 I think it is one of the things that the Law State University Extension manages to issue your soil quality lab in the Southern Ohio, the Titeton, Ohio, and he has a very unique lab that has a lot of soil quality tests that are not usually done in the normal soil tests for phosphorus potassium. He can get into all the different parameters that you really need to understand soil quality. I will talk about that. Today we are going to focus on looking at cover crop species. What happens when you are buying one type of cover crop filter? Is that what you get? Otherwise soil quality that is the question. So that is the problem with the slide setting. I was asked to give it a talk on cover crop orchid. We use rye or red or clover, but when you combine all different types of cover crop, how they work, how they affect soil or crop yield or soil biology. That is what we are going to talk about. So before I go into that, one of my research related to cover crop on sustainable land funded by North Central selling. So they asked me to talk a little bit about that. So I will have some slides to explain to you what we got in different states in the US, what farmers are thinking, and after that we will move into the main talk. Is that okay? Let's start. Okay, so I have to talk about selling project EAC 118. That is to develop professionals so they can train farmers or help farmers to follow sustainable land. So that is what I am going to talk first. So this is the project we got funded. It is training the trainers on sustainable land. So what we got? We got our resources, which are sun, that means the light, main powerhouse in the world or ecosystem. Then we got air and water, and we got soil. Good soil, only 10% good soil we can use to grow crops. And water less than 3%, fresh water. So you can imagine how less resources we have in terms of good quality. So that's why we said how we are going to manage this. And all these resources come through sunlight, utilizing rainwater and nutrients from the soil, produce food, feed, fiber and energy. And everything based on carbon. As a whole, life on earth based on carbon. So if you manage carbon, you manage the ecosystem. And that's also one of the important components of organic farming, sustainable farming or natural farming. Manage carbon, that is organic matter. So current agriculture production, although it is very productive, it will give you lot of good production of 200% corn, 60% soybean. But it affects our production. How? Over the years, it will affect your farm economics and ecosystem services. That means poor soil quality, bad air. If you go to China, you will see everybody has a mask of pollution. And also the water quality. And as a whole, it affects us. When you drive on the highway during summer, it says ozone alert. Because ozone is bad for asthma. Those people are suffering from respiration problem. Ozone affects them. And how we produce all these activities, what we are doing, releasing carbon dioxide, NOx, and it creates this situation. So managing ecosystem based on carbon is the management of our survival. And we have to think about again, how we are going to use our equipment. We have too much equipment. So how we are going to use equipment. And also, we have to diversify crop in polyculture. And then we have to think about using reactive fertilizer. That means nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. And also toxic chemicals. Those are hormones or pesticide, insecticides. So as a whole, all kinds of things, what we are doing, we have to think about that again and again. As a result of our activities, which I had mentioned yesterday during our workshop, conventional way of farming, creating some kind of circular big radiation. That means we plow with a lot of mechanization, use fertilizer. And that created loss of organic matter, compacted soil, and poor healthy quality. And as a result, a lot of diseases started to develop and that makes the plant unhappy. So plants are not productive or they don't like to be that way. And when plants are not productive or they are unhappy, it will affect your biodiversity and disease causing organism. So as a result, you apply more pesticide. And that pesticide, again in a circle, affect your biodiversity. And as a result of biodiversity, you are getting the poor quality soil. So it's a cycle. So you have to get out of that cycle. Just I just give you one example. This is, if you use 100 gallon of gasoline in your tractor or any kind of mechanization, what you are going to get? You will get 90 to 120 pounds of water out of every 100 gallons of gas. And you will get 3 to 10 pounds of carbon shoes, the black shoes. Then you will get one and a half pounds to two pounds of shoes. And then one, four to one pound of varnish, the chemicals. Last of all, you will get one to four pounds of nitric and sulfuric acid. Can you imagine that? When you burn 100 gallons of gas in your tractor or your car or your any mechanization, you will get one to four pounds of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. So you can imagine what we are releasing into that moisture. This is gas, not diesel. Diesel is more, this is petroleum. So diesel is more thicker and more contaminants. It should be dribble. Just an example that what is coming out. So look at this slide. So we, that's what we said, conventional tillage