By John Nelson, Extension Educator in Lancaster County
Most cover crops are seeded in Eastern Nebraska after fall corn or soybean harvest. Average first frost dates between the last week of September and first week of October across the region give us an indication of the limited time we have to accumulate fall cover crop biomass in Eastern Nebraska when seeding after fall harvest.
One option to potentially increase fall cover crop biomass growth is to broadcast interseed into standing crops prior to harvest. Nebraska Extension began conducting an on-farm research and demonstration project in 2022, to determine the effectiveness of broadcast interseeding cover crops into standing corn around the R5 corn growth stage. This effort, officially titled the Highboy Cover Crop Interseeding Project (HiCCIP) is funded by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
One of the main goals of this project is to encourage cover crop adoption across the region by demonstrating an effective and time-efficient method to improve the benefits of including cover crops in the typical corn-soybean rotation.
Initial results from a farmer’s field in Gage County are shown in Table 1. The data indicates that interseeded cover crops can accumulate significantly more fall and spring biomass than cover crops drilled after corn harvest.
Nearly all HiCCIP research is conducted in cooperation with local growers, so our team is always looking for more farmers interested in trying this method in one of their fields. We provide up to 200 acres of cover crop seed, as well as application equipment and labor. Preference is given to growers located in the Waverly Wellhead Protection Area; Lower Platte North NRD’s Wahoo Creek & Shell Creek watersheds; Richland/Schuyler Phase III or Bellwood Phase II areas; the Upper Big Blue NRD’s Beaver Creek & Lincoln Creek watersheds; Lower Platte South NRD priority areas; wellhead protection areas and National Water Quality Initiative areas.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Go to http://go.unl.edu/hiccip, or contact John Nelson at jnelson158@unl.edu.