Cover Crop Basics Part 6: Ask Me Anything with Keith and Zach

0:00 Thanks for joining everybody. I'm Keith Burns and my colleague Zach Lau is on as well and we're going to do our best to answer these questions. Now Zach, it's called Ask Me Anything. I don't know if people will be asking for relationship advice or the meaning of life or things like that, but we'll take a shot at those too. We've got lots of life experiences here, but mostly hopefully the questions will be about cover crops. And we've actually got quite a few questions already that people asked during the first four webinars that we just weren't able to get to or to answer. And so we're going to start on those. But we would encourage you that are watching this live to go ahead and ask additional questions as well because we want you to get the information that you want and that you need there. So we're going to just jump right in and get started here.

0:55 So Zach, our first question here, Dennis is asking about an alternative to glyphosate for terminating cereal rye. That's a question that we get a lot. Cereal rye actually is still effective at being killed by glyphosate, but is it the best thing to use? What are the options of the alternatives out there? So how would you answer that when people ask you that question, Zach?

1:19 Yeah, probably my standard or go-to is the first thing going to be like explain, you know, we're not chemical agronomists. Although we can help consult with your cover crop mix and give you some recommendations and advice, but by far and away the best advice you can get is go to a true chemical agronomist and they're going to help you with the mode of actions and make sure that you're not doing something that's potentially going to affect your next crop. So Dennis mentioned in there clethodin, which is a grass specific herbicide will work on cereal rye. But like I said, you've got to be careful with potential with your next crop where you're going. And us at Green Cover, we're not necessarily that type of professional to give you the best advice possible. So while clethodin will work on cereal rye, I'm not saying that it's going to work on every situation or should be used in every situation. What do you think Keith?

2:12 Yeah, we've used clethodin in the past, especially, you know, because sometimes you may have planted rye and vetch together and that rye is just getting crazy growth on it and you're worried about it tying up nutrients and getting a little too aggressive out in front of your corn. You can use clethodin, take the rye out, let the vetch continue to grow, and then you take that out later. Now, that's two different passes, two different sprays. You may or may not want to do that, but it's a tool certainly that you have. There's other chemistries out there. You know, Liberty, those types of products can be used as well. You really have to kind of pay attention to the weather conditions if you're using that to try to kill your rye. So again, like Zach said, consult your herbicide guy and understand why you wouldn't want to use glyphosate. There certainly are reasons why you may not want to. Some people, you know, it's still a good tool. So it's not going to be the same answer for everybody. Roller crimping can be an option. You know, if your cereal rye gets tall enough or big enough and you feel like you have enough moisture to let it grow that long, that's an option, too. So clethodin, I think, is a very viable option if you don't have any other broadleaf weeds out there you're trying to clean up ahead of your crop because it's not going to take those out. So then you know in that case you could tank mix clethodin and a broadleaf herbicide together to do something like that. So great question. We got them rolling in all over the place here Zach on the Q&A box. So that's great.

3:46 Larry is asking he used a pea and brassica mix for winter but it supported the large slug population that's causing problems now. Any suggestions on suppressing slugs? And I'll let you know, we don't have slugs here in Nebraska because we're just too dry. We just have never fought that because of our drier climate. I know a lot of people however, who are in wetter climates that do fight that. So, Zach, you're probably more familiar with that.

4:20 So, believe it or not, we have never had a slug problem on our operation either. A lot. But yeah, just not much experience from that side of things. I think it's even further east from us even.

4:38 Yeah. So, you know, the guys that we've talked to that have had slug issues, you know, I mean, there's slug

4:44 Baits that you can put out, I think you have to put those out at night because the slugs only come out at night and so to get them to eat that bait or crawl across that bait, you have to be putting it out there at night. I know guys that are doing that when they're planting cash crops.

5:01 So I think a lot of it on the slugs within this P brassica mix might be a deal where you just have to terminate it sooner than what you really wanted and have a break between where your cover crop is growing and when your cash crop is growing and not have that green and growing bridge right into your cash crop if slugs are an issue. I know some people that have done that. Tillage, we don't like tillage as a general rule for what it does to the soil, but it is a tool and it's a tool that you could use to terminate your cover crop and that, again, may disrupt that life cycle of those slugs enough to where that's effective as well. I'm not aware of any cover crops that are just slugs won't come into because it's not the cover crops, it's more the environment that it's creating. So that's just going to be a really hard one there to do.

6:02 Lorenda is going to sew the soil summer builder soil builder summer mix and a vegetable garden in zone 6B. So I'm going to bring this up right now. We've got a number of questions about gardens and small plot type things. Great questions and a lot of the answers are going to be somewhat similar to some of our larger scale farmers and customers. But we have kind of built our business on working with the farmer and the rancher. So we will answer some of these questions as we go. But we're actually having a whole another webinar next week and Jonathan will be posting the information on how you can get signed up for that, a whole another webinar next week that is going to deal only with the gardens and the homestead type things, the very small operation, some of that because there's some specific termination planting type things because you just don't have access to some of the equipment. So next week there's going to be a webinar just about that. So some of these questions we may not get to because they'll hopefully be answered there. But anyway, zone 6B. So that's probably even, are you 6A, Zach, or are you about 6B? We're real close to 6B. Yeah. So this is going to be southern Kansas type area.

