By Steve Whittington and Brook Wilke
Wheat harvest in Michigan is complete, which provides an excellent window of opportunity to add cover crops to your cropping system. Mid-summer is the perfect time to get into the fields and add some diversity to your post-wheat harvest regimen. This time of the production season is where most fungicide disease applications are complete in other grain crops such as corn and soybean, and producers are working on their wheat fields following harvest by conducting field maintenance and straw harvest. Adding a fall and winter cover crop to your to-do list is an excellent addition to your fields, with numerous benefits.
The following information from Michigan State University Extension hightlights the benefits of this management practice and provides suggestions for incorporating cover crops after wheat into your system.
Fall cover crop benefits