Plant Family Diversity: Rick Clark's Secret to Organic Weed Suppression Without Tillage

0:00 Welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top farmers and experts in the regenerative agriculture movement. Join us as we learn together how to regenerate God's creation for future generations.

0:15 What's been your best cover crop? Sometimes when I ask people that question they talk about the giant biomass they got from their sorghum sedan or maybe their cereal rye cover crop or they talk about the 200 pounds of nitrogen they fixed with this big hairy cover crop. But today's guest has a really interesting and enlightening answer to that question of what's been your best cover crop. I want to welcome my friend Rick Clark from Williamsport, Indiana into the podcast, Rick.

0:45 Welcome Keith. Thanks for having me. I think this is a great idea for you to start a podcast. So many people involved in this movement and you're going to be able to get a wide slice of people. So I think it's awesome. Thanks for having me.

1:02 And for those of you that don't know Rick—many people do—but Rick is a farmer from Williamsport, Indiana and he is what I would say would be one of the leaders in the regenerative organic movement. So he is both an organic farmer as well as a regenerative farmer, both of which are hard to do by themselves but really hard to do together. And he's doing it at scale. So Rick, why don't you tell us just a little bit about your story, your journey. You know, what has happened in your past farming career to get you to the point where you're at now?

1:36 Yeah, it's real simple, Keith. Erosion. A long time ago, back in the middle 2000s, I think it was 2007 maybe, we were doing our usual tillage event like we were some of the best tillers in the county. And we did a spring tillage event like we have done for years and we got a one-inch rain event that evening and it moved the soil on a 1% slope field to the ditch and onto the road. And when I saw that the next morning, I said this is enough. We've got to stop. And at that time the internet was going, but it was the slow dial-up—remember how squawky it was to come online? And that modem sound, the modem. You know, we could do research. It was limited at that time, which comparing that to today is there is no comparison. I mean, what you can do today is unbelievable. But anyway, I researched and what I came up with was I had three criteria. I wanted something that was going to sequester nutrients. I wanted something that was going to mitigate compaction. And I wanted something that was not going to be around next spring. And that was the tillage radish. That's where we started. It was perfect. It did exactly what we wanted it to do. And I've always said that when you try something new, you need to have it work that first time you try it because you may not come back to it.

3:11 If it doesn't at least come to your expectations of what you want, and the tillage radish checked every box off for what I was looking for at that point in time, this would be probably what early to mid-90s. Yeah, no, this would be early 2000s, early 2000, 2000.

3:36 So when L and I—don't know why I did this, Keith. I mean, you just do some things because, like, I mean, you know, maybe God's guiding you, I don't know what, but you just, they just happened. We did this on a 200-acre field and I just kept the field in half and we did half of the field of our normal practice and we did half of the field with this tillage radish event, which eliminated tillage in the fall, eliminated tillage in the spring because I went ahead and treated that as a no-till field, and then we did the normal chemical, the normal fertility, all that stayed the same. But when we got to the end of the growing season and the combine ran, not only was that field the best, that part of the field that had the tillage radish that we know tilled had the best part, or the best yield, it also had the best return on investment because we eliminated those two or three passes of tillage.

4:37 So when I saw this right out of the gate, I'm like, wow, this has got some power, you know? And then you start thinking about how are we going to research this more, how are we going to move this across more acres? Was this a fluke? Is this just a one-time event thing? And then you start becoming a believer of what you're seeing and you start going to conferences, you start talking to more people, and then you just start testing on your own farm, and that's what we did.

5:12 And you're right, it's important to have some success right out of the gate, and that's why, you know, a lot of times when we recommend a cover crop for people, we want them to start relatively simply, relatively bulletproof things that we know are going to work, you know, cereal rye ahead of soybeans for example, is really easy way to start. Then they can graduate because it takes a lot of management. And I love the quote that our common friend Steve Groff, who brought the tillage radish to us, I love it when he says cover crops will make a good farmer better and a bad farmer worse. And he's not saying it's people are bad farmers, but it's all about the management. You have to apply the management just exactly like what you were talking about.

