Can you get drunk on Cover Crop Cocktails?

Maybe! We''ve done so much work to understand and implement cover cropping that sometimes I feel like we're kinda spinning a bit, so maybe too many cocktails???

We've had requests to know what we've planted and are planning on planting so I'm going to give you the rundown. We've really planted way more often than we intend to in the future, but we've been trying to kick start things and also to use many different plants to see if there are some that really work better or worse for us. Here are some of our mixes, both at the north place and our home place.

Our North pivots got the following mix this fall. We needed simply to supplement what had been seeded already. The previous mixes included both some perennials and some hard seeded varieties and so we wanted to give ourselves something that would jump up in the spring, choke out some weeds, and then fall back as the warm season plants come on in June after we graze this seeding.

We planted the following for our warm season mix this summer and got fantastic results. For more information see our other post called Now we're cooking with peanut oil.

We planted the following at home with the intent of improving the soil and harvesting a Fall Rye crop next summer, both for seed and for sale. We recognized that some of the plants would do nothing but improve our soils, but feel that the long term benefit is worth it. Depending on the year we may take an early graze (or bale) off it (with non - organic cattle) and then harvest it later. We know that the Fall Rye will likely be the only thing to really flourish after the cold winter we're having, but we'll see.

Keep posted! We're looking at many of the plants we've mentioned for 2017 and beyond, but are planning on including some or all of the plants below in one or another seeding. We're looking to establish rich, perennial pastures that include warm and cool season plants, but will supplement them with some annuals to achieve production goals. We also plan on allowing a portion of our place to go right to seed every year. For example, we let a half pivot of our warm season mix mature and it really produced some seed. We'll see what we get from it next summer. As Gabe Brown says, we plan to have one failure a year.

Remount Sainfoin

Lana Woollypod Vetch

Barrel Medic

Appin Turnips

more Cowpeas

other varieties of soybeans

Big and also Birdsfoot Trefoil

We have another half dozen under consideration and would like to hear the experience of other folks!