Cover Crop Question

[PsychoFarmer]

Thinking about starting a new game on hard without missions, already playing one on hard with missions. So thinking I have to change the way I do a few things at the moment I always use a cover crop and I know it cuts down on how many harvests as I harvest every other day on normal growth. So was wondering IRL how often is a cover crop used is it after every harvest or after a completed crop rotation, or something like every 3rd harvest when we plough in the game to plough the cover crop in.

Crop rotation would be wheat and soybeans to start with then move onto a 3/4 crop rotation sunflower, wheat, soybeans and then most prob corn every second rotation.

[TopSoil]

What I read in Drmattymd's answer is "we do not use cover crops in the way that radishes are used in FS. We do plant later crops, but we harvest and sell them - we don't plow them into the soil to enrich the soil (i.e. converting sunlight into biomass that biodegrades under the surface)."

When I was a kid, I saw a number of fields "laying fallow" -- i.e. nothing was being grown on it at all, to decrease overuse and give it time to replenish itself. But I don't recall anything being planted on those fields (some random volunteer grass would be there a bit) -- and if memory serves that was a government progress that paid farmers not to grow anything in an effort to support prices by decreasing amount produced.

So I too am curious if, in modern farming, people plant anything for the sole purpose of plowing it under and not using it for anything other than soil enrichment. Perhaps I misinterpreted Dr's response.

[canadafarms]

I don't know a whole lot about this but in the area where we live some farmers are organic farming, so no chemical or Petrolium based products are used to grow crops ie granual or liquid fertilizer or pesticide or herbicide. Sometimes they will plant clover, the same concept as radish in game. This serves multiple purposes. First is weed control, by having a crop growing the weeds will have a harder time growing. Second is then to cultivate into the soil for nutrients. In the case of radishes from what I understand also breaks up the hard pan under the top layer of soil to help with root penetration and also releasing nutrients back to to where yourcash crop can benefit from it. The way the cycle would work here it would not be done yearly as our climate would not allow it.

[krol85]

In Belgium when farmers harvest canola they leave the field untouched after harvest and let the spilled seeds from harvesting sprout and use this as a cover crop. They get a cover crop without having to seed one in. Would be nice if we could do this in the game.