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

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  • From: "Rick Hopkins" <rdhopkins AT americanpasturage.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] pastured produce
  • Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 22:27:30 -0600

Lucy,

We also found that early spring growth does not like the companionship of
clovers. I will keep your water melon experience in mind for next season.
I have thought a late planting of a winter annual that would go dormant from
the heat before setting seed might be a better companion for the melons than
would the clover. We may actually try some perennial cool season grasses as
summer cover as we know a late planting will lead to dormancy or kill from
the heat. As we are going back to pasture after one growing season it is
irrelevant if the cool season perennial survives or not.

We use the medium red clover of no particular brand for cover.

Rick H.

-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Lucy
Goodman
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 5:43 AM
To: Market Farming
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] pastured produce


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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