Warm season grasses and broadleaves as a cover crop in UK

[Baling Hay]

Would a mixture of maize, sunflowers and some warm season legumes be a useful cover crop to be planted after winter barley around mid july?

I wonder how this would go? It should have the advantage that a frost should kill it all meaning no spraying off required?

Plus it would add some extra diversity from these plants.

 

[The Ruminant]

I would say yes.
What's the following crop? Could you put in some clover? That would survive winter then you could d/d into it in the spring. This would give you cool season grass (barley) followed by a mix of warm season grass (maize), warm season broadleaf (sunflower and legume of choice) and cool season broadleaf (clover). A great mix for soil health and the clover would continue to provide N without being too competitive.

 

[JD-Kid]

unless yer clover is an annual the amount of N added maybe less that the cost of the seed frist year clover growth clover can't fix a lot of N ..

if we do the coil spring of agri so called cover crops were grazed the root mass adding to soil and breaking down hard layers IF the roots could grow down the animals converting plant life back in to an eazer form for breaking down also some crushing/tramping of plants

other resons stop run off in high rain fall areas some weed control from shadeing etc

still have to be able to drill in to the cover crop so that can efect types of plants and also the risk of the cover crop carrying over diseases pests etc

not saying cover crops are bad in any way we don't leave ground fallow over winter there main reson frist and formost has to be improveing hard cash profit

back to back cropping for many years full tillage etc yes soil OM levels will be lower but mixed livestock and crop or mainly livestock with say a 1 in 10 year crop levels should be high if not the question has to be why not

 

[Pedders]

The answer is a qualified yes .....sunflowers will grow well maize not so sure millet will though ... Warm season legume no good fo thee uk unless inoculated as soil bacteria needed for n fixing aren't there needs to be native species peas or vetch ....which ends up with pretty much a pedders mix !

 

[JNG]

Did someone on the forum somewhere try mixing beans with Maize to plant between OSR and Winter wheat? If your out there what level of growth was achieved? Simple mix if beans home saved fairly cheap!

 

[BSH]

Was it @Barleycorn?