Welcome to Conservation Ag Update, big thanks to Yetter for hopping on board as our sponsor this quarter. We begin this week in Jackson, Wis., where I just paid a visit to No-Till Innovator Ross Bishop. He’s implementing several of the practices we talk about on this program.

There’s a lot going on at Ross’s farm, including this prairie strips project that he’s working on with the Sand County Foundation. We’ll have more on that in the coming days on No-TillFarmer.com, and later in our Video of the Week. 

Ross no-tills all his corn, and plants multi-species cover crop mixes wherever he can. He started planting green in 2012 and never looked back, even after dark as you can see here. 

“In 2012, when we all know was a bad drought here, I planted a 45-acre of annual ryegrass and that grew the next spring. I ended up planting that field around the 18th of May and it was above my knees, probably 2-feet tall. I thought it was going to be a disaster. I split the field in half, soybeans and corn. My yield average that year on the farm was 116. That planted field into cover crop was 178. The beans were 45. My average beans were 33 across the whole farm. I found huge value planting green, and I’ve been doing that ever since 2012.”

We saw Ross planting in the dark earlier. Here he is planting in the snow! He seeded cereal rye (70 pounds per acre) into corn stubble with a 30-foot drill on January 15th after he got back from the No-Till Conference. Ross says it was 18 inches tall when he planted soybeans green into it this spring.  

Ross’ farm is also one of 24 across the Lake Michigan Basin participating in a soil sensor project being led by the Sand County Foundation.

Watch the full Video of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.