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Subject: Market Farming
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- From: Brian <bcluton AT aol.com>
- To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Cc: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Zone/strip tillage
- Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:06:15 -0400
There are trade offs with every system. Reducing tillage when appropriate can certainly be a good thing but it can also be problematic. It depends on crops and soil to a great degree and most situations and crops will require a good amount of fine tuning. This season we planted some of our tomatoes into a mowed rye crop, we then ran a coulter and ripper to cut a planting strip. These toms established more slowly and yielded less for the better part of the season. Now in the late season however they show less disease pressure and have cleaner more marketable fruit. We had ok weed control early but by late season the field was loaded with late summer annuals and some perennial patches had grown strong. It wasn't a totally successful venture but one we will continue to experiment with. We also planted some tomatoes this season on regular bare soil but undersowed with white clover at last cultivation. This piece has been picking nice cleanish fruit and the field is very weed free. The white clover is well established and should provide a good plow down cover. If you can manage the cover, manage weeds, and facilitate nutrient cycling and simultaneously reduce tillage and increase soil coverage and/or cover cropping periods you'd be crazy not to. Contrary to Bobs statement you can most definitely hurt the dirt. The trick is to craft a system that meets soil building goals while still meeting the immediate need of growing high quality cash crops. The two go hand in hand but not always as gracefully as one might hope. Sometimes one comes at the expense of the other so we need to merge short term goals with long term soil building practices. Brian Stones Throw Farm CNY zone 5
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-
[Market-farming] Zone/strip tillage,
Nigel Wackett, 09/21/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] Zone/strip tillage, Ryan Platte, 09/24/2010
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
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Re: [Market-farming] Zone/strip tillage,
sunnfarm, 09/24/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] Zone/strip tillage, Brian, 09/25/2010
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