Cover Crop Strategies Podcast

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, listen to a conversation with Etienne Sutton, a PhD candidate at University of Michigan studying in the Soil & Agroecosystems Lab. She talks about her research on what factors affect cover crop biomass levels and how to improve cover crop performance overall.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, listen to a conversation with grower and cover crop seeding professional, Mike Unruh, as he talks about three different ways to seed cover crops and explains why he disagrees with growers who say cover cropping in colder climates like Minnesota is too difficult.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, listen to a conversation with cover crop expert Steve Groff, who farms in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Steve talks about how he first came up with the idea to grow his Winter King Hairy Vetch — a particularly winter-hardy variety of cover crop that is able to survive repetitive freeze-thaw cycles.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, listen to a conversation with Rory McDonnell, associate professor at Oregon State University, as he discusses his innovative research on combating slugs and snails in cover cropped fields using bread dough.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to a compilation of audio clips from the 3 most popular episodes of the podcast released in 2023 featuring best practices for aerial seeding cover crops, tips for grazing cover crops, how to use a manure dragline to terminate cover crops and more.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, listen to a conversation with Ben West, executive director of Farmers for Soil Health, and Ryan Heiniger, a 4th generation farmer and executive director of Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC), as they chat about all the details of the Farmers for Soil Health program and what cover croppers need to know about it.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Marisol Berti, Endowed Professor & Plant Sciences Graduate Program Coordinator at North Dakota State University, discusses her multi-year research on nitrogen and cover crops and attempts to answer the question — can we count the nitrogen credits of cover crops for the following cash crop?

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to a presentation from the Soil Management Summit in Alexandria, Minn., that features Anna Cates, state soil health specialist at the University of Minnesota Extension, and Minnesota no-tiller Tom Pyfferoen, as they discuss how cover crops can help combat drought and what Tom has learned from his on-farm cover crop trials.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Marshall County, Iowa no-tiller Wade Dooley shares what he learned from his informal trial of seeding a rye cover crop every month of the year. As a 6th generation farmer, Dooley also shares why he believes communication is the most important thing when transitioning a family farm from one generation to the next.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, Morgan Jennings, field crops viability coordinator with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), discusses PFI’s cover crop cost share program as well as her cover crop research on grazing corn residue in the spring.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to Rob Myers, director of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, as he discusses 4 alternative cover crops and how to manage each one. Myers talks about buckwheat, millet, canola and sunflowers.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE® from Sound Agriculture, listen to Gary Zimmer giving a presentation at his farm in Spring Green, Wis. Zimmer, who many refer to as the “father of biological farming,” talks about his farmer origin story and why rye is so important in keeping his soil covered.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, a panel of 3 farmers discuss how they use cover crops with their varying tillage practices. Jim Stute of East Troy, Wis.; Tim Recker of Arlington, Iowa; and Jacob Bolson of Hubbard, Iowa, talk about their own trial and error periods of adopting cover crops and what they’ve learned through the process.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, listen to a presentation from the 2022 National Cover Crop Summit featuring South Dakota father-and-son farmer duo Barry and Eli Little. They explain how their 2,500 acres of cropland and pastureland have improved by incorporating covers and ruminant animals on every acre, as well as how they use rotational grazing with their cattle and the economic benefits they’ve enjoyed from implementing covers and livestock.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Oliver Peoples, president and CEO of Metabolix Yield 10 Bioscience company, discusses camelina, its benefits as a cool-season cover crop and potential incentives for farmers to grow camelina.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, listen to a popular presentation from a previous National Cover Crop Summit featuring Dean Sponheim. Sponheim, a fourth-generation farmer from Osage, Iowa, who has been aerial seeding cover crops since 2012, discusses how to handle common aerial seeding challenges, recommended rate of establishment for aerial seeding, which species of cover crops do best when aerial seeded and much more.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Tyler Williams and Zach Larson, sustainable systems agronomists with Bayer, share details on a program called ForGround, which aims to assist and provide support to farmers who are adopting or expanding regenerative agriculture practices. Williams and Larson also chat about what factors they consider when providing advice to farmers in a variety of different regions.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by Go Seed, Charlie Morrey, a multimedia agricultural journalist with Agriland in Dublin, Ireland, talks about Irish regenerative farming practices, some of the biggest struggles that farmers in Ireland and other parts of Europe face and how U.S. farmers can learn from them. Charlie also talks about her experience growing up on an arable farm on the Isle of Man.

In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by the National Strip-Tillage Conference, Aries Haygood of Vidalia, Ga., talks about his unconventional path into the world of agriculture and how he first started learning about cover crops. Haygood also talks about what equipment works best for him as a grower of Georgia’s famous Vidalia Onions, which are known to have a very sweet flavor due to the low amount of sulfur in the soil in that part of Georgia.

While using herbicides to terminate cover crops is a common practice for many growers, some are looking for mechanical methods instead. In this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by Montag Manufacturing, Scott Healy of Hartford, S.D., joins us for a discussion about his experience using a manure dragline to terminate cover crops. Healy also discusses the difference between oats and cereal rye as a cover crop on his farm, chopping corn silage and much more.