5:57 So talk about how you got from there to, because you weren't organic at that time, right? Talk about a little bit about what drove you to looking at organic as your farming practice. Yeah, I'll tell you the segue into organic was the roller crimper. And I was reading a magazine or I saw an ad for an event that was going to take place in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was being put on by a friend of both of us, Dr. Aaron Silva from the University of.

6:32 Wisconsin and the heading was something like come to Wisconsin and learn how to roller crimp soybeans and rye all together at the same time, and I'm like you're going to do what? So I showed up to this event and there was about 35 other farmers there, and Aaron showed us how to plant green into rye with soybeans at boot stage.

7:03 And 40 days later—roughly, it's not a day thing, it's a maturity growth thing of the rye plant from between boot stage to anthesis. And anthesis is when it's dropping pollen, and at anthesis that's when the cereal rye plant is the most vulnerable to be terminated with a roller crimper. So in that 40 days your soybeans are growing in the cereal rye and then you're rolling it all down, beans and all, and the beans just stand right back up and away we go. And I'm like this is crazy.

7:39 So we went home that next spring and we did 200 acres or 300—I don't remember the exact number—but we did a significant amount and it worked. And now I was a little scared because this is all new. We were still using some chemistry at that time. We had not gone organic yet, and I thought you know what, I'm going to just make one post-pass of a herbicide because I want to make sure I get a soybean crop. I wish we never would have done that because we didn't need to.

8:10 And the next year I think we moved into a thousand acres of doing beans like this, and not one of those thousand got sprayed with chemical. And now I'm like okay, we've got something here. We can make this work. This is the way we're now going to go into organic.

8:32 And then I want to tell you what also happened at about the same time. I don't remember, Keith, if I was in a combine or in a tractor—it doesn't matter where I was—but I got to thinking about the health and the cancer, the diabetes, all of these things that were associated with my family tree. I mean an uncle died of prostate cancer. I had a sister-in-law with cancer. My wife got cancer—breast stage four breast cancer when she was 30. My nephew had non-Hodgkin lymphoma at 23. And you're just thinking, you know, you're getting older. There's grandchildren coming at some point. I mean you don't know for sure, but they're coming.

9:25 And I don't know about you, Keith, but when you get on—I always call it the other side of life. I mean we're on the back side of this journey we're on, and you really look at things differently. Because when you're in the first part of your journey, you're impervious to everything. So you start thinking about how we can start to take these inputs away. You think about the health issues. Aaron or Dr. Silva has shown us the path, and you start to couple all this together. And that's the main reason why I went organic. You know, I didn't go organic because of the price. Now the price is nice, but I went organic because of building human health.

10:07 Human health as two things I look at it as nutrient dense and I look at it as taking the harmful products away from human touch. I did not want my children or my grandchildren being around these skull and crossbone chemicals any longer so that was what really led us to where we are and I love it how God not only helped you identify the problem but he also brought that solution to you at approximately the same time so that you had a path forward and that's just great.

10:47 It is incredible how people show up at the right time, how you run into somebody at a conference, you see an article, you meet somebody somewhere, it's just incredible how everything has lined up and I'm telling you, mother nature, God, whatever you know, it's all the same, has guided me exactly where they want me to go because I'm telling you Keith I have been humbled but at the same time that I've been humbled I've learned some of the most things I could ever possibly learn from that humbling event.

11:23 I sure hope that I have never misled anybody or I hope I've never said that this is all my doing because it's not. This is a culmination of a lot of people and honestly Keith when you think about what we are trying to accomplish today, we are trying to remember everything we have forgotten about farming because what we're trying to do today is what was being done 80 to 100 years ago so we just have to slow down and try to remember how we got to where we are today.

