Ag Report By Andy Kleinschmidt OSU Extension Ag Agent

Cover crops and hay options   

    Now is an excellent time to be planting a cover crop into wheat stubble fields. There is ample time to utilize the growing degree days that are available between now and a killing frost to capture excess soil nutrients, produce emergency forage, add organic matter, and relieve soil compaction with a cover crop. Some of the non-legume cover crop choices include: oats, cereal rye, annual rye, oilseed radish, and wheat. Summer seeded legume cover crops include: winter pea, red clover, crimson clover, hairy vetch, soybean, and cowpea. Many of the legume species require over wintering and producing significant spring growth in order to supply significant amounts of nitrogen.

    Oilseed Radish is a new cover crop being tested in Ohio. We feel it is best suited when planted after a summer manure application. This cover crop needs to be planted by September and will winter kill naturally.

    As forage supplies remain tight, an option would be planting oats for forage harvest or grazing. Late seeded oats can be seeded after wheat harvest or inter-seeded with corn or soybeans with aerial application. Oats is an attractive forage alternative because: it is a low cost seed; requires little additional fertilizer; tolerates dry conditions; produces good tonnage; naturally winterkills.

    Unlike spring oats, which are planted in March or April, head out in June and die soon after maturing, late season oats no longer produce seeds. As a result, all of the energy is put into leaf production (the source of dry matter protein). Oats will continue to grow until a significant freeze stops them, which in some cases can be as late as the end of December. Late-season oats can be grazed in the field, baled like hay, or ensiled.