on. And honestly, if you get on early on the call you can certainly just, I think most of us are on even 15 minutes before the schedule time. So you can hop on and ask a question real quick if you need to or whatever else we're usually just chitchatting before we start. So, well, thanks everyone for joining. And I'm glad we had this good discussion this morning. And yeah, just join us next week if you have more questions.