is making ecosystem services, farm productivity, soil health declining to the red line. And whereas sustainable ag, which we are thinking, should be enhancing. And that's what we will see a lot of, I could use this one, a lot of organisms, different types of land, the arrows are thicker and bigger compared to the conventional side. So that's what we want to achieve. So that's the project we have that based on sustainability, what would be our objective, what we have to do. So ideas to train professionals to conduct multi-state workshop. So they can be trained on sustainable ag and they can teach and help farmers to follow or adapt that system. So that was the idea. What we have done, our target audience was extension educator, teachers, NRCS and EPA personnel, soil and water conservation people, county official, crop consultant, ag business people and progressive farm, farm leaders. So our expected outcomes, short term that the trained, the professionals who are trained, they will become more and more aware of sustainable ag and they will get knowledge and learn new techniques so they can help farmers. That is the short term outcome. And the medium outcome or intermediate outcome, once they get this training, these professionals are going to develop and implement some program to assist farmers like workshop, field day, demonstration. And also these professionals will help farmers to shift conventional farmers into sustainable ag in the natural farming system by removing road blocks. That means they are going to help farmers where they can get the cover crop seed, how many seed, how many pounds I need when I have to plant this kind of thing ready to use information. And long term outcome was that about 20 to 30 percent of the farmers in North Central region will adapt sustainable ag in the next 10 to 15 years after this training to the professionals. And once they increase this number of farming or farmers involved, then with greater improved economics and ecosystem services, the farm income or farmers income or as a whole rural economy will improve. So that was all this outcome. So we shared the resources we use. We got resources from SARI, they funded us and we got volunteers. They contributed more than 600 hours and the funds also leveraged by Ohio State University, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, NRCS, soil and water conservation and CTC, conservation tillage conference and also ag culture solutions in Canada. So Canadian they came and they said you have to organize this workshop for us also. So we did that. What we did, we organized three workshops for NRCS people in Illinois. So we trained more than 250 people in Illinois and Michigan around 170, 178 people were trained. Minnesota we got 123. Ontario, Canada we got 267 people trained. And in Ohio there were a few hundred, four to five hundred people. And Texas we trained about 42 people. So all together you can see about 1000 people we trained through this program and we distributed the material more than 1000 copies and also we are developing a website so farmers can have access. So what results we got, we have some survey we found that most of the participants are consultant, ag consultants and the second category is university extension educator and dealers. They are also dealers. And we got some farmers also 15% people are farmers they were trained by our workshop but most of the people around 45 to 48% of the participants that means around 450 to 480 people are trained professionals, professional dealers. And we asked them about the satisfaction of the workshop, what we have. So you can see around 85% said they are very satisfied or satisfied, few of them didn't like around 5% people. And knowledge gain, look at this, I mean look at this slide people are looking about 21st century agricultural, new kind of agricultural they are looking for. So almost 23% people they are asking for new kind of information for agriculture. Cover crop, yeah, nitrogen management cover crop look at this blue, dark blue, crop rotation the pink one. So we got a lot of people they are asking for conservation tillage cover crop and some information about sustainable agriculture. So that gives us satisfaction with our project activities and how much they learn. And we asked what kind of soil properties you think are important. So look at that most of them said biological properties or soil biology is the most important. And for organic or sustainable ag or conservation ag or natural production system biology is the main thing. And physical and chemical more or less same. But biology most of the people said this is important. And then we asked what single parameters of soil is important for maintaining soil health as a part of sustainable ag. Almost 48% said organic matter. That means if you manage organic matter you are good. And that's what I told you lies based on our carbon that is organic matter. And you know that and farmers know or professionals they know. And then we asked what kind of management system will be good for sustainable ag to improve soil quality. Almost 30% said conservation tillage and around 25%. So around 55 to 58% said cover crops and crop rotation. These are the important part. Again we are talking about organic matter. Double crop means organic matter, biodiversity, disease separation. This kind of thing. So that's why I