what is cover crop in agriculture

What is a Cover Crop?

• Grasses. Grasses are broad leaves and have a fibrous root system. ...
• Legumes. Legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen, prevent soil erosion and add organic matters to the soil. ...
• Brassicas. Brassicas are good biomass production and known for rapid foliage growth. ...
• Non-legume Broadleaves. ...
• Advantages of Cover Crops. ...
• Disadvantage of Cover Crops. ...

Full Answer

Why do farmers grow cover crops?

are:

• Corn. It is the most widely produced feed grain in the United States, the majority of which goes towards feeding livestock. …
• Cotton. …
• Fruit. …
• Tree Nuts. …
• Rice. …
• Soybean and Oil Crops. …
• Sugar and Sweeteners. …
• Vegetables.

What are the Best Cover crops?

Winter Cover Crops

• rye
• oats
• cereal grains like winter wheat
• garden peas
• radishes

What is the main purpose of a cover crop?

Some of the primary benefits from cover crops include:

1. Soil quality improvements —Soil tilth is improved whenever a plant establishes roots and grows into compacted areas. Water infiltration is improved as well. ...
2. Erosion control —Cover crops reduce wind and water erosion on all types of soils. ...
3. Fertility improvements —Legumes can add substantial amounts of available nitrogen to the soil. ...

More items...

What are the benefits of a cover crop?

Summary observations

• An incentive is needed to adopt a practice.
• Current evidence is unclear whether cover crops improve return or lower risk for subsequent crops.
• A subsidy will thus be needed to encourage farmers to plant cover crops.
• The subsidy will need to cover practice cost and provide a practice incentive.

More items...

What is a cover crop examples?

Examples of cover crops include mustard (pictured), alfalfa, rye, clovers, buckwheat, cowpeas, radish, vetch, Sudan grass, Austrian winter peas, and more.

What are 3 benefits of cover crops?

Benefits of Cover CropsReduce the need for herbicides and other pesticides.Improve yields by enhancing soil health.Prevent soil erosion.Conserve soil moisture.Protect water quality.Help safeguard personal health.

What is the meaning of cover cropping?

A cover crop is defined as a close-growing crop that provides soil protection, seeding protection, and soil improvement between periods of normal crop production (Soil Science Society of America, 2008).

What are four benefits of cover crops?

Cover crops help prevent soil erosion, regulate moisture, attract pollinators, assist in weed and pest management, serve as mulch and the source of green manure and organic matter, and are used for grazing or forage.

What are the disadvantages of cover crops?

Table 1. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Cover Crops.AdvantagesDisadvantagesReduce soil erosion, increase residue coverPlanted when time and labor is limitedIncreased water infiltrationAddition costs (planting and killing)5 more rows•May 15, 2017

What are good cover crops?

Cover crops that provide good cover and a dense root system help stabilize soils and combat erosion. Clovers, annual ryegrass, Austrian winter peas, crown vetch, sudangrass, sorghum-sudan hybrids, rapeseed, mustards, and cowpeas are good cover crops for erosion protection.

What are cover crops made of?

Cover crops are typically grasses or legumes but may be comprised of other green plants. 2 Most often, a cover crop is grown in the off-season before the field is needed for growing the cash crop.

Where are cover crops used?

Farmers around the world grow cover crops to protect the soil and increase crop yields; it adds fertility to the soil without chemical fertilizers. It can be left on the surface as mulch or tilled while it is still green into the soil, becoming green manure. Farmers have used this technique for centuries.

What are cover crops in India?

Popular options for cover crops are buckwheat, clover, rye, field peas & sudangrass. Cover crops are mostly used in large fields or in-ground gardens rather than raised beds.

Do cover crops reduce fertilizer?

As a “trap crop”, a cover crop will store nutrients from manure, mineralized organic nitrogen or underutilized fertilizer until the following years' crop can utilize them, reducing nutrient runoff and leaching.

How do cover crops improve soil?

Cover crops build soil carbon and soil organic matter Like all plants, cover crops use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make carbon-based molecules. This process causes a buildup of carbon in the soil.

How do you plant cover crops?

Planting Your Cover Crop Scatter GardenPrepare the seeds. Before opening the canister, shake it thoroughly to evenly mix the seeds with the rice hulls. ... Sow. Scatter the seeds, giving them enough space so that they do not germinate in crowded clumps which will only stunt the growth of the plants. ... Rake. ... Water. ... Success.

How good are cover crops?