7:18 Would grazing strengthen the ability of that summer soil builder to build soil? In other words, you get more soil health benefits if you're grazing these cover crops? If yes, when's the best time to graze it? I've got a really interesting discussion point for this one, actually. Yes, grazing is definitely beneficial to building your soil and helping it regenerate itself because of all the beneficial microbes that the ruminant gives as it passes through that animal, goes back into the soil. When to graze it, I actually just talked to a customer a few days ago, been a customer of ours for a long time. They do a pretty diverse summertime mix, pretty diverse fall mix, and they're grazing, they're intentionally grazing 365 days a year as close as they can possibly get. And we've been talking the last couple years, they wanted to increase their seeding rate because they weren't seeing the expression of a lot of the plants in their mix. So we did increase the seeding rate last year and they said, 'Well, I'm going to try to graze it a little differently because they're rotational grazing, not super high intensive rotational grazing, but still making the point to do that.'

8:30 And she said last year she turned into it quite a bit sooner than she had in the past. And what she did was pushed those cattle across that mix quickly or those animals across the mix quickly and just basically took the top few inches of the canopy off so that it opened that up. And she said what happened was it allowed all those smaller seedlings to get started and express themselves in such a more full way that the entire rest of the season as they were rotational grazing, it was apparent that they could see absolutely everything in that mix. And I think some of our, sometimes we err on the side of caution as far as turning livestock in to be grazed. But I think you know if we're shooting for that 15 to 20 inch plant height for warm season annual grasses or warm season annual mixes, do a quick graze. Don't take it down to the ground because you will terminate some of those small seedlings, just do a quick graze to knock some of that tall stuff back and you're going to get a big flush of expression from the rest of those plants. And then once they're tall enough and can compete with those fast.

9:39 Growing grasses, they should grow the rest of the summer and really express themselves. So it's one of those practical like why didn't I think of this? Why? Of course, that makes total sense. But that was just some insight from her that I've told to several people just this week.

9:55 Yeah, I like that. And I like to tell people, you know, the principle of soil health is integrating livestock, right? I always modify that and say properly integrated livestock because you can integrate livestock and hurt your soil health. There's no doubt about it. If you're grazing too long or too hard, you're removing too much residue. You know, compaction can happen when you leave them in one area for too long. And so, you know, exactly what you're saying, Zach, the properly integrated livestock are going to graze across it fairly quickly, especially if you're going to come back. If you're planning on grazing and these summer mixes are ideal candidates for grazing more than once because you have the time normally for them to regrow. I don't like taking more than 25 or 30% that first time through. Go through fairly quickly and then when it's your last graze, in other words if you know it's you're getting late enough into the season that this stuff's going to freeze out it won't grow back, you know then you can take 50, 60, 70% of it through the animal. And by moving them on a regular basis you're also distributing the manure across that. If you turn them out into a big paddock, a big field and just give them the whole thing, that manure is going to get concentrated under the shade trees or by the mineral tub or the water source. So yeah, properly integrated livestock can be a great help in building your soil. And when you manage them right, you can get multiple grazings.

11:32 And then the question goes on to ask too about you know what about in the wintertime? Well, you know, the warm season soil builder is going to die out mostly at frost, but we like just following that right up with a cool season soil builder, overwintering mix. These are all pre-made mixes that we have put together that we've developed by working with thousands of farmers and ranchers across the country and just knowing what has worked for the large majority of them. And so we have made these mixes kind of standardized mixes that people can order. Especially if you're not ordering large amounts, these work really well because you can get them cheaper because we don't have to shut down all the other production and do a custom mix. And so, you know, something with the cool season will work really well to follow that warm season up with. And ideally, you know, soil is best built when you have living roots growing as long as possible. And that's usually going to take two plantings a year if you don't have perennials.

12:36 All right. Well, staying on the livestock thread here, Ken is asking, 'Are there summer cover crops that can be broadcast for livestock feed?' So apparently we don't have a drill in this situation. You know, what can you broadcast for summer livestock feed, Zach? And maybe just talk a little bit about the difference between broadcasting and drilling theoretically there.

