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  • From: Steve Diver <steved AT ncat.org>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] no till organic field corn
  • Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:31:50 -0600

As an alternative to managing living mulches via suppression
with "herbicides", Vern Grubinger's graduate work at Cornell
University is worth noting... but keep in mind it relates to
"sweet corn."

White clover was multivated or rototilled with the middle tines
removed, leaving strips of live clover growing between the corn
rows - a procedure called "partial rototilling."

To suppress excessive re-growth of the living mulch, white
clover was partially rototilled two weeks after corn emergence.

Waiting until the fourth or sixth week after sweet corn
emergence to perform partial rototilling was less effective
(i.e., too much competition reduces corn yields, eh?).


Grubinger, Vern P. and Peter L. Minoti. 1990. Managing white
clover living mulch for sweet corn production with partial rototilling.
American Journal of Alternative Agriculture. Vol. 5, No. 1. p. 4-12.


The above method is based on intercropping a living cover
crop in-between the sweet corn crop.

There is much more to understanding the factors and
methods that make intercropping successful or a
downright tangled mess that stunts crop growth.

You can contact ATTRA and I'll set you up with enough
reading material of field trials and methods to ponder for
many weeks and months. It depends on your geographical
location, cropping season, cover crop species, tools and
techniques, and "timing."

That is in response to planting "into" a cover crop; i.e.,
interseeding, undersowing, intercropping with living
mulches and so forth.

But the method that seems most practical these days
is to mechanically kill a high biomass cover crop to
create a weed suppressive mulch, followed by a
no-till planter. As somebody suggested, however,
you will often need to follow up with some kind of a
knock-down for emerging weeds, such as directed
"flaming" or whatnot.... so it will take some tinkering.

What kind of non-spray no-till were you thinking about.

Steve Diver



>Hi, I'm new to the list and this is a little off
>topic.
>
>My goal is to convince my father-n-law, a beef farmer,
>to go organic. Half are grass-fed, but the other
>half are still being fed a minimal amount of grain
>with their haylage and hay.
>
>He insists on growing corn, as most of his customers
>are looking for a nice roast with plenty of fat. >
>Anyone here have experience with no tilling corn into
>stands of barley or other cover crops and not
>spraying?
>
>thanks,
>
>--------
>Sam White
>Cedar Rock Farm/CSA






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