Cover crops form a living mulch in gardens because they grow thickly among each other. They help reduce soil splash and erosion, and keep weeds in check. Cover crops are “green manures” when a gardener turns them into the soil to provide organic matter and nutrients.

How do cover crops reduce soil erosion?

Cover Crops and Erosion Cover crops can successfully decrease, or almost completely eliminate, soil loss from various production systems. They do this by: Providing coverage of the soil surface and protecting it from rain and wind. Rooting into the soil profile and improving soil structure.

What is the advantages of fixing nitrogen with cover crop?

Cover crops and green manures can be annual, biennial, or perennial herbaceous plants grown in a pure or mixed stand during all or part of the year. In addition to providing ground cover and, in the case of a legume, fixing nitrogen, they also help suppress weeds and reduce insect pests and diseases.

What are benefits of crop rotation?

A crop rotation can help to manage your soil and fertility, reduce erosion, improve your soil's health, and increase nutrients available for crops.

What is cover crop?

A cover crop is a crop you grow for the soil, instead of for your plate. The practice of growing specific crops just for fertilizing and building the soil dates back to the Roman Empire. Cover crops add organic matter to the soil, and add nitrogen in a slow-release way that plants can handle, leading to less nitrogen volatilization (read: waste!). Cover crops can also act as mulches if managed correctly, improve soil physical properties in just one growing season, and attract beneficial insects and pollinators to your garden. They are also beautiful!

What to use for cover cropping?

When cover cropping for long periods of time, combine a small grain (think cereal ingredients like oats, barley, rye) and a legume (nitrogen-fixing plant like peas or vetch) for best results.

What is the book "Building Soil for Better Crops" about?

A book often used is Building Soil for Better Crops by Fred Magdoff and Harold Van Es. The book covers several topics for building soil, including composting, crop rotations, and reduced tillage, but the chapter on cover cropping is accessible and succinct, and provides great suggestions of cover crop species.

How to get maximum benefit from cover crops?

The trick to getting the maximum benefit of cover crops is to allow the crop to get as mature as possible without making seeds. When the time comes that you can let it go no further, you kill it, allowing it to provide a layer of mulch on the soil, which feeds the soil food web below as it decomposes.

What is winter rye residue?

Winter rye residue is allelopathic (releasing toxic chemicals as it decomposes) to seeds of certain brassica species. If you are prepping soil for your spring cole crops and are planting from seed, consider a different cereal grain like wheat, instead. In many ways, cover cropping may seem like a practice for the super advanced gardener only ...

How do I kill a cover crop?

There are a variety of methods for killing a cover, but the most popular for home gardeners is mowing, weed eating, or just chopping down with some loppers. However, make sure you’re working with a cover crop that will die from mowing, otherwise you’ll end up with a regenerating cover, which may not be what you’re after.

Can cover crops be planted in one bed?

The alternative is bare soil, and we know what that means: weeds and lost of nutrients and topsoil via erosion and volatilization. Cover crops can be seeded in just one bed, or they can be grown in entire sections of your garden. In short, they go in wherever you have time and space.

What is the cover crop?

Cover crops are an excellent aid in weed management. The cover crops compete with weeds and prevent them from colonizing the crop field. The weeds, unable to obtain sufficient space, nutrients, and light, fail to grow. This is termed as the cover crop smother effect. Even after death, the cover crops form a mulch layer on the surface of the soil that checks the growth of weeds on such soil.

Why are cover crops used?

Some cover crops are used as trap crops in order to eliminate pests from a crop field. Such crops are often planted together with the crop of commercial importance in a separate area or within rows of the cash crop itself. The cover crops that are planted usually provide a more favorable habitat for the pests who collect in the cover crop region in greater numbers. The farmers treat the cover crop areas with pesticides or physically mow down the area to eliminate the burden of pests from the crop field. Thus, the crops of commercial importance remain least affected by pest attacks.

How do cover crops help the soil?

The organic content of the soil acts as a natural physical barrier between the soil surface and rainfall, allowing the raindrops to gradually and steadily trickle down the soil profile. Also, the network of roots of the cover crop creates soil pores that allows for the rainwater to enter deep into the soil instead of being drained off the field as surface runoff. Thus cover crops help in water conservation and minimize surface run-offs to nearby water bodies. In turn, they minimize the pollution of nearby water bodies by such run-offs. The increased water infiltration of the soil improves the water storage potential of the soil and also replenishes the underground aquifers. Cover crops also act as a barrier in preventing the evaporation of moisture from the soil and thus help to conserve soil moisture. In some regions, however, the cover crops do not help in water conservation but actually, draw down the soil water supply. This happens in the case of cover crops grown in temperate regions during the spring season.

