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  • From: Joshua Bryceson <turniprock AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Rye and plastic mulch
  • Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:13:28 -0500

we had  a wet spring and were cornered into planting into a tall stand of rye, because we couldnt get into mow or plow it down before it got too tall. The yields were horrible for everything inculding transplanted brassicas. I would caution that if you have heavy soils and have the risk of not getting in before it is knee high, then don't plant it. The thick stalks will tie up N and it doesn't have alleopathic effects on yellow foxtail, which is all that germinated out there this season, and now we are forced to take the whole patch out of production for at least one year and get the weed seed bank down. 

we are moving to winter wheat and trialing triticale, hoping that they won't get so tall and woody in a wet spring when we can't get in to take care of it. 

my 4 cents

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Pam Twin Oaks <pam AT twinoaks.org> wrote:
Beth (Rehoboth Homestead, Peru NY) said:
"We had some pretty bad weed control failures this year.  I had borrowed a
plastic mulch layer last spring and used old landscape cloth between the
mulch rows - that worked great!  I am planning on buying a bed
shaper/plastic mulch layer and using it a lot next year where we had the
weeds (potatoes, early carrots, early beets, and where the seeds blew in).
It is getting really late to plant rye, but I'd sure like to have a cover
crop on.  My concern is whether I can mow/till the rye fairly early (when it
would tend to regrow), and if the plastic mulch will kill the rye and I can
tp in after a couple weeks.  I could let the rye grow between the rows for
weed control even (maybe?). If this is a big mistake, I'd appreciate being warned."

Beth, you are talking about winter rye (cereal rye) and not annual rye, yes? It is very cold hardy, but I don't know if it is too late to plant in your location. You could go to the SARE website and check out their book on cover crops - it's all online. If you sow late and the plants are small, the risk is that the soil is not protected enough and will erode. Apart from that, I guess it wouldn't matter too much that you don't get tons of biomass from it in the spring, as it sounds like that isn't one of your goals here. It does regrow if mowed before it heads up. But if you cover with black plastic it might be dissuaded. Will the mowed stems puncture the plastic though? I think tilling would be a better choice than mowing.

Another feature to be aware of is the allelopathy of rye - it puts out a chemical that inhibits small seeds from sprouting, for about 3 weeks after it's disked under. But if you are transplanting, that shouldn't be a problem...

That's my two cents

Pam Dawling, Twin Oaks, Louisa, VA zone 7

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Turnip Rock CSA
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