Farmers Build Their Own Interseeder for Cover Crops
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
A father-son farming duo from Wisconsin recently built a 12-row interseeder to plant cover crops into a standing crop. Aaron Augustian say that, as far as they know, it’s the first 12-row interseeder in existence.
Augustian… “It's a new technology that we're doing here with this cover crop system. We wait to the corn gets to about V4, V 5, which is maybe a foot to 16 inches tall, and then we're going in between the corn rows and we're planting a multi-species cover crop of clovers, annual ryegrasses, and some hairy vetches, that when we harvest the corn off, we will already have our cover crop up and growing. So, it saves us a lot of time in fall, and then we have our green cover for when we want to go and spread manure in fall.”
The unit includes an air delivery system that sends the seed out into each row unit. They can then set the right depth to plant in between the rows of corn.
Augustian… “The idea of building a 30-foot, 12-row interseeder, my father took my idea and took it to fruition: Went through the shop, put about 120-130 hours into this interseeder, designing, making plans, working with the machine shops, getting parts made, and a couple of our employees helped my father assemble it. We had all the parts here at the beginning of June, and, in about two-and-a-half, three weeks, they had the machine out the door and running. So, I have to give all my compliments to my father and the employees there at the farm to get this thing rolling.”
The cover is established and preserves moisture and nutrients in the top soil for future crops.