12:07 You know what you're talking about, the people showing up or getting the information, that doesn't just happen. It's kind of like a couple weeks ago we were at an event in Indiana with John, and you and I and John were speaking and he was talking a lot about quorum sensing, yeah, and when enough of those, the right organisms are present then the light switch kicks on and this quorum sensing happens and it all starts operating as one big organism. I think it's the same way with people Rick. Exactly, I think that when you surround yourself with enough of the right people you're going to the right events, you're researching the right things then that light switch kicks on and then all these things start to happen so it's a little bit like an overnight success that you've worked on for 10 years.

13:03 I really like about that is we need to figure out as a group how to move this to a higher acceptance, a higher level of acceptance across not only the United States but the world so we need everyone that's involved and you know there are times when some people's ideas are shot down online pretty hard and we need to stop that because there is not one method, there's not one answer, there's not one system that's going to make this work.

13:41 It's going to be a culmination of a lot of pieces and we have to learn how we can use all of those tools to our advantage and sometimes Keith tillage is that tool. Sometimes, I mean, I've pounded it hard for no tillage but sometimes there needs to be that reset. Now I'm not talking about on a field that's 30% slope that should never be tilled, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not, and I'm also not talking about that we're going to become full-time tillers. I'm just saying that we have to understand how to utilize all those tools and there are a lot of systems out there that are in place that we can pull pieces from. Everybody, so we need to all come together in this quorum sensing collective that you're talking about.

14:27 Yeah, I just love thinking about that concept and how we've seen that work in our own lives and our own experiences. So I appreciate that and I'll just say one other thing, Rick. You know, I really appreciate and admire your willingness to share your information. I know you're very busy, you travel, you speak at lots and lots of different places, always very open and willing to share your story, share your experiences and you'll be the first to say this is what's working for me, may not work for you, but you know, learn from my mistakes. And people in this movement are all that way.

15:06 Yeah, you know, the one thing that really scares me the most about that, Keith, is someone will take me out of context. They won't hear the whole story that I'm telling. They maybe come in at the very end and then they make an opinion or a decision about a perception or something. Those are the things that worry me the most. But I think most people understand that I'm a fairly vanilla type individual. I don't put other people down and I sure don't tell people that they need to farm the way we farm because this is very hard. But I think you can take a couple of pieces of what we're doing and take a couple of pieces of what someone over there's doing and bring it to your farm and the number one thing is to make sure that you do not jeopardize the livelihood of your farm. You cannot just all of a sudden go to a conference and be excited and all ramped up and amped up and hey, we're going to just go, Rick said we're going to cut eliminate inputs. Let's just go do it tomorrow. No, it doesn't work like that. So we've got to go slow and make sure that that farm is still there tomorrow.

16:20 Yeah, I've heard I think it was Tom Robinson from Australia. I heard him say you have to earn the right to reduce or eliminate your inputs and that means you got to build the system in order to do that. And one big way that you've done it and lots of people have done it is through the use of cover crops and so I want to kind of segue over into a bit of the opening that I had there about talking about cover crops and you know, so you know, I asked that question at the.

16:49 Beginning, what's been your best cover crop? And I know the answer, so spoiler, but I think it's a great answer because you really learned some things last year. Yeah, well, I'll try to keep this short and quick. We were most fortunate because of you, Keith, we were most fortunate to have Dr. Christine Jones show up on our farm last year, and she spent two days on the farm, and it was the most eye-opening experience I've ever witnessed. I was the most excited. I mean, this is one of my mentors. I mean, this is a lady who is the queen of ecology, and I don't know what all her titles are, but I mean she—when she's one of those people that when she speaks, you better be quiet and listen to what she has to say. And she said a lot of things over those two days that really opened my eyes, not only about the importance of diversity, the importance of quorum sensing, the importance of following the principles of soil health, all of these things.

