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  • From: "Johnathan Avery Yelenick" <yelenick AT riseup.net>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Transition to Organic
  • Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:48:34 -0600 (MDT)

Hi Michael,

Sounds like if you are going to try and farm next year you are going have
a quite a time with the weeds. My recommendation is definitely do NOT try
to farm unless you have some sort of mechanical cultivator; tine weeder or
sweeps. You will be overwhelmed if you don't have those mechanical
resources. It would be better just to put in some cover to build soil in
the fall-winter-early spring, mow or disc the rye in the spring, and then
to deplete the soil seed bank by clean cultivating with discs or harrows
throughout the season. This will deplete soil organic matter, but it's
probably worth the trade-off to take out the weeds. Add LOTS of compost
(20 tons/acre) in the fall when you reseed a cover to build organic matter
soil reserves. Check out the book Sustainable Vegetable Production From
Start-Up to Market by V. Grubinger and read about cover crops and
cultivation in particular.

I would recommend planting rye this fall '09 and clean cultivating next
season '10 just to deplete the soil weed seed bank. Put in rye or winter
killed oats with some winter kill nitrogen fixer like peas in the fall of
'10 and do cash crops in '11. You can expand this rotation of clean
cultivated fallow to late season cover crop (on the same acrage) to cash
crop (on the same acreage) the next season; expanding upon this theme to
more acreage as you go.

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:11:49 -0400
From: Michael Peck <silverandsienna AT gmail.com>
Subject: [Market-farming] Transition to Organic
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID:
<4c702a8d0908190711m448d172bna61282adb2581657 AT mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I'm going to be farming a few acres of family land beginning next spring in
South Central Michigan. For the last few years it has been in corn/oats or
soybeans. It was not farmed organically. This year it was not cultivated
at all, so there is a fairly thick mat of mixed grasses and weeds. I will
be planting some large areas of corn, potatoes and sunflowers, and mixed
vegetables for market.

What steps should I take to prepare the soil now? I'd like to get a cover
crop in since I have the time now. What recommendations do you have for
timing, crops to plant, cultivation schedule, etc.

Thanks for your help,
Michael
Marshall MI Zone 5b -10 thru -15 F


"If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your
food comes from the grocery store then you are going to defend to the
death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on
that; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that
your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death
because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have
become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it
has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and
it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it."
— Derrick Jensen





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