12:57 Yeah. So broadcasting for livestock feed, we're just throwing the seed out on top of the soil surface. Drilling it, we're opening a seed trench, placing it in the soil, and getting it covered. So there's quite a bit of a difference between those two mechanisms. The first thing that we lead into when we're talking about broadcast is where are you located? Because there's a huge difference in broadcasting in western Kansas even as there is in eastern Kansas because there's about 30 inches of rainfall difference annually. So take that deeply into your consideration. The next thing I would say about broadcasting is it is especially without incorporation, especially into high residue if you already have something growing there. It is fairly risky. Especially risky I would say once you get past May into June because your summertime context is going to start to your rains are going to spread out. It's going to get hotter. You're going to have faster evapotranspiration and it takes a couple rains to get a crop really established well. Now, a lot of our warm season annuals, the sorghums and millets, cow peas, mung beans, they do germinate fast and grow really well in those droughty conditions, but they still take a couple rains or a really good soaking rain to get established. The one caveat I would say, you know, we said incorporation. Incorporation doesn't have to mean tillage. If you're doing paddocks to where you can highly intensive rotate your livestock through there, we have

14:40 Quite a bit more success where we can run the livestock through there and get that to stomp it in. Especially if it happens right after a rain and you go out there. I mean, you don't want to muck it up or anything like that, but just get some more seed to soil contact with those seeds. You're going to have quite a bit better stand and establishment. And then finally, you know, if you do have to broadcast, you really need to work on what species you're using. You don't want to use really large seeds like sunflowers. That's not going to be an ideal broadcasting seed for anywhere really in the summertime because it just takes so much moisture to get started. Takes a lot of energy to get out of that shell and get going. But I am a big advocate for a drill. I know not everyone has a drill or has access to a drill. So we have to come up with options. But if that's the case, just get creative with your cover crop. Maybe focus on millets. Maybe focus on other if you want legumes, maybe you think about sunhemp. Sunhemp seems to germinate really easily. But just put that into context with your situations.

15:43 Yeah, I like that. And if you've got some other cover there, you know, if you maybe had some residual from a winter cover crop or something, you could broadcast that seed and then go and mow and shred whatever cover you have and let that kind of mulch or thatch down. You just need something to help keep that moisture in contact with the seed. So can be done. Definitely is tricky and a little bit more challenging there.

16:10 Got a great question here from Raphael. What are some industry trends you're seeing in the US cover crop seed market? Zach, this is right up your alley. So Zach is our main cover crop seed buyer. I used to do that, but Zach's doing a great job with that. So he really has his finger on the pulse of the seed market. And then it goes on to say, 'How are current state or federal policies such as subsidies, conservation programs, or regulatory barriers either incentivizing or hindering the growth of this industry?' That sounds like a whole webinar right there, doesn't it? It's a doozy. It's a doozy. Well, we'll just keep it short and keep it to pertaining the cover crop industry and green cover. How about we just focus on those two?

17:00 So this is how I've been explaining it: most of the cover crop seed that green cover uses, sources, and grows does come from within the United States. Most of it. There are a few outliers that we're importing. And the reason we import seed isn't so much that it's the best buy, but there are some things that just simply cannot be produced in the United States. And for us to supply the customers in the United States that want the most diverse cover crop mixes possible, we have to bring those in from time to time. Now we're at the hand of the government on those type of products and we just have to deal with that. Now as far as how the policies are going to affect the cover crop seed we use almost every day, most of that is coming from our US producers. So we're not as worried about it there. As far as producing the cover crop seed, there are not very many subsidies for those farmers. I mean, they're not even really getting federal crop insurance. There's a few special programs, but the people that are growing the cover crop seed are already taking a risk. And then as far as the other programs in general, we kind of focus on people that use those programs as an opening door. So somebody that wants to sign up for an EQIP program or something like that to get a little bit of money to get started in cover crops. Our goal at Green Cover is to get those people started, help educate them and explain to them why this cover crop mix is now worth more than what they were ever getting subsidized to. I'm going to say incentivize them to continue to purchase cover crop seed from us. So while there is a lot of shakeup and strange incentive questions and stuff like that, we try to focus on what green cover is good at, and that's educating the consumer, farmer, rancher, gardener, whoever that may be on what the cover crop is actually netting them, whether it be grazing, whether it be soil health and stuff like that, and let someone else worry about the programs, the regulatory barriers, the incentives. And we just try to do really well and focus on the seed custom mixes and stuff like that. So I'm not sure if that really answers all the questions, but I guess what I will say to finish that up, since the seed is grown mostly in the United States, we should be able to keep prices fairly level. We don't see any dramatic spikes in prices from tariffs or whatever it may be.

19:36 No, that's a great point and I would go on to say too that I don't know what the number is, but I'm sure it's

19:41 More than 90% of all the seed that we sell is getting purchased and put into the ground by a farmer with no subsidy, no payment, no incentive whatsoever. And like Zach said, those programs are good. We're in favor of them. We're supportive of helping someone get started. But the economic benefits of any soil health practice has to pay for itself without an outside incentive or it just isn't going to take for the long term.

20:12 So we think that you can prove that case that grazing is an excellent example of that. But fixing nitrogen, cycling your nutrients, preventing erosion, increasing your infiltration rates, there's so many benefits that it's not that hard to justify the cost of doing it. And so the incentive market has gone crazy up and down and all of that really doesn't affect us all that much because that's a very small percentage of the people who are actually planting cover crops.

