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livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Cover crops, roller crimpers, and straw mulch

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Steve Diver <steved@ipa.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Cover crops, roller crimpers, and straw mulch
  • Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:28:23 -0400 (EDT)

If you mow hairy vetch after it starts to flower, you can get
an effective kill-down. A flail mower is preferred if you intend
to come back with a no-till planting.

But vetch is usually planted with winter rye to create a high
biomass cover crop that leaves a weed suppressive mulch.

The roller-crimper is replacing mow-kill because it leaves
a thicker mulch for no-till plantings.

The roller-crimper doesn't kill the cover crop immediately.
It lays it over and "crimps" the stem, so the cover crop
slowly turns brown and dies, leaving a weed suppressive
mulch.

You can do this on a small scale, using the same method
that tricksters use to make crop circles in England.... a
board and a piece of rope attached to each end.

Push the stalks of rye over with the board, stepping on the
board while holding the rope. Move forward through the
field of rye, stepping and crimping as you go.

One of the tricks is to wait until the cereal crop starts
to flower, when the anthers are extended.

Elbon rye is a tall-growing, high biomass producing
cover crop. So variety selection for the cover crop
can also be important. Short-stalked wheat varieties
won't work as well.

A market farmer in Oklahoma used a string trimmer
to knock over cover crops growing on beds. Then he
raked and concentrated the biomass onto the beds for
no-till planting.

But there is a complete alternative to the
roller-crimper to establish no-till vegetable
production, and that is good old fashioned
straw mulch used in liberal amounts.

The deep mulch and sheet mulch methods are
still a good option for market gardens ranging
in size from a quarter to half acre, on up to a
few acres in size.

You can purchase straw or you can grow and
bale your own. Raise winter wheat or winter rye,
but cut it before the seedhead matures.

I'm using one square bale of straw mulch for
every 100 square foot of raised bed, btw.

But no-till ain't for every farm/garden situation,
so there are complementary cover crop and
mulching methods that can be used with proper
tillage and humus management.

Steve Diver



-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Nagel <activism98201@verizon.net>
>Sent: Aug 16, 2006 11:58 AM
>To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Sustainable Production of Fresh-Market
>Tomatoes and O
>
>Paul, I agree 100% with your assessment.
>
>What I was wanting bring up (and failed to do so in my initial response) was
>the question of how it is, exactly, that these crimpers/rollers can be said
>to "kill" vetch. It seems a lot like mowing to me, in which case why
>doesn't the mowing that people are doing "kill" the vetch for them? Are the
>crimpers/rollers doing something special that might be incorporated at a
>smaller scale (with or, hopefully, without mowing)?
>
>I'm interested in this for purposes of potentially reinvigorating land
>(perhaps to plant, but mostly to encourage more permanent vegatative growth
>[create a micro-climate]).
>
>
>-Mark Nagel
>Everett, WA








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