In Row Spacing/ Measurement

Keith Welcome to DAPNet,

There are several things to consider before setting up your garden. Head lands harvest lanes, row spacing, etc. What kind of equipment will you be using? single horse cultivator, a riding straddle row cultivator, a section of harrow? What kind of equipment are you still looking for, will it fit into the system that you develop now? Will you be using a tractor at all, and how does it fit into the system?

Without knowing what you have to work with it is hard to recommend specific details, so I can share with you how I developed the spacial arrangement of my garden. Hopefully this will shed some light on the possibilities when developing your own system. Each farm is different, so hopefully others will chime in too.

I have a few different shaped fields, but for the most part I have left a 20′ head land at the ends of them all (running perpendicular to the rows). I use 20′ to swing a team around and for the tractor that takes all of 20′ to do a multi-point turn. I use horses for most of my work, but rely on a Rain Flo water wheel transplanter that I have to use with the tractor. I don’t irrigate so using a water wheel is extremely helpful to give the transplants a fighting chance at surviving. All plots have at least a 10′ grass harvest lane surrounding them for easy access with equipment, these run parallel to the rows.

Tighter row spacing allows for more crops in a given area but becomes more difficult to cultivate without horses stepping on crops, wider row spacing allows for more error, but also allows more space for weeds to develop. I chose 36″ for a multitude of reasons. I use a Water transplanter and the widest width that 2 wheels will go so that I can plant 2 rows at a time, is 36″. My McCormick Deering riding 2 horse 1 row cultivator is adjustable to various row spacing. With wheels adjusted at 36″ there is more of a limit to the range of movement (of various levers and adjustments) than I care to accept from my cultivator. So I set my wheels 38″ apart, my horses 36″ apart and still have a good range of adjustment while I am cultivating. The wheel width is not noticed when rear sweeps are set at 36″ apart, then I have a good mark to go off of if I am making beds or marking rows. I also like 36″ because frankly the math is easier when calculating various needs like fertilizer, and plants needed for so many feet of garden space. Since 36″ met many of my needs, when I ordered new equipment like my sprayer, I was able to custom order it to meet my spacing. I plant my hot crops (tomatoes, cucs, squash, pumpkins) at 6′ between rows, they need the extra space and we need the room to maintain the crops and harvest them, so thankfully 6’=72″ which is 2×36″, the 6′ rows fit nicely into the garden in reality and on paper.

I would ideally like to have all my rows the same length 150′. 1.75 acres are set up this way, but in order to maximize production the other 1 acre, I have to deal with 160′ to 200′ lengths as well. I like 150′ because 24 rows makes a nearly quarter acre section, this makes planning rotations, calculating cover crop seed and soil amendments all easier. Some of the row cover that I like to use comes in 50′ increments and 150′ of it is easier for me to handle alone. When hand weeding or thinning 150′ is less daunting. I do a lot of succession cropping and I like to plant and seed crops in full or half rows, often times 200+’ of Broccoli Raab is just way more than I need at once, so 150 works well for my crop planning. As the farm (owned by Sam’s parents) transitions from dairy to what ever the future brings, I hope to have more room for my garden for more cover cropping and to whittle my long rows down to a consistent 150′ across all garden plots.

Let us know what you have to work with and what your future equipment plans may be so that we can help where we can.

I look forward to helping one of Pam’s and Paul’s students as much as I can from a far,

Erika

“Just so I understand correctly, are you recommending each single row of crops be 36″ from center to center from each other? Which would mean at 24 rows of that crop spacing, at 150′ long, will total an area equivalent of about a 1/4 acre field?”

Correct Keith, at 36 inches center to center, with rows 150′ long, 24 rows will give you near a 1/4 acre. I like 1/4 acres as they are a manageable size. You can plow it and harrow it the same day if needed, with help you can plant/seed it all in a day if needed, and like I said before, for planning the math is fairly easy.

You can make do with a good single horse cultivator. Mine is rusted up and not adjustable, so I have to go down between each row twice, but it gets the job done. Using a good 2 horse straddle row cultivator takes a little getting used to, but once the horses understand the job it becomes fun, for me it is a wonderful Zen task that I enjoy immensely. So if you folks come across a good McCormick Deering cultivator, don’t pass it by. It may also be good to have some kind of leveling devise, even something like a planker (http://flofarm.org/dap/forums/topic/planker-for-secondary-tillage/) would be cheap and easy for now. Leveling and smoothing the ground makes for more even/easier seeding and cultivating. Even dragging a heavy post behind the disk harrow will help, you will want it on an angle and slightly wider than the disk harrow, we use chain to attach ours.

