Winter rye and clover, managed rightly, strengthen the bottom line while building ecological capital
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned is that soil fertility doesn’t have to come in a bag with a barcode. I can grow it myself. Instead of depending on exogenous (off-site) inputs like synthetic nitrogen or phosphorus shipped from hundreds or thousands of miles away, I build soil health right here on the farm using cover crops and strategic plow-down techniques. A prime example is my use of winter rye and clover.
Every fall as my main annual crop comes off (corn, beans, squash, potatoes), I seed winter rye (or wheat or triticale) as a winter cover crop. The rye anchors the soil, scavenges leftover nutrients to be bound as biomass, and suppresses weeds. In late winter/early spring I frost-seed a mixture of white, red and yellow sweet clover and hairy vetch on top of the young grain.
I grow the grains to maturity; they can produce two to three tons of straw per acre, releasing up to 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre as it decays. The high-carbon straw doesn’t lock up nitrogen because it’s under sown with clover and no heavy feeder will be planted there until the following season. Upon harvest of the grain, the clover sprouts up through the rye straw and I let it go to seed. When the clover has set seed, I either mow it or roll it, adding an additional one to three tons of organic matter per acre and 100-150 pounds of nitrogen to the soil.
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