Roller Crimper

[Wind Gypsy]

Was just considering the effects of roller crimping over the various types of clovers (red vs white and crimson, Balnaasa, etc) and vetches and different small grains.......and came across this article that summizes some of these concerns. A good read if your learning about roller crimpers and termination and timing of such things. I feel I am getting closer to being successful with my "rotation" but another year may give other results. Fun. More discussion on types of plants that will survive or terminate is likely good for us.

I was considering moving away from white clovers to keep my cost down......and plant more crimson and Balansa, and Berseem......but that may not be such a good idea unless I plant them just prior to crimping in the spring. Some of those have a hollow stem - which are the very plants that crimping kills most easily.

Killer Tips for Rolling Your Covers

“When conditions are right, rolling cover crops and not using herbicides can work about one out of five times,” says Holtwood, Pa., no-tiller Steve Groff, who’s been rolling and crimping covers since 1995. “One out of five times it’ll be a disaster, and three out of five it’ll be in the middle...

www.covercropstrategies.com

I would have looked at the annual clovers getting terminated as a good thing allowing the summer/fall planting to take hold without living competition.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Everything I see here I think you are right Gypsy. In a way I’m jealous you only have to do one planting cycle.

I think you got me and @Wild Thing mixed up but I agree with you. It's convenient that planting once a year works well with the growing season length!

 

[Brian662]

I wonder where that line happens to be for the single planting. I crushed my rye in SE MN last year in mid June. I don't normally plant my fall plantings until early to mid August.
I don't think I could swing it. I believe I'd have to plant some kind of summer soil builder/release and then plant fall plots into those in early August unfortunately.

 

[omicron1792]

I think you got me and @Wild Thing mixed up but I agree with you. It's convenient that planting once a year works well with the growing season length!

I sure did my man. Wild thing not a bad one to get confused with though. Dude has a nice drill

 

[omicron1792]

I wonder where that line happens to be for the single planting. I crushed my rye in SE MN last year in mid June. I don't normally plant my fall plantings until early to mid August.
I don't think I could swing it. I believe I'd have to plant some kind of summer soil builder/release and then plant fall plots into those in early August unfortunately.

That looks great

 

[Wild Thing]

I would have looked at the annual clovers getting terminated as a good thing allowing the summer/fall planting to take hold without living competition.

That is definitely a good trait Wind Gypsy, and is exactly why I have been trying out different clovers to find a happy medium between clovers that over winter well in order to feed my deer in the spring, but can still be terminated easily without having to use 2-4,D which has a residual effect. Medium Red Clover is one that I have always liked and included in all of my mixes, but it is really tough to terminate. Sometimes that is a good trait and other times - not so good…

 

[Wild Thing]

I sure did my man. Wild thing not a bad one to get confused with though. Dude has a nice drill

LOL - Happy to hear that you like my drill Omicron!

 

[Foggy47]

That is definitely a good trait Wind Gypsy, and is exactly why I have been trying out different clovers to find a happy medium between clovers that over winter well inorder to feed my deer in the spring, but can still be terminated easily without having to use 2-4,D which has a residual effect. Medium Fed Clover is one that I have always liked and in cluded in all of my mixes, but it is really tough to terminate. Sometimes that is a good trait and other times - not so good…

BINGO! Same goes for white clover.

 

[Wild Thing]

I wonder where that line happens to be for the single planting. I crushed my rye in SE MN last year in mid June. I don't normally plant my fall plantings until early to mid August.
I don't think I could swing it. I believe I'd have to plant some kind of summer soil builder/release and then plant fall plots into those in early August unfortunately.

My fall planted cover crops will almost always have some clovers included with the rye….and probably some Hairy Vetch as well. In many cases I will leave it go to continue feeding my deer and to provide fawning cover until I am ready to plant brassicas in early to mid-July. I am in Upper Michigan.

