Winterhawk Annual Ryegrass: Cold Hardy Cover Crop for Spring Grazing

0:03 One of the annual ryegrass varieties is one that we don't typically think of as being planted after the middle of October, but this is overwintered here quite well. This is a diploid type, which means it's the more minor hardy, so like winter hawk or KB royal are examples of diploid.

0:26 Type ryegrass—is that have the best cold tolerance? A lot of times we don't recommend this to be planted after the 1st of October up here in Nebraska just simply because ryegrass needs to get better establishment before it goes into the winter dormancy in order to survive. So whereas cereal rye could be planted.

0:46 In December annual rye grass has to kind of get some roots down and be established in order to make it through. So this did very well, really came on fast in the spring once it started warming up. As you can see in my grass is a much finer stem to plant than what cereal rye is. It does not get nearly as

1:05 Tall now this has already gone to head. So we would have wanted to have terminated this far, far earlier. It's much easier to plant it in to because they're significantly less biomass. The thing that makes this such a great cover crop is even though this is only maybe 30% the height of that cereal rye, the

1:24 Root system is probably equally as deep as that 5 foot tall rye it has. It may not get as deep as rye, but the density, especially in the surface layers, this tends to take wetter soils and heavier clay than the cereals. Much more tolerant of wet, heavy clay.

1:47 Some other advantages of the rye grass.

1:51 It will regrow after grazing very well. Rye grass is used as a long dress because it recovers from frequent close mowing over and over again. It maintains, it doesn't green up as early as the cereals but maintains quality later. It's a very nutritious plant, a mixture of.

2:16 Ride and annual ryegrass to get the best of both worlds. One drawback of dry grass it is harder to terminate then rot either with herbicide. It seems to be much more resistant to Roundup than what rise or any of the other winter cereals and a lot of that if you look at this leaf.

3:03 Absolutely critical for killing rye grass. There's a lot of good information on the internet about how to kill rye grass, but you have to really pay attention to the weather and have the right conditions or you're just wasting your money. Yeah, 450 degrees, add additional surfactant ammonium.

3:22 Sulfate is really critical and do not take mix with atrazine or sharpen. That's a couple big no-nos. Don't spray on a cloudy day. Don't spray late in the day. Yeah, and part of it is that waxy cuticle, but it's also a very very deep and extensive root system and you don't have near as much.

3:40 Plant area to translocate that chemical down to kill that red sis themselves. It's a great cover crop, you know, if we can get it over winter like this every year I'd sure recommend a lot more of it up here, but definitely as you go south or as you move east into wetter areas.

3:58 There's a lot of this that's blown in prior to harvest. On both seeding rate is much, much lower. I mean you're looking at 20–25 pounds for a pierced and rate versus, you know, 60, 80, 90 on some of the cereals. So for aerial seeding where it's nice to get as many acres as you can out of one tank, there's a lot of rye grass used for aerial seeding. Smaller seed germinates from the surface better than most.