thought I should have given my talk this is our funding and the research to move ahead with the cover crop talk. So I'll come to my talk now. I have to be a mess. So what would be the sustainable organic production or any sustainable production? What do you think? Some of you I know you have been in my last year study workshop. The main thing is noting that should be continuous noted. That means you do it this year and next year you will be flying. So note in corn, note in soybean and then you plow and have corn. So that is not noted. Noted means absolute noted no disturbance. But for organic production we know that you cannot have noted but you have some slide. Our organic system based on doting didn't work. You have to plow to get rid of wheat or something. So we need some balance. We are not totally against tillage. Maybe minimum tillage. But if it is cocktail it will suppress and you'll see the result. But I have to go a little bit fast. So second part is crop rotation that is a sustainable ag component. Third one is crop rotation and cover crop. And the last one we thought nutrients or amendment. What kind of nutrient or new type of amendments we can use in sustainable production system to enhance the nutrient use efficiency. So you don't have to apply that mask. You can reduce the cost of your production system. So look at few organic pictures from organic farm in Ohio. And if you look at that you'll see there are some compaction here. That cloud again and maybe rain and it dispersed the soil and it compacted. Look at the yellow color of the crops and how many weeds we have. So sometimes you have that because weed is a part of the system. And for hundreds of years we have been using pesticide. Oh, thank you. So look at this slide and you'll see that farmer tried to do as much as possible. But weed is part of the system for hundreds of years. I mean last 60, 70 years we have been using all kinds of herbicide round off, string herbicide and all these. We will take out weed. We make them resistant. So weed we can just minimize the effect. We cannot totally eliminate them. So we have to give up with that. So some of this organic system we have to think about how we are going to manage this and make it more productive and suppress weed. Look at this hour research in USDA and OSU Kosacton. It's a large plot. Look at that. This is clover. This is cowpea. But this grass is foxtail millet. Because it was dry. Last year it was dry and dry means foxtail millet will come. Millet will be abundant. And look at here all this in this one we have radish, cowpea mixed together but foxtail millet everywhere. So you need something which can suppress and control the weeds and diseases. One single cover crop cannot do that. So that's why we thought cocktail would be better solution. So why we plan cover crop? Main thing is we have to cover the ground to suppress the weeds, keep the moisture and home grown nitrogen. So we can get nitrogen like we are producing at home. Add organic matter and recycle nutrients. Diversify organisms, suppress weeds and diseases. Reduce surface erosion and soil loss. And also use cover crop as a plow, biological plow. That means if you don't go for no till we will be using radish, deeper radish or carrots to make hole into the soil. So we will have good drainage and removing the compaction. So that's the idea. And also it provides mulch. Dry season you will see one slide. 2012 August it was dry. You know the highest, most extreme drought in United States in 2012. Remember that August you will see the moisture content in the soil. How cover crop mulch conjure. So and when we can use cover crop, look at the plant growing season. This is the main crop season and the spring and the fall before winter. Those are the good windows for growing cover crop. And also in the autumn if you have wheat you can go study in summer even in July. So we thought that cover crop can take this part winter cover crop in the fall and that will continue in the spring all the way early spring. And also you can plant in the summer after harvesting wheat to minimize that gap. So you extend the cover, leaving cover on the surface of your soil. Look at some of this slide. So on the cover crop, buckwheat is the fastest growing cover crop. It takes 30 days to go to full grow. 45 days you can harvest. But we don't want to harvest. We want buckwheat to grow 30 days. If you don't find anything grow buckwheat and rye. So and bad soil buckwheat is the best cover crop to study. And phazelia that's a legume. And if you have honey, if you wanted to collect honey or honey bees, phazelia will be one of the cover crop you need to grow in the field. So you can have nitrogen, lot of nitrogen, good root and it will make a good structure. And also it will produce nice beautiful flower and nectar. So you can collect honey. Herivage and Austrian witter bees, these are extremely good cover crop especially for ground cover like it's March. And also nitrogen, these are legumes. These are finest cover crop you can use and rotate within the system. But you have to grow some of them in the fall, some of them in the summer. So get the thing when you are going to plant. Look at that two combination, two combination. This one is sun ham, sun ham is legume and this is carrot, sorry this is radish. So what it does? The radish gives fast and it gives