Minnesota Crop News

By M. Samantha Wells, Extension agronomist – Forage/Cropping systems High-quality cover crops in a bed of harvested corn stalks, Goodhue, MN. Photo: Alan Kraus, CRWP. Cover crop adoption across the U.S. is on the rise, but Minnesota adoption has hovered around 2%. While Midwestern farmers understand the importance of soil health, adopting sustainable technologies that offer limited near-term economic returns is challenging. Four southeastern Minnesota farmers, the Cannon River Watershed Partnership (CRWP) and the University of Minnesota are addressing that challenge. They are pairing wide-spaced corn rows with cover crops to test whether both economic and ecological outcomes could be improved. Why wider rows? Row spacings vary between operations, crops, and locations across the U.S., but generally, corn is typically managed in 30-inch rows. For 40 years or more, crop rows have narrowed to maximize sunlight interception and subsequent profitability. As a result, thirty-inch ...

Anna Cates, State soil health specialist; Tom Peters, Extension sugarbeet specialist; Liz Stahl, Extension educator-crops and Jodi DeJong-Hughes, Extension educator-water resources The sugarbeet crop looks outstanding in many areas in Minnesota and North Dakota, and pre-pile harvest is scheduled to begin in mid August 2020. An early harvest provides an excellent opportunity to plant a cover crop in sugarbeet fields. Cover crops can make a big impact in several ways, even if pre-pile harvest acres represent only a small portion of the whole field. First, headlands usually will have compacted soils in serious need of remediation. Headlands are a great location to incorporate a large-rooted brassica like radishes, rapeseed, or turnips to loosen the soil. (Be careful to select a radish variety like Defender, Image, and Colonel which acts as a trap crop, not a host, for sugarbeet cyst nematode.) Second, early harvested strips planted to cover crops act as a windbreak over the wint...