Full Season Cover - Harvest Timing

 

Connecting Farmers To Soil Health

Hello, Friends.

Today, we will be quickly touching on silage/dry hay/green manure harvest timing of the Full Season Cover.

1.Silage Timing

We are aware that a lot of farms have to book custom silage harvesters in advance so getting the ideal timing can be somewhat difficult.

What we have found from the first 3-4 fields that have been taken for silage - the moisture has been higher than expected. When considering cutting timing - see below.

"Cereals will dominate the higher part of the canopy and look as though it is a vast majority of the total biomass. However, the low cereal plant populations allow sunlight to reach lower in the canopy and biomass will be thick right to the surface. The lower sunlight plants will stay vegetative longer, hold more moisture, and thus the cereals can be taken at a higher maturity then if grown in a mono cropped scenario. Some extra dry down time may be required before to get the desired 50-60% moisture."

The pictures below were taken the day of cutting (swathed on a Wednesday the 29th, and silaged on Friday the 31st) This resulted in 65% moisture.

What did we learn? This crop could have probably been left for another week before cutting.

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2.Dry hay timing

To achieve maximum biomass, use the same strategy as the timing for silage. So far, we have only seen 1 full season cover that has been put up for dry hay.

It was cut with a disc bind on July 26th and was flipped on the 30th. Baled on August 1st.

The bales were put up between 15-18% moisture. The producer recommends flipping to speed up dry time.

3.Green manure timing

The same concept as with silage & dry hay - we are trying to achieve maximum biomass.

Shallow incorporation with a discer should take place shortly after the legumes in the blend start to flower or the milk stage in cereals. Our apprehension about mowing the crop is much of that vegetative material will oxidize and not be made available to the below-ground biology. Tillage will cycle the nutrients faster and offer biology more surface area around the plant biomass causing rapid breakdown. Try not to over till as the risk of erosion and depleted mycorrhizal fungi increases with every pass, but create a mixture of soil and plant biomass.

We recommend, a warm-season blend or "catch crop" be sown. The moisture in the freshly tilled biomass should create favourable conditions for the warm season plants to germinate, and propagate as quickly as possible.

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Our observations

It is an exciting time of year for us to see the full season come off as we continue to add to our data/research.

With ample moisture in most places throughout the province, conditions are ideal for late summer/early fall regrowth. The plants you can expect to see regrow are ARG, Rye, Vetch, Clover, possibly some warm-season plants if they did not receive enough sunlight to hit reproduction.

Thanks For Reading

To learn more about how we can help incorporate plant diversity into your operation:

With Gratitude,

Covers & Co. Team

Joseph Gardiner, Travis Avery, Mark Fallis, Owen Taylor


 
Covers & Co.