20:45 And so green cover wasn't a part of any of the climate smart commodity grants. And so as some of those are still going forth, some of them are in limbo. Again that doesn't have a huge effect on us because we just weren't that wasn't our main income stream there anyway. And one other thing that I would say there too, you know Zach mentioned that most of our seed is grown domestically, most of it or much of it is grown by what we call our grower network which is customers of ours so we know they're using regenerative practices to grow these seeds. We just are really confident in the seed quality.

21:25 The biggest thing that's going to affect that is just the commodity market in general. So if corn goes back to seven and eight, you can expect the price of everything else to go up because we have to buy those acres away from corn and soybeans. Right now we've got people standing in line to want to grow cover crop seed. We've got plenty of growers. We don't need them all because we've got plenty. But when corn goes way back up, then it's much more difficult to get these guys to come across and grow some of these specialty things because like Zach said, it's a big risk and you can't really get the insurance coverage on that like you do on some of the other crops.

22:05 So yeah, that's a great question. Fun to think about, fun to answer, and hopefully some of the policies and incentives level out and straighten up and there is a place for them. But it's a place to help get started. It can't be the answer long term for sure.

22:23 Okay. Here's a good question from Landon. Landon is asking, 'Would you recommend cereal rye, a fall cover crop on a farm that has winter wheat in its no-till rotation?'

22:41 You want a shot at that one? Okay. So this is a question we get a lot. I would say we have a lot of customers in western Nebraska, Kansas, through the wheat belt, let's just call it. And cereal rye is a great cover crop. But the biggest thing to consider when you're putting it in a rotation, this question is a little bit open-ended. Say winter wheat in a no-till rotation. If it's truly in a rotation, I'm not nearly as concerned about it as I would be if we're considering a rotation as wheat and if you're in a simple that's not even a it's not a circle if you only have two points.

23:22 Well, that's actually only one point. Yeah, that's right. So it depends on your rotation. If you got a situation where you can mix in a warm season grass and get an early planting with some atrazine or something like that to clean things up, it's not a problem. If you're doing constant cereals, it can be a problem. But it all comes back to the management, how long you let the cereal rye go. Cereal rye is a high starch plant, so it's going to germinate fairly quickly. It's not going to have a lot of hard seeds, so it shouldn't be a problem for long term as long as you're getting it managed in the necessary management time.

24:02 That's kind of how I explain it. And then they'll say, well, my neighbor just really doesn't want me to plant cereal rye because he's in a wheat fallow system. And it's one of those hard you want to be a good neighbor, but at the same time, you want to do what's best for your operation. And sure, management, making friends and all of that is something to take into consideration, but just do a good job and hopefully that mends some of those neighborly concerns.

24:31 Yeah. And I would add on to that the I agree. I don't think it's an issue when you have the proper rotation and you're paying attention to termination. You don't want to let it go to seed, that's for sure. And you probably wouldn't want to be trying to harvest the rye for seed or

24:49 You could potentially have a lot more issues down the road. The only exception I would say is if you are growing certified seed wheat, then we're going to tell you no, that's not a good idea because there's just zero tolerance for cereal rye in certified seed wheat. And so there's other options that we could help you come up with there in that type of a situation, but most people growing wheat aren't growing certified seed wheat.

25:17 The other thing is that rye has gotten such a bad name in wheat country because of that very narrow or lack of any rotation. The rye has become feral. And that feral rye—Zach said the rye that we're using has very little hard dormant seed. It germinates pretty quickly, it doesn't last in the soil. That feral rye can last for years and years and years because it has adapted to the system and it has a high percentage of hard seeds, seeds that can lay out there for a long time. So they are different plants.

25:51 Sometimes we have to educate people because their memory of rye is growing up on their grandpa's farm or their dad's farm or whatever, and just fighting that feral rye, or they probably were made to go out and cut it or pull it. But it is different because these domesticated ryes don't have all that hard dormant seed that the feral rye does.

26:17 Going back to a grazing question here, Zach Lucas is asking, 'Are there any tips or tricks to intercede a warm season grazing mix into a perennial fescue pasture?' So you're down in fescue country there in southeast Kansas, and we've had some people do this and have some pretty good success, but what are the things you have to pay attention to if you want to have success at interceding warm season annuals into a fescue?

26:47 I would say I would lead this question into it's feast or famine. You either have really, really, really good success or you don't have very good success. A lot of it is management on your fescue system, establishment or planning on the perennial pastures, and then it's got to rain. Anytime we're interceding into something, moisture is so critical, especially in that establishment phase.

27:17 Tips or tricks—I really like to use a drill when I'm seating into fescue pastures. I know it's hard sometimes to get out there with a drill. When you interseed warm seasons into fescue pasture, it makes a big difference if you can cut that sod layer a little bit and get that seedling down into where it can have a chance to get started. If it's a thick fescue stand or even if it's a thin fescue stand, that sod layer just bonds together and it really is hard to get something, especially a warm season, started and established. That's probably my number one trick to getting it going.

