The winter cover crops in the Carbon Positive trial plots are well underway now. The last dull, wet, cold week slowed them down a little, but they still made good progress. The preparation and planting was covered in an earlier post that you can see here>
To the left of the central irrigator strip, the Regenerative plot triticale and vetch established fastest and by April 20 had reached 28% ground cover as measured using Canopeo, a brilliant free app that we use for all our weekly assessments regardless of crop (or fallow!). By contract, the ryegrass was slower to get started and on April 20 the Conventional plots averaged 5% ground cover, and the Hybrid plots a little more at about 8% cover as seen in the chart below. As well as getting underway quicker, the triticale and vetch is accelerating away. We had expected the ryegrass to be fastest, as that was what we observed in previous winter cover mixes, but a higher sowing rate of vetch and the triticale seems to be a good option at this stage.
There is some banding in the plots that seems to be an artefact of planting, but we’re not sure why. It lines up exactly on the planter but may relate to the discing and rolling that happened prior.
We continue our weekly monitoring, and assume that by next week, the Regenerative plots will have crossed the magical, but arbitrary, 30% ground cover faction. How long before the ryegrass plots reach that milestone?
