SARE Interseeding Cover Crops in Corn Silage Cropping Systems

With increasing focus on minimizing environmental impacts from agriculture, farmers are looking for strategies that are good for farm and environmental viability. Cover cropping is one strategy that has been promoted to help farms improve soil health and minimize soil and nutrient losses to the environment. However, with a short growing season it is often difficult to get an adequate cover cropping following corn silage harvest. Therefore, farmers are interested in using interseeding techniques to establish cover crops into an actively growing corn crop. Being successful with this practice will likely require changes to other aspects of the cropping system such as corn populations, corn relative maturity, and the timing of cover crop seeding. The University of Vermont Extension’s Northwest Crops and Soils Team implemented two field experiments in 2018 and 2019 to help identify best interseeding practices that support successful cover crop establishment without sacrificing corn silage yields