Why are cover crops important?

One of the most important purposes of cover crops is its ability to reduce soil erosion. The roots of the crop plants help anchor the soil in place and prevent soil run-off by rainfall. The root network of the plant also increases soil porosity and provides a suitable habitat for soil macrofauna to live in. The macrofauna is responsible for enriching the soil for plant growth.

How does cover cropping affect soil quality?

The cultivation of cover crop every crop cycle gradually changes the quality of the soil by increasing the levels of soil organic matter due to the input of cover crop biomass over time. The increase in organic soil matter improves the structure of the soil as well the capacity of the soil to hold nutrients and water. Keeping in mind the rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide triggering global warming, increased soil organic matter can also enhance carbon sequestration, a process that involves carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

How do cover crops help the soil?

Roots of cover crops hold the soil in place protecting soil from runoff with wind or water. They cover the soil from the impact of heavy rainfall and runoff. Certain cover crops break the soil compaction by reducing a need of mechanical tillage. Zero tillage farms, cover crops provide non-mechanical soil repairing and maintain the ideal soil structure.

Why are grasses good for cover crops?

Grasses are broad leaves and have a fibrous root system. It is a good choice of cover crop, if there is a need to scavenge nutrients, especially grasses scavenging nitrogen left-overs from the previous crop. Grasses have a higher carbon percentage than legumes. Grasses produce large amounts of residue and add organic matter to the soil. Because the residue of grasses are not easily breakdown it helps to control weed growth and increase essential soil organisms by giving habitats for them.

Why are legumes important to the soil?

Legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen, prevent soil erosion and add organic matters to the soil. Normally legumes are higher in nitrogen and lower in carbon. Faster breakdown of residue in the soil than grasses. So it does not have the ability of weed control. Legumes are also used for composting and green manure production due to higher nitrogen amount and ability of faster breakdown.

How do non-legumes broadleaves help the soil?

Non legume broadleaves help to prevent soil erosion and reduce moisture loss from the soil by covering the soil from their leaves. They can not fix nitrogen in the air but they can absorb more from the soil.

What is cover crop?

Planting cover crops is a common and rewarding farming practice that was applied as far back as in the Roman Empire. Since then, the method has been widely used in agriculture, bringing a lot of good. Farmers reap a plethora of cover crop benefits that fit versatile objectives, both in the short-term and long-term perspective.

How do cover crops help?

Cover crops help prevent soil erosion, regulate moisture, attract pollinators, assist in weed and pest management, serve as mulch and the source of green manure and organic matter, and are used for grazing or forage. Depending on the types of cover crops, they add or uptake nitrogen.

Why do cover crops help the soil?

Soil Health And Fertility. Roots of cover crops help prevent erosion from water and wind. Some species can adjust nutrients to more ingestible forms for other cultures. Planting cover crops between rows, farmers get mulch as part of integrated weed management.

What is the purpose of legumes?

Their vigorous taproot system aids in tacking undesired undersurface compaction when plants grow big. Also, the bigger the plant is, the more nitrogen it can fix.

Why are my seeds establishing poorly in summer?

Nevertheless, seeds may establish poorly in summer due to droughts and heat, induce nitrogen deficiency (unless these are legumes), require extra residue management, or longer time to decompose than expected, thus postponing the time for planting fall primary species.

Why do cover crops grow in summer?

This practice is applied to defeat weeds, erosion, and adjust the earth for the next crop. Summer or spring cover crops also serve as fodder for livestock . They prevent soil from quick drying with their roots compared to bare soils under the sunrays.

Why are cover crops important for cattle?

Furthermore, grazing cover crops enable farmers to create a natural outdoor environment for breeding , which is important in organic agriculture. Grazing also provides animal manure on pastures, saves expenses on livestock fodder, and facilitates removal before primary culture planting. This practice is especially rewarding in late fall, winter, and early spring due to a lack of fresh and juicy vegetation cover.

What is a Cover Crop?

Cover crops do not bring additional profit on their own. Their cultivation is not aimed at increasing profits, but for the long-term prospect of improving the condition of the soil. It is an investment in agricultural management that can be unprofitable in the first year of planting or bring a net profit in a few years.

Cover Crop Benefits

There are several advantages to growing cover crops. Most of these benefits relate to improved soil quality, but that’s not all.

Cover Crops Types

One of the main benefits of growing legumes as a cover crop is nitrogen fixation. This way, you can reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers. However, legumes don’t do an excellent job of keeping nitrogen back from your commercial crops.