carbohydrate and sugar to the microbes and microbes help the legume that is sun ham to fix nitrogen. So it's a synergistic effect, give and take. So legume and radish is very good for deep rooted penetration and removing complexion. It produces lot of sugar and sun ham will produce lot of nitrogen. And in September or October, look at this picture. That is in October, end of October, 31st of October 2010, sun ham is like that. So most of the green cover you have at the end of the year is radish. So you still have cover. So that's what we wanted to extend the cover of the soil. What kind of radish is that? So oil seed radish, lot of people will say tillage radish, ground hop radish. You go for oil seed radish, daikon radish. That means you want 30 inches deep, those kind of radish. And if you plant radish, never plant more than 2 pounds. Some people will say plant 10 pounds, 30 pounds. If you have 10 or 20 pounds, you will have narrow, very small radishes. But if you have 2 pounds, you will get a giant one, monster one, the big one and long one. That's what you need. How much sun ham? Pardon? Around 25 to 30 pounds. But if you go with a cocktail mix, then you don't need that much. I'll show you as we move on. Another one is cowpea and oat. So if you mix cowpea and oat, oat is a grass and cowpea is a lagoon. In Africa, the most important protein source is cowpea. Even in this country, we eat cowpea. That is black-eyed pea is cowpea. An excellent source of protein. So this is a combination, excellent for hay or forage or anything. You want it to grow, feed it or anyone. It's a very fast growing. And if you have drought, grow cowpea. Dry season cowpea. And if it is wet, then go for winter. And also radish, as I mentioned, look at this radish. How they grow and move the soil out and crack the soil. Look at here, how they make the crack. And when it gets, try to crack more. It's becoming twisted because that much energy it needs to penetrate the soil. It's got crack. So now we are thinking that radish is good, but why we are not using some kind of carrots? Carrots are more deeper and sweet. And sweet means sugar, sugar means microbes. And colored vegetable means more vitamins, more flavonoids. So it will attract different types of microorganisms in soil. And which will be very good for organic production system or natural production system. So we are trying one at a time or two at a time and then try to mix it up in a cocktail. So again, earlier we said why we plant cover crop? Now we said why we plant cocktail? So look at the difference. If you have cocktail, it's a biological primer. That means different types of crop need to regulate the biodiversity. Molecular biology of the soil and affect different types of organism, different types of insects is diversified and they started to control both above ground and below ground control. So it improved the solar energy use efficiency. That means if you grow different types of cover crop, it will maximize the absorbance of light to produce biomass. That's what we need. And we provide extended ground cover. That means whatever ground cover we have, we wanted to extend that longer period. And also you add diverse organic matter, organic residues. When you eat your lunch, you don't want bread only. You want different types of food. Cheese, but exactly the same thing, those tiny microorganisms, they want those kind of food to grow and diversify. And also it improves. If you have no till problem, you know the no till has a lot of nitrogen immobilization, compaction and all kinds of problems. So if you have cover crop cocktail, the no till function or the performance will improve. And last of all, overall it enhance the ecosystem. And again, if cocktail is good for also bee, honey bee. But we don't recommend that you grow this kind of cocktail or mix every year, maybe once in a five year. That's all. So look at that. Ohio Farmer Journal, they covered one of our research and it shows a single cover crop is a good start. But if you have multiple species, it will give you more and more benefits. So look at that. And in this one, we have sunflower, we have soot oil, sorghum, grass, and we have oil seed radish. We have some different types of plants in this mix. How do you keep your seed from becoming old? That's a good question. What do we do? We grow cover crop or mix cover crop such a way that it can be killed by winter. So we don't have to, it will not produce any seed. So it will die before winter or it will be what it will sterilize. You can say the seed will not fall. At best it can produce some flower. We don't want buckwheat or something, form seed and hard coated seed and then carry over. We don't want that. So mixing will be such a way that it can be knocked out by cold. We'll move on. We'll show you slowly. Look at that cover crop mix. We have last year in farm science review. So this one, here we have sunflower. We have soot and grass. We have cabbage. Then we have sun ham. What else we have? We have oats. And we have clover. Radish. So different mix we added in this one. At farm science review last year. But if you make a more long shot, look at that picture. So this is radish. Sun ham. This is sunflower. And then cabbage. And all these are cabbage. Sometimes it's hard to recognize. Because it's so different story. When was that point? I just plant in August. Early August. And I will say end of July. Dave Brandt, one of the farmers, you can see this big guy. He, with us, does lot of research and grow cover crop. And he has different types of mix. Four mix, six mix, seven, eight mix. Look at that. It has different kind of mixing. And again, why we want mixing of cover crop? Because to capture maximum sunlight. So we can have lot of biomass. Look at the blend of ten cover crops. And this is the ratio. Somebody was asking how much? Look at here. Sun ham, five pounds. Cowpea, 15 pounds. Austin, 35 pounds. Palm millet, five pounds. Sunflower, one pound. Radish, two pounds. So we don't want so much. We want such a way that we can maintain overall growth and the ground coverage. This is 12 species. Little bit in South Dakota. Look at that field. 