27:52 The next one is use species that can stand competition. So you don't want to plant something that's very sensitive to competition. You want to plant something that's a little bit larger seed size so there's more energy to get pushed out of the ground. The exception to that would be like a millet. Brown top millet does seem to work pretty well in those situations. Sorghums seem to work pretty well in those situations—something that's just kind of bred to be tough. That's the biggest thing. I wouldn't focus on a bunch of small seeded legumes. If you wanted to use like some mung beans or some sunhemp—there's Kansas State's done some research with sunhemp into fescue pastures—but use something that's going to have a lot of energy in it.

28:37 Then like I said, pray for rain because the best way to get something established is to have plenty of moisture and just get it in where it can actually function.

28:49 Those are good points. And the feast or famine thing, we definitely have seen that. But here's the thing—you're not going to plant a full seeding rate anyway. So your seed cost on something like what you're talking about, Zach, is maybe 25 bucks or something on that. Towards the high end. Yeah, 20 to $25. So even if you only hit it every other year, if you produce a ton or two of forage, well, you're easily paying for your cost just by hitting it once every other year.

29:22 It's not something you necessarily do every year, but if you look like there's an opportunity, there's a lot of potential because when it hits, it's incredible. The amount of additional forage you can grow. And I think it benefits the fescue the next year as well, don't you? It absolutely does. So the same reason that you want to get the sod cut is it's keeping oxygen out of that soil and keeping it from being a good functioning system. So I think it does stimulate it.

29:50 To add, I was thinking about it. You have to change your expectations for that cover crop mix and that perennial fescue pasture. You're not going to get the same cover crop mix that you would plant on a crop ground acre. It's not going to be this giant huge lush mix. It's just changing that expectation. That's probably the problem that I've ran into the most. Like you said, 2,000 lbs an acre of forage. That's a lot of forage. It doesn't cost very much. Whereas, you know, if you have a crop ground, you may get, you know, 6,000 or 8,000 pounds. There's a big difference, but you're also not in a perennial system already.

30:29 Yeah. And staying on the perennial thought train here but switching the seasons on us. Daryl is down in the coastal area of Texas and he's asking about how can he get something planted into his BA, which is a warm season perennial grass. So now we're talking about cool seasons into warm season, cool season annuals into warm season perennials. So just the opposite of what we just talked about. But he said his issue is if he waits until bea grass goes dormant, it's too late and his cover crop freezes out too many years. And if he goes too early and the bea is not dormant, then it's really hard to get something established. So how do you know what do you say about trying to balance that timing scale there?

31:24 Yeah, that does start to get a little tricky. Probably one thing that I would look at first of all, it says he's in the coastal area of Texas. So his freezing temperatures are probably significantly different than what I would expect freezing temperatures up where we're at would be. So I would look at maybe something that is still going to get that rapid growth but maybe have a little bit more cold tolerance. An example would be our classic black oats. They're a fast growing. They grow really fast when there's heat in the fall, but they also have winter tolerance to be able to take some freezes and get going in there. Another really good option for this that we've seen is Hairy Vetch. Hairy vetch and bear grass or Bermuda grass, any of those warm season species is really nice. Now, if it's something that you think you're going to use this for a high quality hay the next year, let's maybe not use Hairy Vetch because it's going to have some hard seed and carry into the season. Austrian winter peas. Austrian winter peas would be a great fit or 4010 spring forage peas to get faster growth out of them. A lot of it is going to depend, I think, on your varieties that you're selecting to be able to plant them once that bea goes dormant and still get enough grazing on them throughout the season to do that. And there should be plenty of options. I know that there's a lot of just spring oats seeded in that area or some rye grasses that may not have as much of the winter hardiness. But that's what I would look for is just a little bit more hardy hearty plant that can take those variability of plantings.

33:01 Yeah, I would agree. And even saying, 'Okay, we're going to use a diploid annual rye grass, which has more cold tolerance than a tetroploid, which would typically be used on the coast.' You know, something like that could even help. Forage collards would come to my mind as a great crop that could be put in pretty late down there and tolerate, you know, the cooler temperatures. I'm not going to say cold because, you know, compared to other areas, it's not cold, but it definitely does get cool. And I think that could work. And I agree with something you said earlier, too, Zach, about it. I think it's going to make a difference on whether they're trying to make hay out of this or graze it. If you're grazing it, you've got a lot more options. You've got a lot more flexibility in, you know, because let's say you only grow a ton of forage. Well, is that worth going out and dragging all your hay equipment across that to do it? Probably not. Yeah, but certainly would be worth running animals across there to catch that extra ton of grazing. So that's going to depend a little bit too on how you gauge success. You know, if I have to get four tons of dry hay in order to pay all the bills because it's so expensive to do the haying process, well, that's a much more difficult thing to do than, you know, if I can grow 2,000 lbs of forage.