Cover Crop Selection and Management

Before planting cover crops, consider what goals you are pursuing. Perhaps the soil on your farm needs nitrogen, or organic matter needs to be increased. Reducing erosion or controlling soil moisture may be your goal.

Final thoughts

Cover crops can help manage a variety of soil problems. In addition, it can help reduce the negative impact on the environment due to the ability of the cover plants to fix nitrogen. The choice of the plants depends on the location and needs of your farm. You don’t have to limit yourself to growing legumes or non-legumes cover crops.

What is the primary use of cover crops?

Soil fertility management. Main article: Green manure. One of the primary uses of cover crops is to increase soil fertility. These types of cover crops are referred to as " green manure .". They are used to manage a range of soil macronutrients and micronutrients.

Why do we use cover crops?

In agroecosystems where water for crop production is in short supply, cover crops can be used as a mulch to conserve water by shading and cooling the soil surface. This reduces evaporation of soil moisture. In other situations farmers try to dry the soil out as quickly as possible going into the planting season.

How do cover crops help the agroecosystem?

Cover crops reduce soil loss by improving soil structure and increasing infiltration, protecting the soil surface, scattering raindrop energy and reducing the velocity of the movement of water over the soil surface. Dense cover crop stands physically slow down the velocity of rainfall before it contacts the soil surface, preventing soil splashing and erosive surface runoff. Additionally, vast cover crop root networks help anchor the soil in place and increase soil porosity, creating suitable habitat networks for soil macrofauna. It keeps the enrichment of the soil good for the next few years.

How does rye affect cover crop production?

In a recent study released by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists examined how rye seeding rates and planting patterns affected cover crop production. The results show that planting more pounds per acre of rye increased the cover crop's production as well as decreased the amount of weeds.

How does a cover crop stand work?

Thick cover crop stands often compete well with weeds during the cover crop growth period, and can prevent most germinated weed seeds from completing their life cycle and reproducing. If the cover crop is flattened down on the soil surface rather than incorporated into the soil as a green manure after its growth is terminated, it can form a nearly impenetrable mat. This drastically reduces light transmittance to weed seeds, which in many cases reduces weed seed germination rates. Furthermore, even when weed seeds germinate, they often run out of stored energy for growth before building the necessary structural capacity to break through the cover crop mulch layer. This is often termed the cover crop smother effect.

What are some examples of trap crops?

Another example of trap crops are nematode-resistant white mustard ( Sinapis alba) and radish ( Raphanus sativus). They can be grown after a main (cereal) crop and trap nematodes, for example the beet cyst nematode and Columbian root knot nematode. When grown, nematodes hatch and are attracted to the roots.

How do cover crops help the environment?

By reducing soil erosion, cover crops often also reduce both the rate and quantity of water that drains off the field, which would normally pose environmental risks to waterways and ecosystems downstream. Cover crop biomass acts as a physical barrier between rainfall and the soil surface, allowing raindrops to steadily trickle down through the soil profile. Also, as stated above, cover crop root growth results in the formation of soil pores, which in addition to enhancing soil macrofauna habitat provides pathways for water to filter through the soil profile rather than draining off the field as surface flow. With increased water infiltration, the potential for soil water storage and the recharging of aquifers can be improved.

Prioritize soil health to restore profitability and open new doors

Lance Klessig, certified crop adviser and farmer, teaches the five soil health principles and how they play out in a whole-farm setting.

How to keep nitrogen in the soil where it belongs

Cover crops can be effective in helping to reduce nitrate concentration in a year following a drought.

No-till and cover crops build soil and restore moisture

The Emmonses' cover crops and no-till management improve the soil organic matter, water infiltration, and reduce input costs.

Seeder project to increase cover crop adoption and water quality benefits

Central Iowa seeder project to apply cover crop seed for farmers and landowners. The project is modeled after a similar program in the state of Kansas.

Adopting no-till and cover crops builds soil organic matter and shaves costs

One farmer's on-farm research showed that cover crops could help reduce chemical applications, cut nitrogen inputs, and eliminate the cost of cleaning buildups of eroded soil from waterways.

Cover crop lessons from four Midwest farmers

At the Soil Management Summit in Mankato, Minnesota, farmers shared their mistakes and successes planting cover crops on their farms.

No-till and cover crop systems cut costs and save soil

No-till and cover crop systems are proving their worth, particularly via cost savings.

Grasses

See more on cultivateadream.com

Legumes

Brassicas

non-legume Broadleaves

Disadvantage of Cover Crops