We had some prevent planting acres that we seeded to an oat and tillage radish cover crop last summer. In a previous post, we debated on what we should do with the cover crop acres. On one section we ran it over with a soil finisher and stopped because it was plugging up and making piles of oat straw everywhere. Then we disced it to chop up the oat straw, then we soil finished it again to level it out. What a fiasco. We probably did more damage to the soil than anything.

We needed an alternative. With the help of fellow PFI members and staff, we chose two options: vertically till and no-till corn right into the cover. I have really wanted to plant no-till corn into a cover crop and see how it works on our types of soils, so I am excited to scout this field and see what the stand counts are.

Here’s a few pics from the tractor can, planting corn right into oat straw.