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Rollin'
in my sweet baby's rye: Planting
soybeans no-till into rye using a homemade front mounted
roller. |
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September 12, 2003: Researchers at The Rodale
Institute have been experimenting with using rye as a cover
crop for organic soybeans for a number of years now. One of
the treatments we were especially pleased with was no-till
planting soybeans into a rolled-down rye cover crop. The idea
is to grow a good thick stand of rye planted in October; then
once the rye has reached the heading-out stage, you roll over
it to mechanically kill it and plant soybeans directly into
the weed-suppressing mulch.
As with any mechanical killing of a cover crop, growth stage
is very important. In order to effectively kill the rye you
should wait until it is fully heading out, which is usually
sometime in mid May to early June for us in Pennsylvania.
We now use a front-mounted roller for our mechanical killing,
but we have used other pieces of equipment in the past such
as cornstalk choppers and culti-packers. The front-mounted
roller is designed with unsharpened blades welded to a hollow
cylinder drum that can be filled with water for additional
weight. (More details on this roller will be coming in the
near future, as will details of our less than successful experiences
with hairy vetch as a weed-suppressing cover crop.)
In order to be able to plant into the thick rye residue you
need to use a planter with a double disc opener. We tried
for a couple of years with a planter rigged with a shoe opener,
but this dragged the cover crop residue and resulted in poor
seed placement. The Monosem air-planter that we use actually
has a series of devices to allow for proper seed placement.
First rolling trash openers (similar to the discs on a rotary
hoe) pull some of the rye away to allow for a bubble coulter
to slice into the soil. Next a double disc opener spreads
the soil and a seed is dropped in and pushed firmly into place
with a plastic device.
One of the tricks we have learned is that you should plan
ahead and try to plant your rye cover crop perpendicular to
the direction you want to plant your soybeans. This helps
to completely cover the ground when you roll the following
spring. If you plant your cover crop in the same direction
as the soybeans, you are liable to have 7” gaps in your
rye mulch mat once it is rolled, allowing light to penetrate
and consequently more weeds to break through.
Matthew Ryan has worked at many levels of research and
farmer outreach at The Institute, and co-designed TRI's multi-factor
cover crop and reduced tillage trials. Ryan also designed
the Institute's compost tea verification study funded by USDA-SARE.
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