Beth,
Our neighbor is planting rye as we speak, a winter cover and biomass
additive for spring tillage. He is doing a couple hundred acres
that was in soyabeans. His plantings from a few weeks ago are
greening up nicely. We have had several frosts and the trees are
pretty much bare now. I'm zone 5/6, a cold pocket in SW Wisconsin.
My rye is going in tomorrow at one bushel per acre. It was $13 per
56 pound bushel, not certified organic. Less than 0.2% trash! That
is really what the label says!
Mike
On 10/15/2011 4:42 PM, Pam Twin Oaks wrote:
Beth (Rehoboth Homestead, Peru NY) said:
"We had some pretty bad weed control failures this year. I had
borrowed a
plastic mulch layer last spring and used old landscape cloth
between the
mulch rows - that worked great! I am planning on buying a bed
shaper/plastic mulch layer and using it a lot next year where we
had the
weeds (potatoes, early carrots, early beets, and where the seeds
blew in).
It is getting really late to plant rye, but I'd sure like to have
a cover
crop on. My concern is whether I can mow/till the rye fairly
early (when it
would tend to regrow), and if the plastic mulch will kill the rye
and I can
tp in after a couple weeks. I could let the rye grow between the
rows for
weed control even (maybe?). If this is a big mistake, I'd
appreciate being warned."
Beth, you are talking about winter rye (cereal rye) and not annual
rye, yes? It is very cold hardy, but I don't know if it is too
late to plant in your location. You could go to the SARE website
and check out their book on cover crops - it's all online. If you
sow late and the plants are small, the risk is that the soil is
not protected enough and will erode. Apart from that, I guess it
wouldn't matter too much that you don't get tons of biomass from
it in the spring, as it sounds like that isn't one of your goals
here. It does regrow if mowed before it heads up. But if you cover
with black plastic it might be dissuaded. Will the mowed stems
puncture the plastic though? I think tilling would be a better
choice than mowing.
Another feature to be aware of is the allelopathy of rye - it puts
out a chemical that inhibits small seeds from sprouting, for about
3 weeks after it's disked under. But if you are transplanting,
that shouldn't be a problem...
That's my two cents
Pam Dawling, Twin Oaks, Louisa, VA zone 7
_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
Market Farming List Archives may be found here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/market-farming/
Unsubscribe from the list here (you will need to login in with your email
address and password):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/market-farming
|