Soil Fertility and Management

Cover crops play a crucial role in ensuring your soil provides a strong growing foundation for many years to come. Use Penn State Extension’s comprehensive resources on cover crops and soil fertility. You’ll also find advice on preventing soil compaction and erosion using cover crops, determining levels of nitrogen, potassium, and other vital soil nutrients.

Cover Crops and Soil Health

Profitable, productive, and sustainable agronomic production is not possible without healthy soil. To make the most of their soil, agronomic producers should understand the physical, chemical, and biological components of healthy soil and how to manage them.

Penn State Extension runs a series of Soil Health Twilight Meeting workshops and Crops Days workshops that give producers the opportunity to get hands on with different types of soil, explore a soil pit, and share ideas. At these workshops producers also discuss common soil health misconceptions and the latest innovations for the coming season.

There are many different ways producers can improve the health of the soil, such as transitioning to no-till planting. Using cover crops as part of a soil management plan is also a way to add organic matter to the soil, protect soil from erosion, and can be advantageous for the management of weeds and pests.

Cover crops are known to help prevent soil compaction. This is a serious problem for agronomic producers, especially during grain harvesting and when grazing livestock. Wet conditions in fall and spring also increase the risk of severe soil compaction and lead to compaction infiltration.

Cover Crop Residue and Green Manure Benefits

The killing of cover crops is a necessary step in soil preparation for the next agronomic crop. There are several ways to manage cover crop residue. One way is to use cover crop rollers, which are very effective for high residue conservation tillage. Another option is to let livestock graze on the cover crop residue. Not only does this extend the grazing system, but the residue cover crops also prevent soil compaction.

Cover crops can also be mowed once they’ve flowered, killed using herbicides or naturally by winter injury, or by plowing into the soil. All of which ultimately have a positive effect on soil quality.

Soil Fertility and Nutrient Management With Cover Crops

Nutrients are fundamental for maintaining soil health and soil fertility. Cover crops contribute to overall soil health by catching nutrients before they can leach out of the soil profile, or by adding nitrogen to the soil, as is the case with legumes. The roots of cover crops can even help unlock some nutrients and convert them into more available forms.

The most critical nutrients in supporting healthy soils, maintaining crop yields, and affecting the environment are carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Nitrogen is all around us as it makes up almost 80% of the air. Plants can only use it, however, after it is fixed in the soil, or taken from the air as part of the nitrogen cycle. Legumes are very effective at taking nitrogen from the air and transforming it into a form that plants can use.

Different cropping system management practices such as using organic nutrients, crop rotations, tillage type and frequency, use of manures, composts or fertilizers, and cover crops, can have a positive or negative effect on the dynamics of soil carbons and nitrogens.

Being able to assess what nutrients are available in the soil is crucial. A selection of tools is available to help, such as the nitrogen recommendation tool.

On this page, find abundant resources by Extension Educators on cover crop usage for soil health, fertility, and management.