[bendube]

We’ve been working up a half acre field that was in no-till human powered vegetables for a few years.
The field doesn’t have the best drainage, and the compacted permanent paths were completely infested with quack

After after fall plowing, we’ve taken advantage of the dry spring and have disced the field 3 times already, plus 1 pass through with a riding cultivator set up for field cultivation as best we could (Our springtooth was hit by an idiot with a truck last year.)

The disc harrow has been working, though only slowly, as the grass hasn’t had a chance to regrow much.I liked the action of our S-tine sweeps on the cultivator, but we didn’t like the way we had the cultivator set up.
I think we need at least another 2 months of fallow to kill it. Then we’ll plant buckwheat, or another fast-growing cover crop, just for good measure. I really hope that this is a 1-time affair, as 14 weeks of fallow and intensive cultivation doesn’t fit too well with the ideas that I have about soil health.

As I understand it (not that well), quackgrass should be disced during spring fallow, so as to fragment and destroy its food reserves, while it should be desiccated during summer fallow. If it is disced in the summer, it is more likely to multiply.

And my feeling is that zero tolerance is probably the best policy.

Ben Dube
Cerridewn Farm
Green Mountain College

[bendube]

Hi all,
I’d like to bump this thread up with a question more specific than food safety: Organic Certification.

Are there any certified organic growers on the forum who can talk about how they deal with “raw manure” requirements when growing market vegetables with draft animals? Are bags a 100% necessity, or are there other ways around it?

Thanks,
Ben

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