Cover crop seedlings coming up in healthy soil with a wheat stubble residue cover. Paul Hetland farms in western Davison and eastern Aurora Counties in South Dakota with this field in a corn, soybean, wheat rotation with a strip till cropping system. Paul designed the cover crops mix for this particular field to complement his crop rotation. The mixture is 15 percent crimson clover, 20 percent oats, 15 percent common vetch, 25 percent radish, and 25 percent New York-style turnip. Cover crops are an excellent addition to a cropping system and they serve many purposes, from fixing nitrogen to addressing compaction to providing forage for livestock. Click on the image for a larger view and source information.
Image credit: Colette Kessler, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), South Dakota. CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons.