In organic farming, farmers routinely plant green and delay termination of the cover crop for weeks after planting soybeans because they can achieve greater weed control and thus higher yields by doing so. Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania and Erin Silva’s lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison have led the way on this research. Silva discovered that with a fixed termination date for the cover crop, but varied soybean planting before and after this termination, the soybeans planted before cover crop termination saw an 8 bushel per acre increase as compared to the soybeans planted later after cover crop termination.
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