12 different types of species. So if you have this kind of cover crop, how you are going to grow weed? Think about that. So as I mentioned, weed you cannot take right away, but it will take some time to take it out. Out of competition, resource, suppression, and chemical. They'll release these plants, release chemicals. And that suppress the germination of weed seed. So this is some of the examples what we have. What pH? What pH? Normally around 5.5 to 7.5 standard range. So we did some study on that cover crop, that how much bile was we can get. So look at that. This is the experiment we have. No till without any cover crop. And no till with first system of cover crop. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8 cover crop beaks. And we applied 42 pounds of seed per acre. We got 7.4 tons of dry residues, dry per acre. So that's what I said. You go up every 4, 5 years, you don't have to go every year. So if you have 7 tons of residue on your ground, I mean how weed is going to grow? It will be covering the field. Dry one. And if you have fresh one, you'll have 20 tons. And look at the second one, which we use 44 pounds, 9 different types of cover crop, but it didn't produce that much. That means, again, mixing a lot of cover crops will not guarantee you to produce a lot of biomass. So you have to think about the mixing, suitable mixing, and the right combination. The 6 way mix, we use this one, 117 pounds of seed, but it didn't produce that much. It produced 5.3 tons. But think about the cost of that seed. 117 pounds. We don't want that kind of cover crop to be applied to a field very expensive. We don't want that. The last one, 8 year mix, 82 pounds. It produced 417 tons. So that gives you an idea that I have to go with this one or this one. I don't need to apply 100 pounds and spend hundreds of dollars for growing cover crop only. So that gives an idea, an economic idea, which one would be good to use as a cover crop. And you can roll the cover crop with the cram part or just plant it. And then you can plant right away within the cover crop. It doesn't create any problem. I mean, if you use this kind of plant it. And when you roll the cover crop, especially rye, and before you grow soybean, look at the mulch, the good mulch we have, that is rye. And then we grow soybean, look at the height and the yield of soybean. Rye is another cover crop which suppresses weeds like a thick mulch. And rye has a lot of lignus cellulose material. It doesn't decompose fast. So if you want mulch, you roll it when they started to make the flower and all that, that time you kill them or roll it over. So it will make a nice good mulch for a longer time. And before soybean is perfect. So don't grow rye before you plant corn. Then you have to kill rye early enough otherwise it will affect your corn. Look at reddish. I mentioned you earlier. Look at the size of the reddish. That's what you need. 30 inches deep. And this radish, I got and put it in the lab and I tried to see how long it takes to grow the fungus. Within 48 hours, look at this. These are fungus. These are not root. Anything grows pure white, cotton white. That is fungus. And roots are always little bit brownish. So within 48 hours, just look at that how they grow. And the clothes of picture, look at that. Because these fungus, they are looking for sugar. They want to survive. They need food. That's how they grow. So we need a crop which can penetrate deep, remove complexion, provide a lot of sugar to other plants and also release some chemicals. You know that if you grow radish and when they die during the winter, you'll get smell of natural gas leakage. Yeah. In western Illinois, I got the news from Chicago Tribune that one of the... Don't take it otherwise, one of the ladies, she filed a lawsuit against a farmer. That guy was growing well seeded radish, few hundred acres and during the winter time, he died and smells when the rot started to rot. So she thought this guy is doing something wrong. A case was filed because of smell. But that smell is nothing. It's a natural pesticide called isogrucosynate. And that kills a lot of your disease-causing organism. And it also replaces methyl bromide. It's perfect to use as a substitute. And since I talked about biology, look at that biology. We have a big organic grant for three years, UHDF 100. And we showed yesterday some of the results. We use paste abundance in no-till, city means conventional tillage, no-till, entity means no-till. So we use multiple cover crop in both systems. In conventional till system, in no-till system. A