Nitro Radish, Smart, Control — Spring Planting Uses and Pollinator Value

0:00 [Music]

0:07 Welcome to our 2019 Spring planted cover crop tour. We think that our plots look as good as they ever have, so we wanted to record this and share it with people for years to come.

0:20 My name is Keith Burns, salesman here with Green Cover Seed, and with me is

0:24 Dale Strickler, another one of our sales agronomist with Green Cover Seed, we're just going to take a little bit of time and take you through our spring planted plots. Dale, I believe these were planted April 9th, and as everybody knows it's been a very wet spring here in 2019, so the plots look great. There has been no

0:42 Irrigation no irrigation needed but a tremendous amount of growth in spite of the fact that we've had kind of a cooler and cloudier than normal spring. So I think it's pretty impressive how things look. What's your initial assessment?

0:54 Things look great. They've really developed well, so I'm glad we had.

0:59 This opportunity to capture it's a good-looking plot on film. Yeah, so we're going to start out with the brassicas and then we'll move on to other plants. But I'm sitting here in the midst of our radishes and we've got three different types of radishes here that we'll talk a little bit about.

1:16 Nitrile radish and the smart radish, which are both daikon type radishes, and then we've got the control radish which is over here. It's got more of the purple type blossom and it's an oilseed radish. Its primary use is in nematode control because it's got better nema seidel properties. So as you can see with all.

1:34 The blossoms. This is why you wouldn't plant radishes in the spring if you're really looking to go after that big taproot that the radishes are famous for, because you're not going to get that big root growth. Because radishes go reproductive in sensing day length, and when the days are getting longer.

1:52 Like they are in the spring, radishes are going to bolt and they're gonna flower and they're in the process of setting seed pods right now. When you plant them when the days are getting shorter, that's when you get that big root development. So you wouldn't necessarily plant them if you really want to break up compaction.

2:28 This is very attractive that the wind weren't blowing like this would be coated and butterflies and bees right now. I think this has some real potential to put into pollinator making.

2:38 Is it if blooms very quickly and if you leave it over the summer it'll produce seed and produce a crop of those big radishes.

2:50 With them well-developed root systems that were used to seeing from August or late summer planting. Broke from possibly from the volunteers, right? Yeah, yeah, volunteer crop of radishes this way.

3:01 Yeah, so again I use these wisely. There's one of the type of radish that we usually have, but for some reason when.

3:09 We planted these plots we were out of stock and that's the graça fodder radish. It does not bolt nearly as quickly so if you're looking for a radish to graze and have maximum amount of forage in the spring the graça radish is the better choice. We just unfortunately ran out of seed.

3:25 When we planted our plots and don't have that yogurt brassicas in the top echelon of heat tolerant. I mean it always seems to show well in the summer or spring plan. The plot probably is good looking plant among the brassicas of any we have for summer groups. Okay, and that's the radishes.