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Study provides insights to how cover crops and manure work together

Three years of research has yielded valuable data on how cover crops and manure work together.

University of Minnesota Extension specialist Melissa Wilson says she’s wrapping up an extensive study that used different locations, crop rotations, cover crop species, and manure types.

“In the soybean, corn rotation, it didn’t matter if there was a cover crop or if we used just fertilizer or if we used manure with a little bit of starter fertilizer, all the results were the same. So that’s really promising in that regard, like it didn’t seem to be much we could do to harm yield.”

She tells Brownfield another important finding is plots with manure applied late fall yielded significantly better than plots fertilized in the spring.

“Corn after corn, which the corn that follows the corn tends to be really nutrient responsive, but the manure was actually causing a yield increase. In the one year it was like a 30 bushel per-acre yield increase.”

Wilson says the study validates how valuable manure can be as a nutrient source, and that cover crops can allow for applications in otherwise unsuitable conditions when timing is key.

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