18:00 And when she came and stepped onto the farm, I was really looking forward to hearing her positive answers, and she was very blunt. I mean, I wouldn't say she was disappointed with what she saw, but she was hoping that she would see a little more diversity in the springtime than just a single species of legume growing. And by golly, Keith, she was right. When we pulled into that field, I could hear her heart sink, and she just said, 'Oh my gosh, this is just a single legume growing here.' And then my heart sunk, and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I almost wanted to just turn around,' but we went in, and she was right. There was a compaction layer down two, three inches down, right underneath. I mean, Keith, this was a beautiful field of hairy vetch, beautiful, yeah, and there was corn growing in it, and everything was happening like you wanted it to happen.

19:08 Anyway, she then—and I knew this already because you've had these webinars where you've had her on your show, and she talks about nitrogen, getting the right plant groups together, and you don't need a lot of a legume or a lot of numbers of legumes. And all of it now is starting to click. Like, okay, let's rethink this, because I'll be honest with you, Keith, there was a time when you'd stand up there on stage telling the audience, 'Hey, we just planted a 16-way cover crop,' you know, wow. But when you break that 16-way cover crop down, you might have three families inside of that cocktail, and that's just not enough. So between you and I, we are working toward trying to get as many numbers of families represented to get to this quorum sensing that we can. Now, I've got to stop right here and tell and warn everybody though: you have to understand here—what is your termination method next spring on anything that's still?

20:30 Growing that's number one. So for us, Keith, we're trying to do this with either no tillage or very limited tillage. We're organic, we don't use any inputs. Wow, your family list went from this down to this, you know, but that's okay.

20:51 The special, and I'm getting to your answer, what's the best cover crop I've ever raised? It was the cover crop that you and I created last summer. It was put in after a wheat crop, and the growth and the explosion was unbelievable.

21:10 Now I know, again, and Christine also said this, and you got to step back, and she said, folks, this is not about growing the biggest, baddest biomass you can grow. That's not what this is about. This is about getting everything working in harmony and getting that microbial network going.

21:27 I've always said, Keith, I'm not a biologist, I wish I was, but when you look at the formula for photosynthesis, the two things on the right side of that arrow is oxygen and sugar, and those are the two things that we have to maximize pumping into the profile. You're going to only do that when you have all of this solar array taking place with these cover crops.

21:52 What we have, six families in that one? I think, Keith, if you get seven, seven, seven, seven families, and I think you and I can get to 10, and we get to 10, we're still only going to have one or maybe two families that will survive the winters of the Midwest, and you'll have to deal with next spring. But remember, we're trying to do this with no tillage.

22:19 So I have a rule. It's called the 70-30 rule. 70% of our weed suppression is coming from the cover crop, and 30% is coming from the cash crop canopy. So we've got to have enough hanging around next spring to get to that 70-30 rule achievement.

22:43 And by the way, Keith, I want to tell you, I went by a couple of fields yesterday that we did this cocktail in, and the triticale, which was one of the species in there, is already growing. It's about six inches tall, and we've had a lot of up and down weather. We've had 70 degrees and we've had 20 degrees within the last three weeks. So everything is coming now.

23:11 I don't know, and we had some vetch in there, and we also had some nitrogen fixation clover in there, and I don't know yet if they're going to show up to the party, but we'll know that in just a few weeks.

23:25 And just for a bit of context for people that may not be quite as familiar with the plant families, what Rick was referring to was that every legume you could ever think of, everything from alfalfa to clover to vetch to peas, soybeans, one plant family. All of them, one. So you could have six legumes in your mix, and you still only have one plant family.

23:50 Every grass, oats, barley, sorghum, millet, corn, sorghum, all of them one plant family. And then all of the brassicas, radishes, turnips, collards, the whole gamut, one plant family. So you can have like you were talking about 15-way mix, but if it's only from those three groups, you've only got three plant families, and that's what Christine was.

