I watched the video below by Steve Goff-The Cover Crop Coach. It was very helpful for us as this year is the first year we’ll be planting corn into a cereal rye and we wanted to be prepared to Allelopathic effects. This is a podcast style interview, and super easy to listen to while you’re doing other chores.
Here are some of my cliff notes from it:
- Cereal Rye’s allelopathy usually effects smaller seeded crops, and since corn isn’t a small seed it’s not effected as badly by it. However, cereal rye does affect nitrogen early season in corn, which can result in yellow stunted corn and is often mistaken for allelopathy.
- Very important to use a starter fertilizer with nitrogen on or near the seed when planting into cereal rye
- A mix Steve uses: In-furrow- 1 gal 28% + 2 gal biological + 1 gal water= 4 gal total of starter mix
- For 2×2 starter application- 3-10 lbs of Nitrogen, but the closer to the seed, the better
- Make sure to get a good closed seed bed to avoid allelopathy
- Oftentimes corn planted into cereal rye is slow early, but in August it will be your best corn