34:26 Yeah, good question there, Daryl.

34:29 Brandon is asking, 'Can the warm season grazing mix be combined with the cool season grazing mix possibly at different ratios for different fields to get an expression of growth over a longer time frame of the year?' That's a great question and I have people ask this all the time and my answer to that is I don't recommend it. There's just reasons why the warm and the cool seasons.

40:12 Sugar in the plant growing up above in the in the roots. I'm a big advocate of summer warm season grasses, sorghum sedans, depending if you're grazing it, a BMR is just fine too. Anything that you can clip it, let it regrow. That's what we're looking for. And you know, it's been documented. I think sorghum sedan plants, you know, they can have roots down five, six, seven feet deep. That's how they're drought tolerant is because they have such a massive root system and that's a very fine fibrous root system which really helps break up lots of hard pans, lots of compacted areas.

40:55 What I would like to do is use that as a base and then there's other things. Sunflowers to sunflowers are just a no-brainer, should be in every summer mix, but especially if you want to address compaction issues because now you've got a tap root going deep in addition to the fibrous roots of your sorghum. They're inexpensive to put in a mix. You don't need a lot. A pound, pound and a half of sunflowers really gets you some deep roots going down there. Okra would be another one, particularly if you're a little further south. Okra has, I mean, you go out there and a fully grown okra plant, you can't pull it out of the ground. You just can't. You got to cut it off, dig it up or something because it is so well anchored. So it gives a lot of root penetrating power there as well.

41:44 And then beyond that, just look at good diversity because it's not just the plant roots themselves that are doing some of this breaking up of compaction. It's a lot of the biology that they host and they support that are developing the right organic acids that are sometimes helping dissolve those compaction layers and build the aggregates so that it doesn't become recompacted. And so really all of those things work together. The plants and the biology are going to work together not only to solve your compaction issue but to prevent it.

42:20 And then really importantly is try to figure out why your soil got compacted in the first place and then figure out what do you need to change in your system so that that doesn't happen again. Now sometimes the ground was wet and I just had to go harvest, big storm coming in, whatever. There's sometimes you got to do things that you probably wouldn't choose to do but you just got to do them to make a living and then you got to go fix that problem. But try to identify what has caused the compaction and then modify your system to try to remediate or limit how much of that comes in in the future as well.

43:00 Our friend Steve from western Nebraska. Steve's up in Alliance. Tough country up there. Steve says, 'I planted your companion crop mix in corn and then I grazed it after harvest.' This would be irrigated corn in western Nebraska. My concern is that all the residue blew off the field this winter. I'm seriously considering elimination of livestock grazing. Thoughts on that?

43:33 You know, Steve, I know what you're saying. We're seeing the same thing here. Not necessarily from grazing even. We're seeing it when we go out there and we drill cover crops after harvest. We can get a lot of that residue blowing off and we don't, we're not as windy as what you guys are up there. But we still have a lot of wind and we can still lose a lot of residue. So we've gone to in some instances, considering just broadcasting with a plane or a drone or like with our 10-inch air seeder, we lock the front rank up. So we're drilling on 20-inch centers and then we're just broadcasting. We're blowing the rye out through that front rank. So we're locking it up, but we're not turning the seed off. And so we're just trying to do less cutting, less disturbance.

44:28 One thing you could try is, if you just graze for a shorter period of time, I don't know what the intensity of your grazing is. It certainly may just be an intensity issue. And if you just grazed an area for a couple of days and moved them on to another area, it may not be as big of a deal. That's a little hard to know without the context. I know around here very few guys will rotationally graze in the winter. They're mostly turning out and just doing whole field grazing and then you get areas that just get overgrazed and beat up because the cattle just kind of camp out there. So before you completely give up, I think I would look at what does that rotational intensity look like? Could there be any changes made to that? And you know, if you are, I can't remember if you've got your own cattle, Steve, or if you've got people coming in and grazing.

45:32 Own cattle and you're not getting paid very much for it, it probably should be maybe something that you give up and don't do because if you're not getting the actual income off that beef, it may not be worth the residue that you're losing. Zach, what are some things that you've seen on that?

45:50 Yep. So I'm going to throw a theoretical out here because I think it's a good place to do it. So I'm taking agroforestry class and in the agroforestry class, they're talking about wind breaks and buffers. Obviously, they're talking about trees in that situation, in that context. And again, Steve, take it for what it's worth. I understand management and facilities and stuff like that, but I'm wondering in those wide open landscapes like that if it may not be worth it to take a buffer edge around that field and plant one of our really good tall sorghum sedans that's going to stand in a big enough swath. Maybe it's 30 foot, maybe it's 45 foot to help break some of that wind flow across there. Now, I understand it's not going to help all of it. It's going to make it harder to graze because you're going to have to have a fence on the inside of that so the cattle aren't grazing it. Again, long steps. This is more of a theoretical type of situation, but I do think that that would potentially help with some of that blowing depending on how big of acreage it was, depending on what the landscape was. Maybe Keith that would be something that we could try at Providence Farms to just give a taste of that because Ryan's even talked about the grain cart smashing residue and losing residue that way and that's just, it's really hard to manage when every pass across there you just lose a little bit more. It's pretty frustrating.

