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  • From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] pumpkin trash
  • Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:03:29 -0500

Bob

Is it perennial ryegrass you are buying for $16/bushel or are you using grain rye? We've been using grain rye at various rates but usually 90 or 120 lb/acre gives us our best stands. We have heavy prairie soils.

Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Horticulture Research Center
www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html


You got a lot of options. This year I harvested pumpkins, disc the field once to cut up the vines then broadcast rye mixed with crimson clover and then disc again to cover the seed. I have broadcasted seed into the unharvested crop but never got a good stand. I have seeded and grew pumpkins together with covercrops with so so results. I have also seeded perennial ryegrass just before vines run and the grass makes a nice cover around pumpkin harvest time. This last method seems to be the best... I seeded cover a month ago and just got rain this week, my fields have greened up nicely with as little as one half bushel rye per acre. Rye presently is selling fore $16 a bushel so I stretched it from the usual 2 bu per acre recommendations... Bob
Sunny Meadow Farm
Bridgeton, NJ.

--- rrobinson AT nasw.org wrote:

From: Richard Robinson <rrobinson AT nasw.org>
To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Market-farming] pumpkin trash
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:05:30 -0400

I've been growing pumpkins for a few years, and have dutifully pulled the vines off the field at the end of the season and thrown them on a "compost" pile at the field edge. But I'm wondering if I am doing any good, and whether (since I rotate my pumpkin fields ) I can just leave the vines on the field, mulch over them for the winter, and then plant something else next year, and stop worrying about removing them. Any thoughts or experiences?

Also, do those of you who grow pumpkins sow a winter cover crop while the pumpkins are still growing strong? It's too late by the time I harvest, so the field stays bare, except for the thinning mulch.

--
Richard Robinson
http://www.nasw.org/users/rrobinson/

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