Wondering what those fields of purple are? Hint: It’s not flowers

ST. LOUIS – Local residents may have noticed fields full of purple “flowers” pop up recently.

What look like pretty flowers are actually weeds, which are thriving thanks to the warm weather. Although it’s considered a weed, it can bring some benefits to farmers as a natural cover crop.

Cover crops aren’t anything new, but due to the push towards increased sustainability and regenerative farming, these kinds of practices are getting more attention these days.

“Think of no till; think of cover crops,” Tyler Williams, an agronomist at Bayer, explains. “Everything comes back to keeping that soil productive, enhancing organic matter, all of the benefits that come with many of the practices we talk about.”

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The plants are gaining popularity in the agriculture world due to their many benefits.

“You know, (it helps keep) that ground covered between the harvest of one cash crop in the fall to the planting of the second cash crop in the spring. So keeping that ground covered, you know, prevents erosion. It adds more roots to the soil if we can increase that organic matter. It adds more biomass to the system,” he said.

These purple fields are full of henbit. Henbit starts in the fall, overwinters, and then takes off in the spring.

“We had fall weather that allowed the germination to go and then the spring weather just kind of taking off sooner than most, and so you see it and it just kind of grows, really, everywhere,” Williams said.

It’s also a give-and-take for the farmers but in general, it’s not a hard weed to control.

“A lot of times, it’s not consistent on the field. And so when you’re going to plant corn in the spring, consistent ground cover is really crucial to have an even emergence,” Williams said.

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