More isn’t better: single cover crops shown to outperform mixtures for weed control
24 February 2020
Last update: 26/03/20 14:08
Today the use of cover-crop mixtures has become commonplace. Surveys show most farmers use them and believe them to be superior to any single cover-crop species for weed control.
That common wisdom is upended, though, by research featured in the latest edition of the journal Weed Science.
A team of weed scientists conducted experiments in New Hampshire involving cover crops planted in summer, fall and winter-spring. They compared the effectiveness of the most weed-suppressive, individual cover crops for each of those seasons (buckwheat, forage radish and triticale, respectively) to mixtures that included from five to 14 cover-crop species.
Regardless of the season, the most weed-suppressive, individual cover crops proved to be more effective at weed control than any mixture. In addition, crop mixtures that contained five or six cover crop species outperformed those with 14. The consistency of weed suppression was two to six times greater with the best-performing, single-species cover crops than with any of the mixtures.
Want to know more? The full text of the article “Are Cover Crop Mixtures Better at Suppressing Weeds than Cover Crop Monocultures?” is now available free for a month.
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