Flax: The Unsung Hero in Your Cover Crop Mix

0:00 Dale, this is a beautiful stand of flax. It's a little surprising because this was planted the end of May. Here we are the end of July, so this stuff's grown through 60 days of a lot of heat. Flax is a cool season plant, but this looks

0:14 Really nice, it's got a lot of blossoms set in seed pods already. I'm not saying that we should grow flax here in Nebraska, plant at the end of May to try to harvest for seed, but I think it speaks to the resiliency of this little plant. It's never going to.

0:29 Be huge. But every time I put it in mixes it's always there. I like what Christine Jones says about it. She says flax is one of those seeds that punches above its weight.

0:38 Yeah, tell us why that is. Well, I refer to it as the iceberg plant.

0:44 Because like an iceberg, what you see above the surface is not indicative of what's going on below the surface, and that's the way it is with flax. I had three different farmers tell me the exact same story almost word for word.

1:01 They put in cover crop plots the next year. They planted either corn or soybeans, didn't matter. And they saw this strip that looked unusually good and they went out and said, 'What did I have in there last year?' And they went around and found the little orange.

1:16 Steak and flax. It just makes the next plant in the rotation grow better and we think it has to do with its stimulation of soil microbiology because the roots nothing.

1:33 The top's nothing special, but there's something going on there. Yeah, the root exudates do something. It's one of the most beneficial plants for mycorrhizae fungi. And so if you have any mycorrhizae in your soil at all, this will just really.

2:02 One of the biggest benefits of mycorrhizal fungi is it helps with water uptake and it also helps with nutrient uptake. And the other thing mycorrhizal fungi do is they secrete a compound called glomalin which is the most powerful soil.

2:20 Aggregating agent known glomelin is probably your best, absolute best compaction fighting compound that you can have in your soil. Aggregates your soil, allows oxygen in so that roots can grow.

2:36 Break up those hard pans. And flax is another one of those—this is very high in lignin. This is not going to get grazed by livestock, so it's a very long lasting durable residue which we really like as well. I would never use flax by itself.

2:52 As a cover crop it's an amazing companion in almost any mix that we do. Yeah cool season warm season yep, pound or two of flaxes. Look at the aggregation in this oil right there and all those roots. Yeah, the aggregation you get from this plant is really pretty amazing.