Cover Crop Role

Idaho NRCS State Agronomist Marlon Winger pointed out the importance of cover crops for Idaho farmers. "Maximize the diverse of the of plants in the rotation and use cover crops to help maximize that diversity. A crop that is currently not in your rotation. We have a cover crop periodic table. Do you remember in chemistry, how they had the periodic table set up? Yes sir. We have developed the periodic table of cover crops. It is basically a crop that is not in your rotation and you put that cover crop, it's an alternative, behind your winter wheat for example. Any time the ground has not got a living crop in it, then you can put a crop in it. Let's say that it is winter wheat and your next crop is corn planted May 15th, well you should have a living plant growing in that soil from August 15th till you get ready to plant your corn. And the reason behind that is that different crops extract different nutrients from the soil? Yes but they are also constantly feeding the soil microbial world. The live plant photo synthesizes and that is how these microbes get carbon in their system is through photosynthesis. You have to have a living plant to photosynthesize. These plants leak out exudates. They grow of course but those exudates are what feed those microbes."