[Market-farming] Managing ground between plastic mulch rows (was Rotor Tiller)
Willie McKemie
mf at austinfarm.org
Thu Nov 15 08:57:01 EST 2007
On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 07:14:29AM -0600, Errol Castens wrote:
> Marlin, cowpeas (the default meaning of "peas" in the Deep South) will do
> a good job of suppressing a lot of your weeds, but considering they can
> get waist-high themselves, it's going to take extra effort to walk through
> them while tending/gathering your primary crop. It's a good but not
> faultless plan.
Certainly "not faultless".
I had some "under maintained" crops this year where the primary weed
was volunteer peas. They were in eggplant, peppers, basil and
potatoes. Sadly, they produced no marketable crop. Even though I
thought most peas are open pollinated, they seemed to be hybrids, they
produced no identifiable variety and produced poorly. And, they
attracted stink bugs. They did seem to suppress other weeds, though.
I presume I have more N in my soil than I would otherwise; I have never
noticed any benefit from the nitrogen that is supposed to be fixed by
legumes. Even though I used to religiously inoculate the seed with
nitrogen fixing bacteria.
--
Willie, ONWARD! Through the fog!
http://counter.li.org Linux registered user #228836 since 1995
Debian3.1/GNU/Linux system uptime 164 days 9 hours 13 minutes
More information about the Market-farming
mailing list