Cover Crop Seed Cost-Share
Now Available from King Conservation District
Winter cover cropping has been added to the list of eligible practices for cost-share funding through KCD’s Landowner Incentive Program. KCD will reimburse farmers up to $135 per acre for the purchase of seeds for crops planted in late summer and/or early fall and maintained through the winter to protect soil when it would otherwise be bare. Cover crop cost-share contracts are written for three years and participating farmers will be reimbursed after each planting season.
Eligible cover crops include winter grains, clovers, vetch, field peas, mustards, turnips, and fava beans. The seeds can be sown in tilled fields or beneath standing late-season cash crops such as corn, winter squash and brassicas. Cover crops are planted to minimize erosion, increase organic matter, enhance soil fertility, smother weeds, and control soil-borne diseases. Cover crops such as red clover (which flowers in early spring), can also provide early forage for honeybees and other pollinators.
Cover Crop Cost-Share Announcement
Definition
Crops including grasses, legumes, and forbs for seasonal cover and other conservation purposes.
Purpose
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Practice Criteria:
This practice is meant for cover crops planted in late summer/early fall and maintained through the winter. Cooperators can apply for this practice one time only. Each application will cover 3 years of implementation. Cooperators will be reimbursed after each season of planting cover crops.
Resources:
- OSU Establishing Winter Cover Crops
- OSU Organic Fertilizer and Cover Crop Calculator
- eOrganic cover crop group
- UC/SAREP Cover Crop Database
- Managing Cover Crops Profitably
- Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd Edition
- Midwest Cover Crops Council
- Replace Fumigant and Improve Infiltration in Potato Cropping System
- Mustard Green Manures
- WSU Cover Crops Resources
- Cover Crop Publications
- Reduced Tillage Organic Ag & Cover Crop Research Field Day 2016
- Reduced Tillage in Organic Agriculture and Winter Cover Crops Field Day, WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center, 21 May 2012.
- NRCS Technical Note: Cover Crops
All land managers in KCD’s service area are eligible to apply for cost-share funding, but the practice must be pre-approved and included in a Farm Conservation Plan or other technical assistance plan prepared by KCD resource conservation staff.