Cover crops are off-season crops that are grown between the harvest and the planting season of your cash crop. They offer many benefits, including preventing soil erosion, managing soil fertility, managing soil quality and water retention, and suppressing weeds, pests and diseases in your fields. They can also create forage for your livestock. If you’re leery of investing time and finances into cover crops, since they may not yield returns right away, take a closer look at their benefits.
Managing Weeds
Weeds can take over your fields, reduce your yield, and lessen the quality of your forage. A diminished forage can also reduce the feed intake of your cattle, since weeds can oftentimes be spikey, hairy, bitter and toxic to your animals.
During the growth period of a cover crop a thick crop can prevent a majority of germinated weed seeds from reaching maturity and reproducing by depriving the seeds of space, light and soil nutrients.
Once your cover crop has reached maturity, if you terminate it by flattening it to the surface of your fields—instead of incorporating it into the soil as “green manure”—the crop essentially forms a dense mat that reduces the amount of sun that weed seeds receive, and lessens the chance that they will germinate.
If the seeds are able to germinate they typically exhaust their stored energy before they’re able to establish a structure that’s substantial enough to pierce through the thick layer of cover crop. In essence, the crop mat smothers the weeds and makes it almost impossible for them to penetrate. Even after the cover crop dies it continues to suppress weeds by forming a kind of mulch layer.
Managing Disease
Cover crops can break cycles of disease and reduce bacterial and fungal diseases. For example, mustard crops are known to quell fungal diseases by releasing toxic chemicals during the decomposition process.
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