27:36 Family, there's something going on here with the Daisy family. I mean it was just constant, and I think also Keith, again, I don't know, we've got a wide variety of listeners here. If you are a farmer that still is using chemistry, great, that's great. Then you need to not only be having warm season, cool season, you need annuals and perennials. Because I asked you that question in that meeting: what percent of these cocktails you create are annuals? And it was over 95%. Yes, there is diversity there, but we're still limited on annuals to perennials. They all bring a different exudate to the microbial biome, and that microbial biome needs all of that. So it's again, it's not rocket science. It's going back in time. What was happening on all of these fields that were being grazed by all the animals, the bison and all of those things? It was a combination of multiple species, hundreds, annuals, perennials. I mean it was all of these things. So we just have to understand how to get back to working with Mother Nature.

28:52 Yeah, and you know Christine has referenced those native prairies and what it would have been like when settlers came, and she made the comment too that 80 to 90%—I don't think she's talking about by biomass but by number of species, were forms. And that's what we're talking about right here. So buckwheat, flax, sunflower, safflower, these are all would be categorized in that forb family, and we had those in that mix. We got you up to seven plant families, and I think both you and I, our goal for this coming year is to try to get you to 10. We can do that by adding some things like sesame, which is a completely different family, and okra would be another completely different family. And maybe, you know, real low amounts of some like chia or even fella, again in the borage family. So there's, we don't have to load the box with quite so much.

30:01 We had a little round table discussion last night, and one of the guys that was on there said, yeah, I did a 25-way mix last year. This is one of our customers in Kansas, and he said, and I did it for just a little over $30 an acre. Yeah, and it's like, well, that's incredible, because he doesn't have to load up on every single thing. In fact, you don't want to. You can overcrowd, you know. So it's about choosing the right things at the right amounts and planting it at the right time. Yeah, that's right. You know, and I'm going to tell you, I'll give a little tidbit of what I'm thinking about doing this spring. And again, this isn't something that nobody—there's a lot of people doing this stuff. But we're going to put some flats and we're going to put some buckwheat together into some corn and maybe some beans as well. And we're going to also put in, we're going to bring the

30:51 Three sisters back and we're, and this is all with your help green cover. I mean folks, this is the plate green covers you go to put your order in and get your seat. I don't know how many species you've got there Keith, probably over 200. I don't know, maybe it's more than that, but it's a bunch. Keith has never yet not been able to supply me something that I asked for, but we're going to put the squash and the beans and the corn together. I mean, we have to do this. This is the future of farming. We have to understand how to co-mingle these crops together and either find a buyer that will buy that co-mingled product when you harvest it at the end of the year or get a cleaning system and clean the crop and separate the crops out and sell them as individuals. That is the future of where we're going to really take this regenerative movement in my opinion.

31:44 Or like in your case, a lot of what you're talking about doing are going to be species that will live as a companion with the corn, but then they'll eventually kind of die off or go through their cycle and won't really be an issue with your corn harvest. So that's a great option too, right?

32:02 And then you've got some cattle and you've got sheep, and if you can grow any of these squash or cucumbers or melons, I mean they'll go crazy on that stuff after harvest. Yes, I'm sure that a lot of these guys who are doing 60 inch rows that are also grazers are doing the exact things we're talking about. And I don't know if I want to get to that kind of system. You never know, but I'm going to tell you I think another thing that we should be doing more of here is this relay cropping notion.

32:35 Now I'm doing it to some degree where we will have a solid field of a cereal grain growing and then we'll come in in the spring and we will plant a soybean or a pea into that and then we'll harvest off the top, which we're running over the beans or the peas with a combine, and then we'll come back in the fall. We're doing that or we're letting them grow together and harvesting together. But I'm kind of, I've never tried this 20 inch row spacing that we're planning. We're spacing 20 inch rows and plant the cereal rye in the fall with the 20 inch row planter and come in in the spring and set over 10 inch and plant the cash crop in between. I want to try some of that because I feel like that is a great way to continually have a living root growing as many days out of the year as possible.

33:34 Yeah, well, you just need to go down the road to your fellow Indianan there Jason M. He's kind of leading the charge in that area. Maybe we'll have to have him on the podcast because he's a fascinating guy to listen to and talk to. Yeah, he really has thought it through and has got, you know, I was at his field day a number of years ago and yeah, it's just a cool system.

