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  • Ethan Stuckey

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    November 12, 2020 at 4:54 pm
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    I did try crimping a little bit and had a negative experience. I found Rapeseed and Hairy vetch particularly hard to terminate, even when done at flowering, perhaps more weight was needed. My early experiences no-tilling vegetables were in very low residue environments, and those successes led me down this path. I find the higher biomass crops tie up a lot of N that doesn’t cycle in an 80 day period. For example in 2018 I no tilled sweet corn into rye stubble after it was made for forage and with only 50# of additional N produced a successful crop. In 2020 in high biomass covers (rye 70%, rapeseed 10%, vetch 20%) 150# of additional N didn’t even seem to be enough. Obviously rainfall was a component in that but I find this backpedaling discouraging. Our typical NUE is .6# of N per bushel. Mowing is something that does interest me, which would possibly recreate an environment that would help residue cycle quicker, is that a correct assumption?