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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] No-till planting

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  • From: Pumpkin Lady <pumpkingal@clearwire.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] No-till planting
  • Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:58:08 -0500

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




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