By Jordan Keller
With assistance from the Ohio Department of Agriculture and cooperation from a local producer, Richland SWCD installed two overwintering cover crop demonstration plots after the harvest of a soybean crop in Fall of 2025. Following harvest, the field was lightly tilled by the producer to allow for better seed-soil contact. On September 24, 2025, we broadcast a rye/oat cover crop mix at a rate of ~60 pounds per acre (lbs/ac) across 0.1ac of the lightly tilled farmland. Then on October 8, 2025, we broadcast a rye-only cover crop at ~60lbs/ac on a 0.1ac plot directly adjacent to the first plot. The plots were monitored bi-weekly until going dormant at the end of November. The following is what we’ve observed so far:
- We initially had some volunteer soybeans act as a cover crop while our first planting of rye/oats got established. The volunteer soybeans died back after the first hard frost.
- The rye broadcast on Oct. 8 did not germinate well and that plot is sparsely covered as a result.
- Going into dormancy, the rye/oats plot had an estimated coverage of 44% with average height of the rye grass around 7 inches. It does not appear that the oats germinated. The rye-only plot had an estimated coverage of 2% with an average height of 2 inches headed into dormancy.
We will revisit the plots this Spring as they come out of dormancy and continue our biweekly monitoring until the cover crops are terminated. For cover crop rates and seeding dates reference NRCS appendix A. The goal of the demonstration is to gain a better understanding of the overall impact of NRCS appendix A (download below) cover crop seeding dates and rates across Ohio.
