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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] pastured produce

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  • From: Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] pastured produce
  • Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 06:43:23 -0500

This sounds very close to what we did this season. We had planted a clover pasture for the meat chickens on a 1/3 acre and because we had extra clover seed (and I don't recall what kind of clover and i don't have the records near by) we planted the adjacent 1/3 acre. This past spring at planting time we looked at the wonderful clover pasture and said to ourselves we cannot till this under, it's too pretty. So we decided to try no-till organic vegetable production and planted tomatoes (yellow taxi and Big beef), cucumbers (diva, conquest-we also grew lemon but in a tilled bed and they did great), zucchini (zephyr) and various cantaloupe (earliqueen, charentais "Savor", gala, athena), and later water melons on the clover.

The tomatoes, cukes, zukes and cantaloupe did really really well on the clover but the water melons about failed (I believe we got .5 melons per plant). I am not sure if the failure was because of the clover cover or because of the especially wet and cool growing season.


We did our first planting of maters, cukes, zukes and melons (earliqueen, savor and gala) very early (mid april planting) in hoophouses. These beds produced until fall. I did not know cantaloupe can set fruit 5+ times in a season if given enough time. The Conquest cukes and 9 beds of cantaloupe were transplanted in early June as were 5 beds of water melon. We also had some tilled beds and planted cantaloupe in those beds (mostly savor IIRC). Our main crop tomatoes were planted on SRM IRT plastic mulch and our main crop zukes were planted on tilled beds. Tomatoes, zukes and cukes had about the same yields. Water melon did MUCH better planted in tilled areas, cantaloupe did slightly better planted on dirt rather than no till

We did not keep great records as this experiment was not planned. As I said it happened because the clover was just too pretty to kill. Now, during the growing season we had to keep the clover mowed so it did not take over the crops (This was NOT dutch white and I think I remember the clover being the big red stuff-it did need mowing every 10 days or so). So we would take the weed eater out and lift up the vines and mow the clover right around the plants that way-it worked well. One person can do this easily but two is even better and faster (one weed whacks, one picks up vines).

I believe no-till organic produce is possible, though not for everything-spring mix would not be a good candidate for this.


Boulder Belt Organics
New Paris, OH
Check out the Boulder Belt website:
http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/boulderbeltcsa
"There is no way to peace---peace is the way."
A.J. Muste





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