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Elk Grove california

My plan is to til in the cover crop march 1st and my question is if we can add our Amendments in at the same time without lockout and if there is enough time for things to break down before the April 15-20 plant date.

2/14/2026 12:21:52 PM

Central NY

Whatcha throwing in that takes the longest to break down?

2/14/2026 2:17:27 PM

Western NY

I'm typically the first weekend in April for tilling the cover crop and amendments in, and planting the last week of April.

I'm sure your soil has a pretty good temperature advantage over mine, so you should be fine.

2/14/2026 6:51:16 PM

Winchester, Ohio

I think a lot depends on what type of cover crop, it's growth stage and amount of biomass. The situation you would have to most worry about nitrogen tie up would be if you had a mature cereal grain cover crop like wheat or rye that produced a lot of straw. I'm going to guess at the beginning of March you will be before stem elongation and still have a pretty ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio and not have any issues.

2/15/2026 1:35:18 PM

I would see about Glyphosate-killing and mowing whatever cover crop it is before tilling it in, producing finer particles to break down once tilled in; Also, obtaining and tilling-in Mycorrhizal Inoculant in a substantial quantity, as that, to me, is always a good idea.
To be considered by all, isn't it common practice to use hi-N fertilizer by default (24-8-16, lol) or any of a million high-N configurations? I'll think it'll be funny to slam one patch with...
Shhh...Secret Agent Orange, lol. eg
PS---Oh, yeah, in figuring it out as I go, the roots from the CC are still there for a couple of weeks and the Mycor will likely
attach to them and begin colonizing the patch as though there are still living plants (My just-now belief); Therein, the Mycor
(calling it that to avoid misconstrues with 'Mykos', which IS Mycorrhizae...) would grow and thrive until it ran out of roost to colonize, which is when otherwise, the '26 crop is coming in nicely, anyway. Good Luck---eric g

[Last edit: 02/15/26 6:48:16 PM]

2/15/2026 6:36:15 PM

Grittyville, WA

I am suspicious of adding glyphosate, I think mowing, bagging, and composting separately is something to consider but I dont really know how you would weigh the possible merits vs the extra effort. It would be interesting to try multiple methods, short of this I dont know how you'd really know which method was the best.

2/16/2026 3:40:49 AM