Mother Nature's Cover Crop

I see lots of fields full of Mother Nature's Cover Crop around here. Cressleaf groundsel, a yellow plant that every one calls wild mustard, yellow rocket and everything else is in full glory. I snapped a picture this morning to show you. I have to clean my camera lense right now as the piece of dirt on it really shows up in this picture!

We didn't go 100 yards and the next field on the other side of the road was snow white! I tried to figure out what herbicide turned what weed white? I assume it's roundup on a grass that looks like downy bromegrass but that is not a common weed around here. I wondered if they sprayed liquid lime on the field but didn't see it all tracked up which it would be the last few weeks.

Now, would you rather have Mother Nature's Cover Crop or this pretty picture posted by Gary Fennig in western Ohio? He planted 3 lbs of radish and 25 lbs of oats last fall and the result is beautiful!

I have been talkling about notill and cover crops since the day I started this blog, January 1, 2009. They are the most exciting things in production agriculture I have found in my lifetime. They combine soil improvement with grain production which is something very difficult to do otherwise.

Think hard about my question and tell me what you would do.

Would you plant a cover crop or spray herbicide in the fall that might let your soil wash or would you do neither and let Mother Nature plant your cover crop?

Thanks,

Ed Winkle

PS Don't you love what Google has done to its bloggers? I have to know HTML to center the picture without the editor they used to provide. The blogosphere will never be the same!