Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pumpkin Lady <pumpkingal@clearwire.net>]

mcoldiron wrote:
> I'm pretty sure I know how to modify my buster planter to a no till 
> planter.  So let's take black eyed peas, for example.  I usually 
> pick 4 or 5 bushels a day for market.  It usually takes a week or so 
> for the peas to grow again, so I pick different rows each day.  I 
> plant enough so I'm starting over at first set of rows at the 
> beginning of the next week. I sell them shelled or by the bushel.  I 
> know black eyed peas will grow here without irrigation.  If I use your 
> method of no till and grow a cover crop for mulch for next year, 
> should I plant fewer rows of peas to get my 4 or 5 bushels a day?  The 
> last time I planted peas, it took about 3/4 of an acre to get my daily 
> quota.

I think part of the problem is that no till people don't think in terms 
of rows...they think in terms of plants. In a 4 x 25 bed you can get 400 
cowpea plants(planted the recommended 6 inches apart, but not on hex, 
which some people also recommend). I also have 2 ft of walkway between 
beds, although you can have only 8 inches to 1 ft if you want, and of 
course your beds can be longer than 25 feet. That's just what I decided 
on based on talking to other people. 4 ft is about as wide as a person 
can comfortably reach halfway across (you work from both sides and never 
step in the beds) and 25 feet is about as far as most people want to 
"walk around" a bed. You can shoehorn in a few more plants by planting 
on a hex or equilateral triangles, which works out to be a hex. The 
numbers that Jeavons claims should fit in I can't understand what he 
gets from the math I would use to get how they say it works, so mostly I 
just plant on a square since I can plant on a square more reliably than 
I can on a hex and I understand the math for that. ;-).  I plant 
presprouted plants, so of course I am guaranteed that at least at the 
beginning my beds are completely full. You'll need to figure in for lack 
of seed germination, unless you want to fill in by hand.

You'll need to figure out how many plants you have in your rows what 
beds and paths would take up space wise to figure out what sort of space 
savings you'd get on no-till. In general it should allow you to cut back 
on the land you use by a factor of 3 or 4 I would think.

Morgan