47:17 Yeah, it is. You work so hard to grow it. You sure hate to see it blow away and lose it, but definitely, definitely happens a lot. So yeah, Steve, that's something we can visit with you more about later, but those are just some initial thoughts and ideas that we have there. Mike, so Michael is from Canada and he is asking if our mixes or products are available in Canada. If not, do we offer things, you know, places up there that they can find that?

47:46 I'll take this because I do deal with a lot of our export type stuff. So we don't ship a lot of stuff to Canada, but we certainly can. Shipping seed across international boundaries is difficult just simply because every country has different rules, different regulations. It's just like bringing seed into the US. We have to follow all the rules and regulations. And it's relatively straightforward when you're dealing with one or two things. But when you start going, I want this 15-way blend, well, every single species in there we have to get tested to Canadian standards. So that's a different test. Some tests require or some species require us to get a disease test on it. Some of the cereals like going into British Columbia and Alberta, I know we've had to get it tested like for carnal bunt and some things like that. So it really kind of depends on how complex your mix is, where it's going. Most often it's going to require a phytosanitary inspection, which isn't a huge deal. It certainly was always going to require a Canadian standard seed test. Again, not a huge deal. But that all adds up into additional cost. So if you're doing a decent size mix, yeah, it's probably worth getting a hold of us and, you know, seeing what the additional cost would be in order to do that. If you're only looking at doing it on, you know, a thousand pounds or less of seed, it's probably not going to be worth the additional cost that it's going to take in order to get all the inspections and the tests and the protocols and the phytosanitary and all that to get it up there. So it kind of depends. We certainly can do that. We don't always do that. We do have some other companies that we have worked with in Canada that are doing some similar things to what we're doing. And so if you contact us, we can help put you in touch with some of the folks up there. We don't know of anybody that's doing quite the scale of diversity that we're doing, but we know that there's some good companies up there that are doing some things there. So and Canada is so much easier than any other country partly because we can put it on a freight truck and it can get up there and across the border. A lot of other countries are much more difficult because of both the logistics and sometimes you'll get the requirements from a company, from a country, and it's in a foreign language and you know then you got to get it translated and so just there's a lot of difficulties in doing that.

50:34 Certainly it is possible. Okay. Another question here, Zach, from Voldemir. Do we have any experience planting cover crops with biochar or biomaterial liquid fertilizers, such as biodynamic substance 500? So maybe we'll just kind of open this up to just different seed treatments, whether it's biochar or other biological organisms, liquid fertilizers, things like that. Why don't you talk a little bit about the things that we do offer in the experiences that we have?

51:11 Yeah, so we offer several different options for our seed treatments. When I say treatment, it's biological treatment. We try to almost primarily use products that are omry-labelled. That way it can cover all of our producers, even the ones that don't need an Omry label. But we've got a product called Elevated Fungi. It's through Elevate A. And we've had really, really good luck with it. It's a very low application rate, very low cost, but we're seeing quite a bit of seedling improvement from that. It's not enough to carry your crop the entire season as far as that goes, but it's definitely enough to draw that biology in, get it started, and get that plant off to the best start.

51:59 And then we have a rhizobia type bacterium or inoculant which is a broad spectrum. So it's got enough inoculant or rhizobia in it to do most all of the species that we carry. There are some exceptions primarily being alfalfas, clovers of which we have a separate inoculant rhizobia for it. But we're pretty excited about it because it's long life on seed. For so long we've had a rhizobia inoculant that's good from three days to six weeks. This one is a lot longer than that. What do we say up to nine months? Is that kind of the threshold that we're in? And it's got some other stuff in it. It's got Azospillum in it. It's got a rhizobacter. Lot of all those fancy words like that.

52:45 And then we also carry mycorrhizae inoculant. We have our mycorrhizae NPK that has—oh, I just pulled the label out of it. There's a ton of stuff in it that outside of mycorrhizae, but it's a really good mycorrhizae pack that has more in it than about any other one that I've ever found on the market. And then to pair with all of those, we're offering a couple products from Advancing Eco Agriculture, both their seed flare and their bioat gold. We keep those in stock and we can place those on the seed as well. All of them we see a direct benefit to the seed itself and that seedling plant. We're not really selling products right now that are carrying full season. We do have access to some through Elevate A, but most of the products that we're putting on our seed is specific to seedling and getting that seed started.