I have also let a fall planted cover crop go until August when the rye seed heads have matured to where I can just mow it with a rotary mower to scatter the seed and get another free crop of rye to supplement the clovers and vetch - essentially getting 2 years of crops for one planting.

Here it is the following June 11th. I can see Med Red Clover, Crimson Clover, Hairy Vetch, and of course the rye which all overwintered well for me in Zone 4.


August 7th when I mowed it with my brush hog…


All of this nice thatch helps keep weeds at bay, insulates my soil, provides a moisture barrier to retain water, and eventually breaks down adding nutrients back into my soil to keep feeding my plants.



With some timely rain I had fresh rye coming up only 9 days later on August 16th…


August 30th - a little over a year after I planted the original cover crop and I have fresh rye and clover…and even a little vetch still feeding my deer. After planting this the previous fall I added no additional seed, no fertilizer…no nothing. All I did was mow it once the following August. The following summer I terminated this and planted brassicas.

 

[Foggy47]

^ Beautiful pics and outstanding plots! But tell me.....didn't you get a shit-ton of rye by just mowing it down for seed? No Experience......I've just read you don't want to do that.....due to the heavy rate.

 

[Wild Thing]

^ Beautiful pics and outstanding plots! But tell me.....didn't you get a shit-ton of rye by just mowing it down for seed? No Experience......I've just read you don't want to do that.....due to the heavy rate.

Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. It all depends upon how heavy a rate you planted the original rye at, and it also depends upon the timing of when you mow it. If I wait until late August to mow it, all of the seed will be viable and the vast majority of it will germinate. In this case I mowed it on August 7th and I am sure a lot of the seed was not ripe enough to germinate yet. I had also used a lighter rate of rye in my 12-seed mix when I planted it so that factored in as well.

That being said, I am one of those guys who actually believes that you can never have too much thatch. I love heavy thatch.

Here is the same field as pictured above a year or two earlier. This was planted at a fairly heavy rate of rye the previous fall.


I dont have a roller/crimper but my old cultipacker does a fairly good job of rolling it down. This was on July 8th.




A few extra passes and it is plenty flat enough for me to plant with my no-till drill. I drilled this the very next day and had a beautiful crop of brassicas come right up through all this thatch. Perfect IMO.

 

[SD51555]

I may end up trying to roll my nurse plot that's full of vetch. I wonder if that wouldn't slow that stuff down if those seeds weren't shattered with a mower. My hairy vetch comes back too damn thick to let much else play with it. I've gotta think that through some more maybe. I like the look of a rolled field, but I also want to make sure my yellow sweet clover can volunteer too.

On the flip side, the goat mower I've used the past couple years never had enough snort to shatter the rye heads, so I got practically zero free rye out of the deal.

 

[Wild Thing]

I may end up trying to roll my nurse plot that's full of vetch. I wonder if that wouldn't slow that stuff down if those seeds weren't shattered with a mower. My hairy vetch comes back too damn thick to let much else play with it. I've gotta think that through some more maybe. I like the look of a rolled field, but I always want to make sure my yellow sweet clover can volunteer too.

On the flip side, the goat mower I've used the past couple years never had enough snort to shatter the rye heads, so I got practically zero free rye out of the deal.

I usually only include 1# - 2# per acre of Hairy Vetch In my cover crop mixes. I can imagine that if you plant at a higher rate it could get pretty thick.

 

[Foggy47]

^ WT.....I assume you drilled with the direction of the rolled rye in those pics above....correct? Your pics show you had a plan to do so. I've read bad things about hair-pinning and plugging if your not careful. That is a big reason I have been trying to plant green (or chemically killed) into the standing rye crop with my drill.....and then roll it down after the seeds are drilled. Unsure how well I can penetrate the thatch if I drill after rolling. (I'm using a conventional drill to no-till. Experiments to follow this summer.)

