From the depths of a soil pit, it’s clear how cover crops and no-tillage benefit overall soil health.

Cedar Creek Farmers, a producer-led watershed group in Ozaukee and Washington counties in Wisconsin, held a Healthy Soils Field Day last September at Ramthun’s Hickory View Farm in West Bend, Wis. The field day offered a farmer-to-farmer panel discussion about no-till and cover crops, a presentation by strip-tiller Ryan Nell and 3 stations focused on equipment, cover crops and soil health.

At the healthy soils station, Michael Patin, a district conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Jamie Patton, senior outreach specialist of nutrient and pest management at the University of Wisconsin, shared these 3 ways cover crops can improve your soil health:

1. Cover crops and no-till keep soils in place during rainfall.

Patin says water runoff from a farm field isn’t a bad thing. The problem is the amount of soil it takes with it.

“If it’s coming off the field, it’s impacting your bottom line and the next generation’s bottom line,” Patin says.

Patin demonstrated how cover crops and no-till preserve soil and retain moisture with a rainfall simulator. The video below was filmed during the second of 3 times that Patin ran the simulator at the field day. The samples, from left to right, came from:

1. A conventionally tilled corn and soybean field.
2. Residue from 2 years of corn.
3. A field across the road from Ramthun’s, which grew oats in the spring and had a crimson clover cover crop last year.
4. One of Ramthun’s fields with cover crops.
5. Fence line.

Water showered five soil samples for several minutes until the rain gauge reached 7/10 of an inch of water. As the rainfall simulator showed, samples 4 and 5 from the field with cover crops and the fence line prevented the most water and soil runoff. You can inventory the health of your own soil using 4 principles illustrated by the most successful samples in the simulator:

1. Is it green and growing? Keeping something growing on the soil is good.
2. Diversify rotation.
3. Keep soil covered to protect it.
4. Minimize or eliminate disturbance.

Patin recommends making small changes in one area of the field to improve soil health, and as you learn what works, implement those practices in other areas and fields.

Read more about soil absorption of heavy rains and water management.