little bit more paste in no-till system because we just started one year experiment. A little bit more. But if you look at the slide to the left and to the right, you will find the predator abundance in no-till system which covered a lot of predators. So you need that so you can kill the other bad organism or disease-causing organism or insects. So that already started to show the biology of the soil changes by the cover crop. Yes. Oh, I mean paste means those are disease-causing organisms, mostly. And predator means it has all kinds of organisms. Some of them may be disease-causing, some may be disease suppression. But although little, they are not significant, paste. But look at the, I mean the diversity of predator in the no-till with cover crop is more. The undisturbed and laurels are different cover crop material. And this one, the same result, I'm result from our one of our project. In conventional till and no-till with cover crop, the bacteria and fungus distribution, look at the bacteria, fungus, ants and other components. How diversified? No-till has more bacteria. And if you look at the slide on your right, that shows the biocontrol, that means how much activity this bacteria can do. And we have this experiment at three different locations in Ohio, totally organic, compared with no-till, conventional till, with and without cover crop. In python, we don't have that much. But if you look at total, total bacteria is one of the highest in python, one of the highest worst-selling that the farmers still for 12 years, 12 or 14 years of all certified organic. And the last one is Bolling Green, that is Alan's research organic research plots that has one of the highest activity. So you can see how disease suppression activity improved over time in different certified organic experiment with and without cover crop. And this one same result from the experiment again, look at the Shannon diversity index, that means the diversification of organism in soil. The python has the highest number of different types not the total number, different types of organism, diversification and then worst-selling and then Bolling Green. And we thought, because python in the soil is a little bit warmer maybe that has some diversification effect from the temperature. Yes. Can you clarify this is an organic farm that's no-till or a conventional farm that was transitioned to organic from the world? In python, we have transitional organic system based on no-till and conventional till with and without cover crop. And worst-selling same thing that farmer has conventional till and then he started no-till with and without cover crop as a transitional part. And Bolling Green we have 12, 14 years of 12 years of certified organic with no-till and also conventional till with and without cover crop at Hartzell farm, at Hartzell farm. So that's why but again these are little bit cold area so we measure this in July so temperature is little bit effect on this one python in south. Yes. We deal it we did broadcast, we deal it so if you do broadcast you will get 60-70% germination because birds will feed them and also insects and all this but if you deal them that's the best one. And always set your dream according to the size of the larger seed. Okay? So if the seed hole is the larger one or the small one will automatically go and when the large seed will germinate the small one will be automatically coming you don't have to think about that This is in your field role? Yeah. So look at also richness of organism look at that West Salam that farmers have 14 years of organic farming he has more richness or diversity of organism. But this experiment we started last year so it will go for two more years. How far I mean? Oh I have to log, okay because of the year we have to give it a little bit more time. So this is R2M again look at that that node will have more R2M and python side has more R2M how the biology changes and also the R2B all these insects again we have this slide already okay so we talked about biology now we talk about organic matter again this experiment no deal with cover crop different types of mix look at that this is only no deal the red one all other are mixed so how organic matter improve at different depth of soil up to 12 inch depth of soil how the organic matter has increased over time this is active organic matter also how it will increase this is carbon sequestration index how carbon is accumulating compared to no deal only not it is good but when you react cover crop look at the result the total nitrogen content that no deal no deal cover crop group number 2 is the best to accumulate nitrogen right the mixes it has 6, 8, 5 and 9 and this is phosphorous adsorption and release how phosphorous is expensive and it will be expensive you see all the phosphorous adorption is more or less same but when they release no deal with cover crop has more release of phosphorous for your plants those are coming from organic source not from fertilizer and look at this the loss of nitrogen and phosphorous how they can be controlled by cover crop right spales and wheat so I have to just pass through look at how phosphorous this is the CEC this is the soil moisture look at that no deal the red one has less moisture compared to the cover crop cover crop has more moisture august 2nd 2012 because of mars in this way look at the temperature no