33:58 Yeah, I mean there are a lot of smart people that are not afraid to try something new, and that's what this takes. I mean, a lot of the, if you would ask most, if not all.

34:08 Of your farmers that you have on this podcast, they are all probably doing trials on their own farm and learning from their own mistakes and their own system because just because I say so doesn't mean it's going to necessarily work in your context. You have to try this on your operation at small scale, and I'm sure everyone, including Jason, is trying something all the time.

34:43 I want to just bring out one more point Rick, and then we'll kind of bring this to a close. All of the things that you're talking about doing with this diversity, you know, having 10 families in there to get all this great diversity and all this growth, you're not going to be able to do that if you're strictly in a corn soybean rotation, right?

35:03 The reason is you can't plant warm season crops in October. When I describe what we're doing on our farm, the crops that we're raising is corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, peas, milo, buckwheat, cover crops, sheep, and cattle. Well, right there inside of what I just said, there's two ways to get these established. I said we raised a cereal grain in there—you do not double crop another crop behind that cereal grain. And I said livestock: pull your livestock off your grazing field soon enough to go out and get this 10-family cocktail established in late summer.

35:54 I'm in West Central Indiana. This cocktail that Unite created needs to be planted to fully utilize what it can do for you, needs to be planted by the third week of August at the latest. I prefer the second week of August. Do that in a corn bean rotation. The other way that we do this—we've got three ways to do this—and I call it a regen year sometimes. We take an acre out of production because it's fallen behind in the system. It winds up being that last field harvested, it's the last field planted in the spring. All you can do is a single species monocrop cereal rye, which by the way might be more harmful than a single species monocrop that I found. I mean you can rely on one species too much, and I think that's part of the compaction issues that Christine experienced—not only the legume single species but too many years of a cereal run because that's the only choice we have in October in the Midwest.

37:04 You have to understand that the cover crop—let me start over. I've got a saying: the success of next year's cash crop starts with the success of this year's cover crop. It's that important. So yes, you are not going to get this in a corn soybean rotation. Again, I would imagine Keith, that when I look at the principles of soil health, my number one is diversity, and that diversity is not only with you.

37:40 You used to have four plants in your cocktail and now you've got 10. Yes, that is diversity, but now you need to get annuals and perennials, warm season, cool season. You need more than two crops in your rotation. The cash crop is diversity. You need diversity of the people that are in your life. Diversity is everything, all encompassing.

38:03 That's a fantastic point, and you know, just so spot on with how God has created us, not to live in isolation. And he didn't create plants to grow in isolation. I just love how that synergism comes together. As we kind of wrap this up, Rick, I like to just ask people a last question. You know, somebody just getting started, somebody just going down this path, what would be one piece of advice you'd have for them to help them get started?

38:34 The Internet is alive with a lot of ideas. Go out and try to find some people that you trust and that you understand and that you become one with, because you can tell there's certain styles that people like and certain styles you don't like. Take a couple of ideas and try them on a small scale. Keith, you have one of the best tools created for this—your calculator that builds your cocktails, that shows you everything about that. Is it a heavy legume or what's the carbon to nitrogen ratio? All of these things you are telling in that calculator. So it's an easy way to build a two or three species cocktail. That would be my recommendation if you're getting started: two or three species. And then again, what is the method of termination? If it's chemical, then there's nothing in your lineup that you should be afraid of. If it's less chemical and less disturbance, then you got to be a little more careful on which species you pick.

39:51 Well, thank you again, Rick, for all of this great information. I look forward to working with you on building this ten family mix. We're going to have to ratchet that goal up every year, so it's going to get harder and harder, but I look forward to working with you on that. Maybe we'll have you back on down the road and we can have an update on how that one went.

40:10 Thank you, Keith. Thank you. It's an honor. Good luck, and thanks, and good luck everybody. Number one thing for 2025 is everyone please be safe.

40:23 My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska, but we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed, put into the right diverse mixes, along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today, and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations.