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  • From: "sals3" <sals3 AT cox.net>
  • To: "Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group" <SANET-MG AT LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>, "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Fw: [Market Farming] Not-till for diversified
  • Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:26:43 -0800

 
----- Original Message -----
To: sals3
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2010 4:04 AM
Subject: Fwd: [Market Farming] Not-till for diversified

Sals3 (Larry?),

Thanks for reposting on SANET.  I thought I was on the Market Farming listserve, but haven't received an email for a month or two.  Would you mind forwarding this to the Market Farming list?

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Snow <msnow AT valley.net>
Date: December 18, 2010 5:33:01 AM EST
Subject: Re: [Market Farming] Not-till for diversified

Hello,

I've been a member for just a year or two.  I manage a small organic vegetable farm in the Mid-Atlantic.  Thank you for those links - thanks especially for Steve Diver's ATTRA publication.  I'm sorry that I missed the original thread and so can't respond to the question as posed.  I do have a thought to consider re: no/reduced-till practices as practiced in these two links (rather than at Foundation Farm) in a market garden: it's a great idea and it can work, but so far not for all your crops.  Particularly if you practice succession planting/sowing.

I think the driver, if you're organic, is that you need to time your rolldown with the flowering/pollen-to-milk stage of the cover crop so that it dies and leaves the thickest mulch possible.  I'm not sure that undercutting a cover with less growth will give you the desired benefit - more weeds later.  That undermines no-till's use when you plant successive crops.  I can see it as a useful part of a rotation, which makes the rotation a little more complicated then.  And sometimes I just want a simpler rotation not a more complicated one.

Take tomatoes.  I usually start in an unheated tunnel and plant around the equinox.  I plant a new crop every month or so (field conditions are pretty variable at my site) for four total plantings.  So rye and/or vetch flower mid-late May.  I can live with that for planting 3 (second outside), but what about my first outside planting, or the fourth?  I'd need something that puts on a lot of biomass and matures mid-late April.  I can live with beginning of May, but 1) the early crops want warm soil, too, and a thick cover will slow that spring warming and hold moisture, and 2) I'm concerned the planting will bear too close to the next.  For the last crop, which I plant as late as July 1-4, I'd want something that will be in flower/pollen that late, or that I've seeded in spring and puts on 3-4 tons of biomass and flowers by then.  

Am I looking at this wrong?

I'm considering if it's a matter of picking cover crops that mature at different times - in some cases even breeding them or selecting varieties that work for our systems and marketing needs.  Reading Steve's ATTRA document, perhaps a forage soybean will work for the late tomato plants, for example, or field pea or sunn hemp.  In theory at least.  The details have a way of making things a little less wieldy - soil temperature, soil type, water management, variable conditions, weed control...

Another limiting factor for small farms is tooling.  I'm working on adapting an earthway and a planet jr seeder to do a better job in a bare, untilled spring surface (after winter killed covers).  The issue at my farm is the soil surface can be "tight" and uneven - it's not light and fluffy as after a tillage.  Spring crops do well when seeded with something heavier (like a Mater Mac dream machine), so the seed bed is really an issue for light seeders like we might use on a small farm.  

Does anyone here has any thoughts or ideas to the last?

Mike Snow, Maryland


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rob Wallbridge 
To: 'Market Farming' 
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] No-Till for Diversified Vegetable Production?


Here's another good link on no-till vegetable production:

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/choosing_the_best_cover_crops



And I listened in on this interesting webinar last week:

http://www.extension.org/article/31013



Cheers,

Rob



Rob Wallbridge

Songberry Organic Farm

email: rob AT songberry.ca

web: www.songberry.ca

facebook: "Songberry Organic Farm"

twitter: @songberryfarm


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Steve Diver
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 12:26 PM
To: Market Farming
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] No-Till for Diversified Vegetable Production?



John / Bill - 

Here are two more key links, in my experience.

Mechanical roller-crimper methods for no-till cover crops via NCAT-ATTRA 
http://attra.ncat.org/calendar/question.php/2006/05/08/where_can_i_find_information_about_the_m

The roller-crimper method will give you a killed or dying cover crop mulch 
to transplant into.

Obviously this kind of system won't work for directed seeding of small-seeded 
carrots and lettuce, but transplanting warm-season peppers, tomatoes, & melons 
would match that kind of system.   

For the smaller scale market farm, the methods that Patrice Gros is using
at Foundation Farm are worth knowing about.    

Pics of No-Till Bed System at Foundation Farm, NW Arkansas 
http://www.foundationfarm.com/farm_pics.htm

One key angle to keep in mind is that he lives in Northwest Arkansas in the Fescue 
Belt.  It won't work with Devil's Grass, aka Bermuda Grass, and similar running 
warm-season grasses. 

Actually, if you go back through Eliot Coleman's old references and dig up
European farming books by Faber & Faber, the system called "surface cultivation" 
is a good description of the no-till methods used at Foundation Farm.

When I visited Patrice's farm, the level of fertility displayed in growing crops 
suggested the soil fungal network was still intact and functioning, plus the 
heavy mulching helps.  They avoid scratching deeper than a few inches 
and the soil has never been ripped or turned.

Steve Diver 
Austin, TX 



William H Shoemaker wrote: 

John



These links are a start, but probably not as comprehensive as you'd like. Both authors are very practically minded. They might point to other resources for you too.



http://attra.ncat.org/downloads/notill_veg.doc 

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/organic_no-till_for_vegetable_production 









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