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sandy soil cover crop mix???

D

Dave from MN

Well-known Member
any one care to share a cover crop mix for summer
long growing season to build up real light sandy
soil that has been neglected for years? .08%
Organic matter. Feild will be going to corn next
year, and any cover crop planted this summer will
be lightly tilled in late august-mid september,
covered with 4T/acre chicken litter, then resseded
to a fall cover crop mix to be no tilled into next
spring. This large field will also be going to
NoTill so I am trying to set up the feild for that
also. Biggest thing for the summer and fall seeded
cover crops are under ground biomass with Nitrogen
building, deep rooting to get some decaying matter
in the top 10-16" of soil, and 75-85% winter kill.
 
Legumes are good ground builders, however I would recommend getting your soil sampled, and then speaking with your County Extention Agent reference your plans, and how to maximize soil production.
 
www.geneticseed.com has plenty of choice for summer and fall, forage soybeans and iron and clay peas provide a lot of organic mass and build the soil, good prices and shipping rates.
 
I'll second cow peas. They do well in drought and do okay with lower fertility soils. Make sure you get the inoculate for the peas.

Larry
 
Whew.... Was worried on the .08 deal. ;)

It is June now, do you get rain, otherwise really hard to get a crop to start and grow this time of year in a normal mn sand area. Too dry if you didnt get it planted in April. Especially the tiny seed cover crops.....

Peas would be good, a pea oats mix maybe, the peas will do the N, the oats will add biomass, mixing a legume and grass is often the best to catch one way or the other of soil building and those are both pretty cheap in case it dries up and not much comes of it.

Run it through a drill so it gets good seed-soil contact and down into possible moisture. Broadcast has less of a chance when we are in the hat of summer.

Paul
 
Years ago, yellow sweet clover was a common plow down. Grows several feet tall. Maybe a mix of several suggestions?
 
He's got 3 months or less, a lot of the clovers and alfalfas just won't get very far in that short time. Starting in April might work, but sweet clover likes to overwinter and then really take off, works nice with oats or wheat, THRN plowed down the next spring. Over a hot summer you just don't get much growth now.

Paul
 
If the goal is to increase organic matter then the fastest growing plant will be hybrid sorghum/sudangrass. It will grow super fast and super tall. It deals well with moderately low pH and is also drought tolerant. The only thing it will require is a shot of N every once in a while.

It makes the most tons of organics if it is cut down to a height of 4" after reaching 4' for the first time. Just mow it down with the rotary cutter and apply more N. It'll be back at shoulder height before frost. The problem is going to be dealing with all the residue but then again residue is the only way to increase OM quickly.
 
Dave some thing I have done to get a cover crop that will die out over the winter is to seed spring oats in late summer. There really is nothing that will bind much nitrogen as a fall cover.

When the CRP program was getting a lot of acres in the late 1980s, I seeded down several farms for the land owners.

I worked the ground in mid to late August. Then seeded down oats with grass. The oats would get about a foot tall and then freeze out over the winter. Then the grass would come right through the next spring.

I just used clean feed oats not seed oats. Keeps the cost down and seemed to work well.

As for the rest of your soil building. I have ran into farmed to death fields before. Check the PH to see if you need any lime. I found most had the PH all out of sink too. Also have a soil test for trace elements. Zinc, sulfur, and boron are needed for a good corn crop.
 

Anyone in your area sell weed seed? I've seen them thrive in dry hot sandy conditions when nothing else will grow.
 
We use Sunn Hemp here on our sandy soils in North Florida to build organic material. Grows fast in short season. We use in the short summer cover season between June to August. Doesn't seed itself back. Do a web search and you will see a lot about it even on you tube. Hancock seed is where we get our seed.
 
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