Todd Ballard

Snake River Soil and Water Conservation District

Kimberly, Idaho

Todd Ballard is a relative newcomer to soil health although his family has farmed in the Kimberly area for 100 years. Ballard’s normal crop rotation is beans, barley and hay. He began experimenting with cover crops and direct seed technology around 2012 with an eye towards improving sustainability and profitability.

Ballard has become a self-avowed cover crop nerd. “My favorite thing to do is dig up cover crop and look at the root structure, the number of nodes (on a legume) and all worms; all that good stuff,” he said.

When Ballard began farming with his father, Ron, they used to plow, roller harrow and land plane to prepare fields tor gravity irrigation. Now that most of the farm is sprinkler irrigated, reducing tillage is easier.

The duo first began experimenting with cover crops a couple of years ago as part of a conservation district program. They no-tilled a multi-species cover crop mix into malt barley stubble. They planned to disk the cover crop in the following spring and then plant dry edible beans, but when an opportunity came along to lease the field for grazing to a sheep producer, they said yes.

From that first experiment, the two have continued to experiment with cover crop mixes and reduced tillage practices. Last spring, they tried direct seeding beans into cover crop residue. One benefit they noticed almost immediately was that the field held more water. Even ten days after the pivot had run, a quick soil moisture test showed the field still had adequate moisture for growing the crop. To continue monitoring soil moisture, the following year he installed water meters in his fields. 

Another benefit they saw from direct seeding beans into the cover crop residue was that the beans were cleaner and did not have as much soil sticking to the roots.

Ballard direct seeds a cover crop (usually radish, turnip, hairy vetch, pea and triticale) into his barley stubble in late July or early August. In spring 2018, he decided to experiment with two different methods of terminating the cover crop ahead of his bean crop. In half of one field he sprayed the cover crop with a herbicide and then direct seeded the beans. In the other half, he used a high-speed disk to incorporate the cover crop and then planted beans.

Ballard planted a cover crop in September 2017 to see how it would do compared to the normal planting time of early August. Most plants were the size of a quarter in October but continued to grow throughout the winter and had caught up in size by spring. He dug up a crown of triticale in March and found 15 earthworms.

Ballard continues to experiment with cover crop mixes. “I’ve learned that having a variety in your blend is a good thing because some things will winterkill,” he said. Radishes seem to winter kill on his farm. If he can move up his cover crop planting date by a week or two, he thinks it would help the radishes grow larger to capture more nitrogen in the second foot and bring it to the surface where the other species could utilize that nutrient. 

One concern he had with transitioning to no-till was how the residue would impact irrigation on fields and pivot corners that are still gravity irrigated. Residue has not been as much of an issue as he had feared.

Ballard says he is still learning but is starting to see results, now that some of his fields have had two rotations of cover crop. 

His advice to growers who are still weighing the costs and benefits of soil health practices: don’t be afraid to do it. “Cover crops and no-till have helped me with a lot of different things,” Ballard said. “There is no number one big benefit. There are multiple benefits.”

Updated April 2020.