From a conversation we had on Twitter:
Luke Jones, @Grassfedmoobaa–
Hello Jerry, question. How well does balansa roller crimp when it’s in full bloom. We seeded quite a few acres of it on prevent plant last year. Ground is river bottom ground, going to corn. Preferred method of termination?
Plant green was our plan earlier when it was smaller, then chemically terminate, but plans have changed as we are wet
Jerry Hall, GO Seed-
Some have had success using a roller-crimper, I think that the aggressiveness of the crimper and the thickness of the stand play a large roll. Planting green is still an option. Dave Holste has been doing this for several years and was recently featured in an article. Fixation Balansa Clover is what he is spraying out in the large photo on the top.
Cover cropping: Advice from a cash crop farmer on planting green | AGDAILY
Luke:
Perfect, thank you for info! Love the growth of the plant. Sheep love grazing it. The hollow stems made me think we could roll ahead of planting to eliminate some.wrapping and such, but we will be chemically terminating. Trying to keep boss man away from working it in..even though that would capture maximum nitrogen… but hate to destroy structure we’ve developed for x amt of n.
A follow up with Luke:
Well the balansa exceeded our expectations this year. It didn’t look like much in March/April, but biomass exploded! We planted green then terminated. River bottom ground, so ground naturally wet with high river. Clover sucked up excess and allowed us to plant more acres than expected. Seed trench was left open some but clover covered it back up allowing seed to come through. It now serves as a stability for corn until it roots better. Time will tell and end of year harvest will tell. Just wanted to update you and apologize for my negativity towards it earlier. We planted corn when we should have (late may June) which allowed clover to maximize. We have sent a forage sample off and i will let you know what it looks like! Luke
Cover crop test results. Note this was only about 3 maybe 4 plants in a 3×3 sample
