Winter rye usage

[Mennoniteman]

I planted rye a second time on a water hole fill plot I made in 2019. It switched on (clover) pretty good by mid summer that I could mow it and throw down rye. I wanted one more crack at it to try to push roots down through the fill to the original topsoil. Kinda excited to see how much comes up in spring.

Well first of all, if you had clover growing, clover will root down to 8' deep if you're not in a short grass prairie area with a layer of hard carbonates at 18". And rye will root down 5 to 6 feet, which in your case, if you are in a wet area on fill, should easily be attainable, unless its too wet, at which point the soil conditions will be too acidic for rye. Rye usually has a 4 leader root system compared to 3 for most other grain species, and around 1/3 more total root length than most of the others, which is why rye does better in dry conditions than most grains. If things work out this spring, that rye should be bringing a lot of carbon to the surface to offset the nitrogen of the clover.

 

[maddog3355]

Well first of all, if you had clover growing, clover will root down to 8' deep if you're not in a short grass prairie area with a layer of hard carbonates at 18". And rye will root down 5 to 6 feet, which in your case, if you are in a wet area on fill, should easily be attainable, unless its too wet, at which point the soil conditions will be too acidic for rye. Rye usually has a 4 leader root system compared to 3 for most other grain species, and around 1/3 more total root length than most of the others, which is why rye does better in dry conditions than most grains. If things work out this spring, that rye should be bringing a lot of carbon to the surface to offset the nitrogen of the clover.

I’ve never heard of clover roots going down that far but I looked it up and learned something there.

 

[MarkDarvin]

Well first of all, if you had clover growing, clover will root down to 8' deep if you're not in a short grass prairie area with a layer of hard carbonates at 18". And rye will root down 5 to 6 feet, which in your case, if you are in a wet area on fill, should easily be attainable, unless its too wet, at which point the soil conditions will be too acidic for rye. Rye usually has a 4 leader root system compared to 3 for most other grain species, and around 1/3 more total root length than most of the others, which is why rye does better in dry conditions than most grains. If things work out this spring, that rye should be bringing a lot of carbon to the surface to offset the nitrogen of the clover.

Interesting. It must have made it through then, because one trip it looked like total hell. I came back a few weeks later and it was spectacular. Let's amend my goal then to fiberizing my fill layer.

 

[Drycreek]

I’m in Missouri so we don’t have any deep snow. All the rye I plant will look like bare dirt by spring. When you walk out into the plot it will look like hogs have been in it. The last several years I’ve been planting a mix to try to get the deer to use them earlier and try to compete with acorns. My mix has been Austrian winter peas, Bob oats, wheat and rye. My review is it’s hard to compete with acorns when they first start falling after awhile the deer start using the plots. If your deer don’t like rye I would try a mix or something different.

In my opinion, nothing on the green side will ever compete with acorns. The deer will eat both, but they prefer acorns over anything we can plant. The saving grace is, when they eat all the acorns, they’ll be back to the plots. If you have a bumper crop of acorns, they won’t be back as quickly

 

[jsasker007]

I'm not understanding why clover dries up in the summer heat if the roots can go that deep? I thought that chicory did better in the dry spells because of it's deep roots(always thought chicory went deeper than clover). I'm in minnesota though so i can only imagine what REAL summer heat is. Winter rye gets used here until the snow gets too deep, then they are eating lots of brush. MMMM...brush.