By Steve Whittington and Brook Wilke
Wheat harvest in Michigan is complete, which provides an excellent window of opportunity to add cover crops to your cropping system. Mid-summer is the perfect time to get into the fields and add some diversity to your post-wheat harvest regimen. This time of the production season is where most fungicide disease applications are complete in other grain crops such as corn and soybean, and producers are working on their wheat fields following harvest by conducting field maintenance and straw harvest. Adding a fall and winter cover crop to your to-do list is an excellent addition to your fields, with numerous benefits.
The following information from Michigan State University Extension hightlights the benefits of this management practice and provides suggestions for incorporating cover crops after wheat into your system.
Fall cover crop benefits
First, let’s highlight some of the benefits of incorporating cover crops into your production following wheat.
Soil health and fertility
Planting a cover crop after wheat is a great way to improve soil health by putting fresh, green beneficial plants into what would otherwise be a weedy or barren field until the next season.
Source : msu.edu