How no-till and cover crops work together in northern Minnesota

Mikayla and Benjamin Tabert’s diverse farm near Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, is living proof no-till/cover crop systems can thrive in the north. Farming in far western Minnesota, just 80 miles south of the Canadian border with Mikayla’s parents, David and Peggy Miller, the Taberts grow as many as seven cash crops along with cover crops on nearly every acre. The family integrates cattle into the complex cropping system as well.

“Growing as many crops as we do, we’re definitely not the norm for our area,” says Mikayla Tabert. “The diverse rotation, cover crops, and cattle help us build soil health and improve profitability.”

The family uses every window of opportunity to keep crops growing in timely sequences to improve efficiency. In addition, weaving cattle into every nook and cranny of the system lets them make best use of cover crops and crop residues for cattle feed.

They grow corn, soybeans, spring wheat, sunflowers, tall fescue for grass seed, alfalfa, and peaola, a field pea and canola intercrop. They no-till all the farm’s 1,300 acres of cropland. Their 150 beef cows graze 550 acres of pastureland in summer, and cover crops and crop residue in fall and early winter.

It Often Starts With Winter Rye

The Taberts’ sequence of crops and cover crops is flexible, but typically begins with drilling winter rye as a cover crop into soybean stubble. They plant the rye in paired rows 7.5 inches apart, leaving a 22.5-inch spacing between the twin rows.

“We will plant the rye as late as mid- to late October,” says Tabert. Despite the early frosts of their northern location, rye seeded by mid-October “will get one or two leaves up” by the onset of winter, she says. “But the sooner [we can plant the rye], the better.”

The rye takes off the following spring, growing to a height of 4 inches by mid-May under cool conditions. The Taberts plant the corn in 30-inch rows into the rye and terminate the cover crop after planting the corn.

To establish a more diverse cover crop requiring warm weather to get started, they interseed a multispecies mix into standing corn. They plant the cover crop in the corn the middle to the end of June, aiming for a leaf stage of V4 to V5. Planting the cover at that stage of corn growth gives the seedlings time to get started before the corn canopies and restricts the sunlight available to the seedlings.

The Taberts seed the cover crop mix at the same time as they apply liquid nitrogen with a modified liquid nitrogen sidedress applicator. They stripped off the row units and added double-disk openers from an old John Deere drill and attached a Valmar air-seeder box. Tubes deliver the seed to the row-unit openings.

The cover crop mix they interseed into the standing corn typically contains 10 to 15 species, including cowpeas, flax, annual ryegrass, radishes, turnips, kale, sunflower, millet, and faba beans. Tabert doesn’t include winter rye in an interseeded planting because “winter rye doesn’t like the shade or to be seeded that early,” she says. “Later in the growing season, when the corn leaves dry down and sunlight gets into the canopy, that’s when the cover crop takes off.”

The Taberts also interseed multispecies cover crops into sunflowers. After harvesting the cash crops, they graze cattle on the diverse covers. Following the corn with the diverse cover crop, they may grow a peaola intercrop in the spring. “After harvesting the peaola in early August, we’ll plant a diverse cover crop including winter rye for fall grazing,” says Tabert. “We’ll calve cows on the rye the following May and early June.”

That practice sets the stage for planting sunflowers on the calving grounds. “We like calving on winter rye, but we also wanted to be able to grow a cash crop after the rye,” she says. “We chose sunflowers because sunflowers compensate for a later planting window. We plant them in late May to the first week in June.”

As they do with corn, the Taberts interseed the sunflowers with a diverse cover crop mix. “We haven’t figured out the absolute best time to seed the cover crop in the sunflowers,” says Tabert, “but planting it at the V2 to V4 leaf stages seems to work.”

The next growing season, they follow the sunflowers with spring wheat underseeded with tall fescue planted in twin rows. After harvesting the spring wheat in late August, they interseed into the fescue paired rows of red or white clover in the fall or the spring, depending on soil moisture. The fescue will overwinter and be grown for seed the following cropping season.

In early July, they swath the tall fescue and combine it. They drop and bale the fescue straw for low-quality cattle feed. The fescue regrowth and previously established clover provide grazing or a hay crop for cattle in fall and early winter.

Alfalfa is included in the cropping sequence and is in production for four or five years.

Across the farm, in their cropping sequences, they aim “for a fairly equal acreage of each crop,” says Tabert.

Livestock Grazing Boosts Soil Health

The multi-crop system with livestock grazing integrated has improved soil health. “Our organic matter has increased; water infiltration has improved; and we’re not experiencing soil erosion,” she says.

While varying with weather extremes, crop yields have generally held steady despite declining inputs. “We’re applying 30% less nitrogen than we did in 2016,” she says. “We’re also applying less herbicide. Planting into the rye helps with weed control.”

However, weed control is a challenge. Because of the plant diversity in their cover cropping sequences along with the grazing of the cattle, restrictions in pesticide use prevent them from applying many types of pesticides. Conversely, the cultural strengths of their cropping and grazing system help control weeds.

Economically, net profitability has increased. “Our net profit is higher,” says Tabert. “We went from farming for yield to farming for profit.”

As they position the farm for the future, they are considering simplifying the rotation to reduce labor, while maintaining gains in profitability and soil health.

While their established practices continue to build soil health, soil carbon is bound to also be increasing. However, the present development of carbon markets limits their opportunities to monetize the carbon. “Most carbon markets at the time are based on new practices, so there isn’t currently much potential for us there,” says Tabert.

Learn More: Mikayla Tabert / ben.mik.tabert@gmail.com

How to Jointly Weave Crops and Cattle

The Taberts’ system of integrating cattle with cropland enhances soil fertility because cattle contribute manure and urine to the soil. The practice increases profitability as well by decreasing feed costs for the herd.

“Our feed cost per cow is almost half of what it is for other producers,” says Mikayla Tabert. “That’s due primarily to grazing the cows on pasture, cover crops, and crop residues into January when weather permits.” They also start grazing early in the spring.

They graze cover crops in strips, moving cows every two to three days. As winter weather worsens, they give cows access to bales set out in pastures.

Delaying calving until May and June on rye cover crops has increased calf vigor. “By calving in warmer weather, we went from having to help 20 to 30 calves nurse when we calved in early spring, to helping just one,” she says. “We used to treat 15 to 20 one-month-old calves every year for pneumonia and scours, and even the calves that recovered would be slow to keep up and grow well. We haven’t treated a calf for either disease in the last two years.”

Weaning calves late is an-other management change that makes the cattle-crop integration more efficient. “Ideally, we’d like the calves to stay on the cows until February if weather and cow body conditions allow,” says Tabert. “That keeps more of the manure out on the fields and saves labor overall.”