I was in your shoes not too long ago, I had 10 years of working vegetables with tractors, and more years working with horses, but I never married my 2 passions together until I moved to CT. You folks are always more than welcome here, you can always ask more questions here and search for subjects, that is how I found the planker link to a previous discussion. Best of luck to you and Blue Star, do what you can even if it is just planting cover crops until you can devote more time next season. Keep the questions coming 🙂

Hi Keith,

I wanted to share what we do here on Stone Horse Farm, just north of San Francisco. I have been farming with a team of big Percherons for 17 years. I set up our fields, like Erika, in 1/4 acre chunks. It fits the farm well, and is relatively easy in the rotation I have developed. We too leave about a 20′ grassed headland, and our rows are about 100 feet long. A square quarter acre is 104 by 104. I drip irrigate as much as possible, for water conservation and much reduced weed pressure. Since my drip tubing is my irrigation system I need to make the size of my fields the same, another reason for the quarter acre increments.

My row spacings are at 42″, mostly because I need to fit my horses down the rows easily without stepping on plants. The straddle row cultivators are adjustable to that width, and the one horse walking cultivators also work well to that width when plant height gets too tall for the straddle row. I double that width to 84″ or 7 feet for things like tomatoes, melons and winter squash, those crops that like to sprawl. Once these deeper rooted crops are established, they are on their own for moisture, and I must say they are delicious for it.

My horses are probably too big to be efficient in my small fields, but I also use them in the woods where their size is very handy. And for the wagon and carriage work in public, their size has the wow factor.

Fit your field layout to the tools you have. Once your rows are established they will act as a guide for the horses, too.

Stu

A couple years ago we had a teamster working with us with her team of Belgians. We didn’t do much of it, but we did cultivate 32″ rows with one of her Belgians and a walking cultivator. It was definitely feasible. I think 30″ with a fjord would not be a problem. I know folks doing 30″ rows with Suffolks. We now have a fairly small pony that we used a little last year for cultivation and hope to use more this year, on 30″ rows.

I agree with the others that a single horse working 30″ rows is a good fit. We worked a couple acres of 30″ row corn with straddle row cultivator a couple years back, it was tight, but we made it work. A McCormick New 4 will adjust down to ~36″, but you sacrifice your ability to steer the rig as well as if it were wider. Having it this narrow may even sacrifice the ability to widen the individual tool frames as well. My compromise was to set the wheels at 40″ on center so that I could still make full use of widening the tool frames and have a good steering range with the foot pedals. When I use the cultivator to mark rows I just set over a wheel width to keep my 36″ rows, what make this easier is if you set your rear sweeps at 36″ on center. These will leave a shallow mark that is easy for you and the horses to follow.

With the 30″ corn rows we set the rear sweeps narrower so that there was less chance of wiping out the adjacent rows. The one ton horses would occasionally take out a plant, but a well seasoned farmer once told me that it is common to kill 5% of a crop while cultivating (especially with that Willams tool system).

Speaking of the Williams tool system, that is a hard one to beat, but I will say that I don’t miss it too much and having lines in my hands seems to negate any small differences from the Williams and my McCormick Deering. For blind cultivation we use and old rod weeder on the back of a JD cultivator, it works fairly well, but if you could figure out how to mount lely/einbock type tines to horse drawn equipment I think you would be better off. the original McCormick had a little tine attachment that blind weeds what the sweeps don’t get, we like this option even better as we can do a better job with weeds between the rows while blind weeding the crop. I will attach pictures below.

Such great information here, thanks. Our crop plan has always included a healthy safety margin, even up to 30% depending on the crop, not that I ever plan on destroying a third of the row due to poor aim or hastily-adjusted machinery (or bugs, disease, drought, poor germination or whatever else) but this way when it does happen to something essential we still have enough to put in the CSA baskets and fill the table at market.
Looking forward to a lot fewer hours behind the wheel and a lot more with hands on the lines this year.