Will Your Cover Crop Seeds Separate in the Drill?

0:10 In regard to planting, people will often ask if the seeds in these diverse mixes will separate in the drill and how deep do you plant?

0:22 Yeah, we get that question all the time. The way I answered this—and Dale, you can weigh in on this too—the more diverse your mix is, the less chance that you're going to have for seed separation.

0:36 If you order a mix and it's peas and turnips you're going to have separation from the get-go and it will be a disaster, won't work. But now if you start adding in because you got a large round seed and a small round seed and they're just going to move past each other really easily. But if you start throwing in oats and buckwheat and rye and sorghum and

1:00 You know things that have different sizes, different shapes. Basically what that does is it plugs all of the gaps and it makes it much more difficult for seeds to move past each other in order to separate. And oats is a great one. We sometimes I'll put oats in a mix just to help tie it up and keep it from separating like that because oats is a

1:21 Long narrow shape and it's a rough seed, and so it kind of sticks in the holes and plugs the gaps, and that roughness keeps seeds from moving past it as easily. And it really helps bind the seeds together.

1:36 So the more diverse you are, the less you have to worry about it. If you aren't as diverse, if you only have three or four things in there.

1:43 And there's lots of varying sizes or densities you could have some issues with stuff pulling apart. So then the recommendation that we tell people is separation really is a component of how long is it in your drill and how long are you bouncing along because if it's just sitting in a bag it's not going to separate. It's only going to separate as it as it.

2:04 Bounces and it moves inside your drill box. So if it's a concern then put only a little bit in your drill at a time, maybe put enough in there that will take you an hour or two to plan out and then go fill. You know, so fill less at a time and fill more often and you'll have less seed separation there as well.

2:25 We do have some people that have multiple boxes on their drill and we can.

2:28 Keep the small seeds separate. I would say we do that once in a while. It's pretty rare. And even people that have the small seed box, once they see how well that stuff really holds together and flows through a drill in a diverse mix, a lot of times they say yeah it's not worth messing with. Just mix it all together and I'll plant it, so that's kind of our answer to.

3:22 When all these diverse mixes start getting planting, this will never work because some of this seed needs to be at a half inch and some of it needs to be an inch. There's just no way you can make this work — only one of those seeds is going to come up, and it's really been a bit of a much ado about nothing.

3:45 It's amazing when you take a

3:48 A mixture and you plant it say three quarters of an inch. Some of the seeds need a half inch, some of them need an inch. You put about three quarters inch and everything seems to work. Those big seeds kind of break that crust and create a line of weakness that the small seeds can get sunlight earlier in that crack. They can get sunlight down here instead of having to go.

4:16 Clear to the soil surface. Because the big seeds are pushing and creating a line of weakness, the small seeds don't have to do a lot of pushing, and so it all seems to work. We have very, very few instances where we get a complete failure of any one seed in a mix. Dale, would you say I would, you agree with this? I would say that we have more

4:46 Issues with people planting things too shallow and they either dry out or they sprout and then they die rather than planting it too deep and they don't come up.

4:56 Yes, yeah. You know if you're planting turnips by themselves and you plant them an inch deep, I'd expect complete failure. You plant turnips in a mix and go an inch deep, I'd say most of them are going to come up.

5:10 Yeah, yeah. I'd rather in a mixture, in a monoculture the rule is there's little seeds. It's better to air too shallow than too deep. In a mixture, I'd rather air too deep than too shallow.

5:33 Yeah.