Some no-tillers say they don’t plant cover crops because there isn’t enough time, or they don’t want to add extra equipment passes in their fields.

But last fall, Vincennes, Ind., no-tiller Ray McCormick came up with a newfangled solution. He mounted a Gandy Orbit-Air applicator onto his combine and seeded annual ryegrass into freshly harvested cornfields.

For a project that was done on the fly, there were surprisingly few problems, says McCormick, whose experiment has sparked a new wave of interest. The setup shows high potential in some regions of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, where there’s a longer period of time after harvest for cover-crop stand establishment.

“When we pulled out of those fields, the cover crop was done,” McCormick says. “People say they don’t have time to put on cover crops, but if you do it with your combine, you don’t have to run your drill through those fields and chop up your tractor or gauge-wheel tires. It’s a one-pass operation.”

Let’s Get Serious.

McCormick, who no-tills corn and soybeans in southwestern Indiana, says he’s heard other no-tillers toss around the idea of seeding covers during harvest. Last fall, he decided to actually do it.

He called up one company to get an air seeder to mount to his combine, but was told it would take 8 months to take delivery. He then called Gandy, which eventually sold him a used 6-bushel applicator that he could put together and use.

McCormick spent $80 to buy metal that he…