Cover Crops
At Browning Seed, we believe that cover crops are an important and emerging facet of modern agriculture. By planting cover crops, farmers can mitigate soil erosion, improve their soil health, enhance their water availability, suppress weed growth, mitigate pests and diseases, increase the biodiversity in their soil, along with numerous other benefits that cover crops can bring to your farm.
With our expansive lineup of cover crop varieties, we hope to bring the most amount of value back into your soil that will help boost yields for your future crops. Each and every region is different in which kind of cover crops will work the best and at Browning Seed, we want to help you find what works best for your operation! Whether that be just one kind of cover crop or a blend of cover crops, our seed specialists are ready to help you with your next cover crop purchase!
Wheat
Wheat is a great cover crop option for grazing, erosion control, breaking up the various compaction layers, and nutrient scavenging. Wheat is similar to cereal rye, but tends to be a better forage option.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of wheat seed. This list includes but is not limited to:
- Deliver Beardless
- Smith’s Gold
- Brundage White Soft
- Rosalyn White Soft
Oats
Oats are another great option as a cover crop for they establish quickly, create quality forage, help suppress weeds, soften the soil, and keep the soil from eroding. This cool season annual grass is great as a cover crop.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of oat seed. This list includes but is not limited to:
- Bob
- Jerry
- Troy
- Goliath
Rye
Using rye as a cover crop is another great option for several different reasons. The benefits of planting rye as a cover crop include reducing nitrogen losses from leaching, builds up the organic matter in the soil, and helps protect against erosion from wind and water.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of rye seed. This list includes but is not limited to:
- Elbon
Triticale
Triticale is used as a cover crop to help build up soil structure, prevent erosion, and has an enormous amount of value when it comes to grazing or baling. With triticale growing 3 to 5 feet in height, weeds will be suppressed and create a great forage for grazing or baling.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of triticale seed. This list includes but is not limited to:
- Merlin Max
- VNS Triticale
Legumes
Adding legumes into your cover crop rotation is another great option for it will help fix atmospheric nitrogen, reduce or prevent erosion, attract beneficial insects, and produce biomass to add organic matter into the soil.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of legume seed. This list includes but is not limited to:
- FD4 Alfalfa
- FD5 Alfalfa
- Alfalfa MX9
- AH F16 Alfalfa
- AH F22 Alfalfa
- Sunn Hemp
- Austrian Winter Peas
- Red Clover
- Yellow Sweet Clover
- White Dutch Clover
- Lidino White Clover
- Lab Lab
- Hairy Vetch
- Sainfoin
- Mung Beans
Brassicas
Brassicas as a cover crop have two main benefits which include breaking up soil compaction and weed suppression. These leafy plants grow rapidly which helps in shading the soil to prevent weed growth.
We offer a wide range of different varieties of brassica seed. These include but are not limited to:
- Diacon Radishes
- Barcant Turnips
- Purple Top Turnips
- Rape Seed
- T-Raptor Rape Seed
Broad-Leafs
Broad-Leaf cover crops are designed to do a vast array of things to benefit your future crops. For example, Buck Wheat will suppress weeds and attract beneficial insects, while okra is a natural de-wormer for cattle and
We offer a wide range of different varieties of broad-leaf seed. These include but are not limited to:
- Buck Wheat
- Okra
- Black Oil Sunflowers
Cover Crop Blends
Here at Browning Seed, we offer several great cover crop blends that are already pre-mixed and ready to be planted. We have formulated these specific blends based on what has yielded the best results for our customers in the past! With the popularity of cover crops rising, we hope that these cover crop blends will suit the needs of your operation and if not, we would be happy to mix your specific blend up for you!
5×5 Wildlife Mix
Our 5×5 Wildlife mix is our best selling cool season cover crop mix! This is a mix of 5 annual forages and 5 legumes to give your food plot a broad range of grazing. This mix includes Wheat, Oats, Rye, Triticale, Barley, Alfalfa, Clover, Vetch, Austrian Winter Peas, and Radishes to give your food plot “10 points” of coverage!
Forage Plus Blend
Forage Plus is a haying, grazing, baling, or cover cropping blend that has brought an enormous amount of value to our customers in the past! This blend is extremely palatable when mowed at or around 40 days after planting. This blend made up of sorghum-sudangrass hybrid, forage sorghum, grain sorghum, sudangrass, mung beans, and sunn hemp. With this blend of forages, this product has great potential as a high protein forage that also fixes nitrogen. This product will also attract wildlife and meets USDA Standards as a cover crop.
Spring Wildlife Mix
Our Spring Wildlife mix is a highly nutritious nitrogen-fixing blend that is great for grazing, cover, wildlife food plots, and preventing soil erosion. With that in mind, we have formulated this blend to include mung beans, lab lab, iron and clay cowpeas, millet, okra, grain sorghum, hybrid grain sorghum, southern cowpeas and sunn hemp. With this product, wildlife is sure to frequent your chosen spot of planting!
Three Little Indians® Blend
Three Little Indians® is a high-quality forage sorghum, sorghum-sudangrass hybrid, grain sorghum, and sudangrass blend that is used for forage production. Three Little Indians® is great for cover cropping, hay and grazing cattle. Three Little Indians® is very palatable and grows 8-10 feet tall.
Cover Crop Corner
As we move throughout the year, we hope to create more cover crop corner videos to better give our customers the information that they need in order to help decide which types of cover crops will best suit their operation! If there is a specific cover crop that you would like for us to make a video on, please complete the form below!
Check out our sorghum-sudangrass hybrids!
