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Crimping Cover Crops to Grow Alfalfa
Updated: Dec 19, 2020
Erin and Wayne Harris of Kootenay Meadows Farm, Creston, BC, take us along as they experiment with crimping a fall rye cover crop to reseed a field to an alfalfa-sainfoin-legume-grass forage blend.
What is crimping? Why two seeders trained together? Erin and Wayne walk us through the reasons they are trying this new way to establish forage, and ways they hope to improve the system.
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 — due out early 2021 — will join Erin to look at establishment of the young plants and discuss successes and failures.
Produced by Andrew Bennett of the Kootenay and Boundary Farm Advisors and Living Lands Agroecology.
Watch the video here:
Contents
00:00 Intro
00:13 Erin Harris: Why and How
00:31 Establish Fall Rye
00:59 Crimped Mulch Benefits
01:44 Dryland Trials
02:29 Why Two Seeders?
03:06 Crimper Front vs Rear?
03:30 Extra Corner Crimping
03:54 Last Year's Lessons
04:24 Crimp Hard (but don't cut)
04:53 Diverse Forage Seed
05:27 Seed Drill — Set the Depth
06:32 Seed Drill — Set the Rate
07:17 The Lodging Problem
08:08 Brad Welds on a Rake
08:42 Brad Built the Crimper
09:01 Measuring Biomass
09:40 Rye Too Thick?
10:03 Rake is Ready!
10:21 Trying the Rake