David Brandt knows cover crops. The Carroll, Ohio, no-tiller has been using them on his 600-acre farm since 1978 and today has a cover crop seed company to help others improve their soil health and land management practices.

When discussing interseeding — the method of seeding cover crops into a standing cash crop — at the 2019 National No-Tillage Conference, he admitted that it’s not a perfect system. He’s having about a 79% success rate with it on his own operation.

But by pairing the right cover crop species with the right seeding equipment, along with knowing how long residual herbicides are activated in the soil, no-tillers can increase their odds of having success with the practice.  

Consider Herbicides

The biggest mistake Brandt sees no-tillers make with interseeding is not understanding how their herbicide program will affect their cover crops.

The first thing Brandt asks when a grower inquires about interseeding is what his herbicide program is and how long the residual is activated in the soil. Oftentimes, the grower hasn’t thought about it.

GIVE IT TIME. If you don’t see your interseeded cover crop before harvest, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to grow, David Brandt says. In this picture, the cover crop was seeded 2½ weeks before the corn was shelled. While Brandt didn’t see the cover crop when he took the corn…