deal or plow 170 degrees temperature when you have cover crop you have 87 to 80 degrees so that is one of the cause loss of temperature and then infiltration so if you use cover crop it enhance the drainage you see the porosity how they improve look at the structural stability and this is fungus the white things are fungus they try to bounce on into good aggregates this is how root of cover crop bind soil particles into good aggregates and this is Bill Richard farm he was the energy chief you know that and he has control traffic this is this these paths are like a concrete wheel goes again and again and he goes look at that how this cover crop really penetrate this compaction and crack it and how deep it can go look at the left right and the crop the same experiment we have no deal with different mixes of cover crop so control one is no deal only and the last one didn't perform that good but look at mix 1, 2, 3, 4 they increase crop yield compared to no deal only so I am almost done so we found that if you go cover crop is good but if you go multiple cover crop every 5 or 4 years it's really really good to really enrich your soil and to get more enrichment we found zeolite is a natural compound abundant in United States and that is the real good material to hold nitrogen and phosphorus in soil so you can maximize the nutrient absorption minimize the nitrogen input and this is in New Mexico we have lot of mines over there and look at that how they absorb this nitrogen and phosphorus especially for organic system if you had 100 pounds with your compost that will give you tremendous effect so you can cut down the compost or manure application and this is the recent study we presented look at that if you apply zeolite and you increase the absorption of ammonium so ammonium will not have chance to form nitrate if you have nitrate it will leach out from your soil but it holds in the soil and look at that if you apply zeolite you don't have nitrates higher level of zeolite takes most of the ammonium so there is no chance to form nitrate so this is certified by organic system we are using that and phosphorus also phosphorus increase absorption increase zeolite so in organic system little bit of soil amendments really really good to enhance your nutrient cost when did you apply that? if you apply manure or compost again once in every 3, 4, 5 years you don't have to apply every year so rules this is the important one rules for cover crop culture what first thing you have to think that what kind of cover crop I am going to use for what is it for honey or is it for biomass is it for nitrogen needs for what and then crop production what kind of crop you have and when you wanted to grow there and also plant type and architecture that means is it a broad leaf broad leaf or narrow leaf is it grass or legal so that is important and then carbon-nitrogen ratio is the biomass you want carbon-nitrogen ratio little bit in the middle 30 is to 1 you don't want 80 is to 1 there will be no nitrogen but if you have 10 is to 1 or 80 is to 1 you will have lot of nitrogen you don't want that you will balance so look at that chart this chart gives you an idea how to select cover crop what kind of mix that cool season warm season, broad leaf, grass legume so it will give you an idea online online or if you need you can email me you can email me so that way I can send you the power point so this is the most important slide on the top so when you mix cover crop the top layer the top layer that should be per millet so then grass or sorghum only 20% the tall one should be 20% in the mix the middle one sunhemp or sunflower this type of middle story should be 20% maximum so and the lower level that means cowpea winter pea, clover veg radish all this would be 50-60% because if you have tall cover crop most of the field is covered with tall cover crop then the lower or smaller height cover crop will not get the light so always mix that is the way that tall cover crop should be only 20% so light can go into the middle that should be 20% so it will allow the light to go to the bottom level so most of the cover crop should be shorter at the close to the ground or 2 feet or 3 feet and 4-5 feet you should have middle that should be 20% and top 6-7 feet tall that should be 20% so that is the way you mix it up to maximize the light capturing so conclusion and done so cover crop especially cocktail impacted soil health is positive impact and that impact is more pronounced on no tip than conventional tip and soil biological properties more responsive to cover crop cocktail than chemical and physical and cover crop improves the structure and the functional complexity of the food way and the last one is cover crop enhanced biocontrol and soil health improvement doesn't mean that you are going to get bumper yield it will take time so first soil health will improve then your crop will improve so crop will not improve when soil is building up and the last one for organic production or natural it is important always start with a cover crop or a cocktail to control weeds maintain organic matter and improve coffee so never start any good organic thing without a cover crop start with a cocktail suppress all the weeds take out the weeds put lot of organic matter then your no tip or organic system will be really really really good I am sorry for all this problem