Allamakee County Soil and Water Conservation District awarded grant funding for cover crop interseeding project

We are excited to announce that the Allamakee County Soil and Water Conservation District has been awarded $235,907.00, for a three-year project, that involves interseeding cover crops into V4-V7 Corn. The funding for this project came from the USDA Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) program.

Short planting windows after commodity crop harvest has some producers frustrated and looking at other methods of getting cover crops established. One option is interseeding cover crops into corn between the V4-V7 growth stages. Doing this allows cover crops to get established prior to corn canopy.  After canopy the cover crop will go dormant from being shaded out and then restart growth once the corn is harvested. The overall goal of this project is to get more producers to try interseeding as an option for cover crop establishment.

Fifteen producers throughout Allamakee county have stepped forward with interest in participating in the project. They will be using several different seeding methods including no-till drill, broadcast spreader, and an air seeder attached to a modified rotary hoe. Each grower will also be choosing from 4 different seed mixes including species such as rye grass, buckwheat, brassica, and cow peas. 

A minimum of 4 replicated strip trials will be done at each site. The main components of the project will be evaluating yield, cover crop biomass, nutrient uptake, soil microbiology, and soil loss. Temperature loggers will be installed in an interseeded and not interseeded row with each participant to gauge season long differences in soil temperature. Haney soil tests will be run for every producer and if they continue for multiple years will be used again to gauge any soil health improvements.

The Allamakee Soil and Water Conservation District is one of two conservation districts selected to be a part of the CIG program. There was a total of 19 projects selected and about 12.5 million in funds awarded. A large portion of the funds available went to university programs.