A short rotation with multi species cover crops?

It seems reasonably widely accepted that true no-till doesn't work if you have a short rotation with only a few different types of crops. Cover crops help increase the diversity and can bring in different classes of crop (warm season broadleaves etc.) that were formerly lacking in the rotation. A multi-species cover crop is better than a single species cover crop according to a number of people as this mimics Nature more closely. These claim is intuitively compelling although I haven't seen any concrete in field evidence. Let's assume though that the above is roughly true.

Given the above what I wonder whehter it would be possible to stick to a pretty tight rotation if multi-species cover crops were included. For example:

WW - WOSR - (summer cover) - WW - (overwinter cover) - Spring Beans

Put another way, can a tight rotation with multi-species cover crops be just as good as a wider / longer rotation involving many different main cash crops?

BSH said:

I'm hoping that it can as I intend to do a WW/ Wintercover crop/SBarley WOSR rotation using a multispecies cover crop to be eaten by sheep. When I met Carlos Crovetto in the late summer, he seemed to think 3 crops was an acceptable minimum. Will see how we go but I guess will only know the answer some years down the line. It has been suggested given your proposed rotation that two wheats followed by two breaks would be beneficial. Had you considered this?

Click to expand...

That's interesting. I had considered a double break. See the discussion here:

http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=67599