53:39 Yeah. And we do, we are big—as you can tell from Zach's answer there—we're big proponents of putting biology on the seed, biological products. I'm not familiar with biodynamic substance 500, but I mean, if it's got good biology in it, best place to put that is right on the seed. It's the cheapest way. It's the best way. Get it right on the seed. Now, I will say this with biochar: I would not do biochar either with the seed or in the seed furrow unless you are inoculating that biochar with a good charge of a really good biological product because the biochar itself is just a carbon house. It's a good carbon source. It's got a lot of surface area for organisms to live on, but you're wasting a big opportunity if you're putting just untreated or uninoculated biochar in your soil. So always use the biochar as a carrier and get some sort of compost extract, get some sort of biological product on that, and then it becomes a really good product to put with the seed or right in that seed furrow or seed trench.

54:52 So there's lots of good products out there. These are the ones that Zach talked about are the ones that we have easy access to and we can put that right on the seed and it goes right out in the bag so that when you plant, you're not doing any application of that. You're just opening the seed bag and getting it in the ground. Yep. And so we're trying to make it easy for people that way.

55:16 Let's see. Maybe we have time for one more here, Zach. Let's see. Sue is asking if we have different cover crop mixes for different livestock classes like cattle, like sheep. She didn't mention it, but you know, like hogs, do we have different mixes for these different classes of livestock? You're a goat man yourself, so you can talk just a little bit about the different mixes that we would have for those different classes of livestock. Yeah, we do. We do have them. So one cool thing is they will all eat mostly the same stuff.

55:52 Some are pickier than others, though. So like your cattle are going to be pickier and have a higher digestibility requirement than your sheep and your goats are. It's going to be a different digestibility requirement instead of maybe a higher, but we do carry those warm season or cool season grazing mixes. Those are going to be tailored primarily to cattle, which maybe we should think about changing the name to say warm season cattle mix or something like that. We do have sheep and goat mixes as well, both warm and cool season. Those are designed by people at Green Cover, our staff that have those types of animals and know what they like. And primarily the big difference with the sheep and the goats, we're trying to increase the protein, the sugar, but also keep those plants smaller. That's quite a bit shorter animal. I like to be able to count my goats as easily as it is to count goats or sheep, but to be able to at least see them, but also to match their nutritional requirements or dietary requirements in those plants.

56:57 So like for instance, your sheep and your goat have a higher protein requirement when they're getting ready or when they're going through the gestation periods for reproduction. So we want to make sure that we're hitting those numbers a little bit closer than just a generic cattle grazing mix. And we the great thing about this, those are pre-made mixes like Keith mentioned earlier. So if you just have a few sheep or a few goats, the website has those on there. It's got exactly what's in them. And that's more or less an easy go button for you. Order that, get it shipped right to your door, and you can get your plots for your sheeps, your goats mixed. The one animal that we really don't have a pre-made mix for would be like a horse. I would say that that one is so specific that we haven't taken a swing for that. And you definitely need to visit with your nutritionist before you plant some of these species for your horses.

57:51 Yeah. And people will ask about grazing mixes for chickens or hogs and we don't have a specific mix for that but what we have found and what other people have told us is really just go with the diverse mixes. So and then with chickens you just need to be grazing earlier. You can't let it get eight feet tall and then try to run your chicken tractors through that. So really just a lot of that diversity. And we even have a it's called wild gamebird mix I believe Zach that people can plant for like pheasants and quail habitat. I just shipped some seed out the other day to a guy that's using that exact mix for his chickens as well. And has been pretty happy with it. So you know we have like forty some different pre-made mixes now and then one hundred twenty different types of seeds. So there's probably a pre-made mix that is going to get pretty close to what you need. And if it's not quite right, and a lot of times what I tell people is start with one of those mixes, see what really works and what doesn't. And then the next year you can build your own custom mix based on what you learned from, you know, the fifteen-way mix that we sent you out and you've identified the ten things that really worked well. So that's a good place to start and then you can kind of build on that knowledge and you can go from there.

59:12 So, unfortunately, Zach, we didn't get to all of the questions. Felt like we got through quite a bit. Time went pretty fast there. Fun conversation. So, thank you everybody for joining, not just for this webinar, but if you've been on any of the other ones, we appreciate that. These are all going to be on our YouTube channel, so you can go back, listen to it again, watch them again. Again, if you are a gardener, homesteader, small acreage type situation, please tune in next week and you'll have to sign up for that. It's a different sign up link than these first ones were. Jonathan had pasted it in the chat early on there. But we would love to have you come back. Jonathan and Sophie will be talking specifically about cover crops for those small acres and just how it's different. The plant species may not be different, but it's the management of it that's going to have to be a little bit different and working with, you know, small equipment or hand-powered equipment. So I think that will be really interesting for you and they'll answer some of these additional questions that we weren't able to get to in that webinar. So that'll be next Wednesday at noon and then that will conclude our spring webinar series. We'll be picking up some webinars back in the fall. We'll be putting out videos and podcasts throughout the summer. So again, thank you so much everybody for your time and attention and we're just thankful for each one of you and just pray for rain in its time for all of us. So thanks everybody. We'll see you later. Thank you.