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Crop Rotations

Camelina is a short season, drought tolerant crop that has both winter and spring biotypes. This leads to flexibility and many different places in a crop rotation where it can be grown. It can be a main crop, double cropped, relay cropped or intercropped. It is also used as a cover crop, and is often included in cover crop seed mixes. One of the biggest interests is as a cover crop that is also a cash crop, offering a new income source for farmers.

Main Crop

  • Spring Camelina: Camelina works well as a main crop. Typically spring camelina is seeded in the late winter or early spring when the soil can first be worked and harvested in late spring to mid summer depending on climate and temperature.

Double Cropping

  • Winter Camelina: Camelina can be fit into rotations in seasons when fields are often fallow. Winter camelina can be planted in the fall in cold climates and harvested in late spring or early summer. It can then be followed by other short season summer crops such as millet, sorghum, sunflowers, buckwheat or short season corn. It has also been used in rotation where wheat/fallow occurs and can replace the fallow, thereby giving farmers another source of income and diversity in their roation.
  • Spring Camelina: There is often time for caemlina to be planted after a cereal crop and harvested in fall where the season is long enough, and rain or irrigation is available for germination.

Relay Cropping

  • Winter Camelina: Camelina has been succesfully relay cropped with soybeans. Soybeans are interplanted in the spring before camelina stem elongation occurs, in rows left empty within the camelina. The camelina is then direct harested and the soybeans grow throughout the summer season. There is potential for other crops to be relay cropped with camelina depending on the climate and season.

Intercropping

  • Winter Camelina: Camelina can be grown with other crops simultaneously such as lentils or peas. It does not compete well with grains so it is not advised to intercrop with cereal grains. Due to its lack of shattering seed pods it has a longer harvest window and does not need to be swathed first, but can be also. There is more research needed to see other crops that would work intercropped with camelina.