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Planting green over cover crops a practice to consider

An agronomist with the Soil Health Partnership says farmers should consider planting green, or planting over their growing cover crops, as they enter a wet planting season.

Abigail Peterson has been scouting fields in southern Illinois and Missouri. She says the most common practice is planting soybeans on top of cereal rye.

“This helps with moisture control, it can help with weed suppression, it helps with making less tracks into that field and it creates a great seed bed for that plant to start growing.”

Peterson tells Brownfield farmers often begin planting green by force, because they did not get the cover crop terminated in time.

“Once they have that initial go in the field with the planter and get to feel out how it is going to plant, most of them transition to doing that every year.”

She says farmers should be more cautious when planting corn into cover crops because they can take up nitrogen needed for the corn.