How We Plant and Test 70+ Cover Crop Species
Watch Noah Young walk through Green Cover Seed's spring test plot planting day in April 2019. You'll see how we plant individual species in monoculture, test customer mixes from our Smart Mix calculator, and plant maximum diversity plots to measure soil health impact. This is how we back up our recommendations with real field data.
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0:00 [Music]
0:04 Hi guys Noah Young here with Green Cover Seed. Today is one of my favorite days on the farm and that's because today we
0:11 Planted our test plots. One of the really cool things about green cover seed is that we're still a family-owned business that operates a farm here in south.
0:18 Central Nebraska and farming is really where we got our start back in 2006. Our owners Keith and Brian planted their first cover crop test plots and from...
0:28 Their green cover seed was truly born. Now about 13 years later here we are planning our spring test plots in April of 2019.
0:37 So when you typically call in to Green Cover Seed, we're gonna recommend a mix of different species because diversity is key to soil health but in a test plot.
0:46 What we want to see is how these plants perform by themselves. So today we planted over 70 different species in a monoculture test plot in order to see.
0:55 What these plants will look like that doesn't mean that we didn't plan any mixes because one of the cool things we do here is we actually take some of the
1:08 Across the nation, one of the other cool things we do is we'll take all 70 of these species we mix them together and we'll plant one pass at the end to see.
1:16 What maximum diversity does to soil health in a field. These test plots are also helping us put into action one of our core values which is innovation.
1:24 Through education a green cover seat we truly believe that education is the driving factor in the regenerative eggman and we hope that farmers ranchers.
1:33 And anyone with an interest in agriculture can look at these plots and see that there's a lot more to grow than corn, beans, or wheat. So thanks for taking the time to watch this video. I appreciate any comments or feedback you guys have on things you'd like to see in future test plots, and if you have any photos of any cool plots you've planted on your field, feel free to share them below. In the meantime, I'll document the process out here and we'll keep you in the loop.