 

[omicron1792]

My fall planted cover crops will almost always have some clovers included with the rye….and probably some Hairy Vetch as well. In many cases I will leave it go to continue feeding my deer and to provide fawning cover until I am ready to plant brassicas in early to mid-July. I am in Upper Michigan.

I have also let a fall planted cover crop go until August when the rye seed heads have matured to where I can just mow it with a rotary mower to scatter the seed and get another free crop of rye to supplement the clovers and vetch - essentially getting 2 years of crops for one planting.

Here it is the following June 11th. I can see Med Red Clover, Crimson Clover, Hairy Vetch, and of course the rye which all overwintered well for me in Zone 4.
View attachment 51318

August 7th when I mowed it with my brush hog…
View attachment 51319

All of this nice thatch helps keep weeds at bay, insulates my soil, provides a moisture barrier to retain water, and eventually breaks down adding nutrients back into my soil to keep feeding my plants.

View attachment 51320

With some timely rain I had fresh rye coming up only 9 days later on August 16th…
View attachment 51321

August 30th - a little over a year after I planted the original cover crop and I have fresh rye and clover…and even a little vetch still feeding my deer. After planting this the previous fall I added no additional seed, no fertilizer…no nothing. All I did was mow it once the following August. The following summer I terminated this and planted brassicas.
View attachment 51322

You’ve found out the secret. How awesome.

Up north this is exactly what I would do. Let my crop go to seed and stand all season until fall planting. You would not need to add much seed, if any, to keep crops going in perpetuity. If something was ever thin, just frost seed and plant some extra grain the next spring.

I have a sneaky suspicion that for a lot of the people pushing regen at, they are wanting your to double crop to sell more seed. I have a great long summer season to do it in, but reading the throw and mow thread crimson and camo does exactly what you do in the south. I think we get more summer weeds that grow into the mix, but they easily terminate with mowing and the change of season in the fall. Also, those weeds do a great, and free, job of repairing the soil.

 

[omicron1792]

^ Beautiful pics and outstanding plots! But tell me.....didn't you get a shit-ton of rye by just mowing it down for seed? No Experience......I've just read you don't want to do that.....due to the heavy rate.

I think that’s because they want to sell you more seed each year instead of you using what you grow.

Is there such thing as “too much” rye? Seriously.

 

[Wild Thing]

^ WT.....I assume you drilled with the direction of the rolled rye in those pics above....correct? Your pics show you had a plan to do so. I've read bad things about hair-pinning and plugging if your not careful. That is a big reason I have been trying to plant green (or chemically killed) into the standing rye crop with my drill.....and then roll it down after the seeds are drilled. Unsure how well I can penetrate the thatch if I drill after rolling. (I'm using a conventional drill to no-till. Experiments to follow this summer.)

Yes - I always drill in the same direction that I roll it down in. I have planted green, planted after rolling, after mowing and have had excellent results with all of them. My drill is a true no-till drill though, as pictured in my avatar.

 

[omicron1792]

Yes - I always drill in the same direction that I roll it down in. I have planted green, planted after rolling, after mowing and have had excellentvresults with all of them. My drill is a true no-till drill though, as ouctured in my avatar.

There you go bragging on that drill! Haha

 

[SD51555]

I usually only include 1# - 2# per acre of Hairy Vetch In my cover crop mixes. I can imagine that if you plant at a higher rate it could get pretty thick.

I lost control of my yard plot (the one I watch from the kitchen table) I started in 2020. Between vetch and quackgrass and burdock, it's about gone. I need to restart that one this spring and get that vetch out. That might make for a good new thread.

 

[Foggy47]

I lost control of my yard plot (the one I watch from the kitchen table) I started in 2020. Between vetch and quackgrass and burdock, it's about gone. I need to restart that one this spring and get that vetch out. That might make for a good new thread.

This is why I have not tried vetch (yet). I've read that is is pretty aggressive, invasive, and hard to manage and to plant into with a drill.....yadda yada.