Cover Crop Winter Growth Question

Is there a reason why my cereal rye grew about twice as tall around my cultipacker as compared to where it was planted on bare ground? Cold protection? Moisture insulation?

That is pretty interesting…my initial thought would be it is temperature related…the metal holds heat and keeps a more stable micro climate around it.

4 Likes

hard for us to gues, since we don’t know your climate. (do you have drought during the growing of the cover crop?)

But i would gues lower moisture stress.

2 Likes

I’m zone 7 Northern VA. We had a really wet winter but I do know that winter air is dry and can affect plants.

Definitely a thought I had as well

Any chance some deer had access to the area? That’s one of their favorite winter foods when available and the cultipacker would have acted as an exclusion cage.

Interesting point. Fence is turned off in the winter. But I could only see one set of tracks.

Maybe dogs peed on the cultivator?

Seriously, I lean towards the heat retention factor.

1 Like

I think it’s a Russian conspiracy…trick photography.

(Seriously, i’ve seen it many times…but
I never bothered to over-analyze it.)

1 Like