Uriel Menalled

Strategies are needed for no-till management of organic grain crops. Mechanically terminated cover crops can be used for mulch, and this approach has been used successfully for organic no-till soybean. However, tillage is often used to establish the cover crop and for other cash crops in the crop rotation. Developing strategies for no-till planting other cash crops into rolled-crimped cover crop would allow farmers to extend the duration without soil tillage, which could lead to enhanced soil health and resilience to extreme rainfall events. The goal of this experiment was to identify successful cover crop and cash crop combinations for organic no-till production.  The experiment included eight cover crops and eight cash crops. Data collection included cover crop and cash crop biomass, weed biomass, and cash crop yield. Results show good potential for no-till drilling winter wheat into sunn hemp and buckwheat, no-till planting dry bean into a mixture of cereal rye and hairy vetch, and no-till planting sweet corn into hairy vetch.