What is the relationship between reduced tillage and cover crops?
A. When you decrease one thing, you have to increase something else. When we reduced tillage without increasing anything else, the weeds began to take over. Other farmers at this time who were interested in reduced tillage would increase their herbicide use. That was not an option for us. So we increased our use of cover crops to supply nutrients, build organic matter, prevent soil erosion, and suppress weeds. Suddenly, our system began to improve. Q. How does the rolling technique benefit the system? A. We knew that we couldn’t continue to just drive over fields, let alone recommend this to other farmers. But what we did know was that we needed to simulate the rolling technique. It is a way to manage cover crops in such a way as to kill them with minimal disturbance to the soil. Q. Were there any forerunners to the cover crop roller? A. Tractor-pulled rollers did exist at the time. We tried a cultipacker, but it didn’t give enough crushing action for a good kill rate. Then we tried a
