Cover Crop Progress

[Tim Harrigan]

This work integrating liquid manure and cover crops is coming along really nice. Here are strips of oats/forage turnips on the left and oil seed radish on the right. The close-up is the oat/turnip mix. I am surprised at how good they look because we seeded at the end of July and August was hot and dry, not what I was hoping for. Some of these strips were seeded directly with manure, others were drilled and then manure over the top with an AerWay applicator. Cover crops love manure. I did not do this with animal power.

Pictures did not load, file must be too big. So I put them the attached pdf.

[jac]

I know im late in on this Tim, but been in Oxfordshire for 8 weeks… Cover cropping is not widely used in the UK and I was wondering how this mix in your fotos are incorperated ? Do you graze it down with sheep before tillage ? or does it die back enough to plow under ? …
John

[Tim Harrigan]

That is on a 40 acre demonstration site that I have about an hour from my place so it is not my land. It would be a good graze for sheep or cattle but the owner is not set up to graze. So in this case the cover is a catch crop for nutrients and for soil quality benefits. The oats will probably be killed by frost by mid-October and the turnips and radish will probably grow into December before they winter kill. The farmer will no-till corn into it next spring.

[jac]

Min till and no till seem to be the by word in arable circles nowadays. Is there any equipment that horse farmers can use for this I wonder ? The min till cultivators I saw down south were really heavy, but suspect they need to be so heavy to break up the compaction caused by years of heavy tractor use..
John

[Tim Harrigan]

There are no-till drills and planters and some tillage equipment that would be considered min-till in some situations like the chisel plow or some other combination tillage tools that are designed to work in crop residue. Others like the AerWay for aeration tillage or low-disturbance subsoilers would be other examples. Weed control gets to be more of a challenge with less tillage, it seems like most animal power farming is still with the tools that were designed for it, moldboard plow, disk, harrows, etc.

[jac]

I just thought that with the horse farm land being generally more friable the min till might be an easier transition than the traditional tractor farm. It would be great to have the modern systems available to horse farmers. Surely horse farmed land doesnt have the same pan problems as the tractor boys ??….
John

[Andy Carson]

I am attempting to use animal power and minimal tillage. I think the concept makes alot of sense, but have to admit I have struggled with weeds alot at this early stage. I expect that each additional year and cover rotation will eliminate more weeds, but that remains to be seen and I am not ruling out plowing now and then. The Nordells lay out a model for these techniques that works in thier hands. They sell a video that lays out thier techniques, which I found fascinating. It is interesting to me that thier techniques use a mix of traditional tools and newly developed tools. Also, many of the traditional tools are also used in slightly different ways than they were intended for. For example, skim plowing with a traditional hand plow. My take home message was that there is much from big “modern” tractor-based farming that can be adapted to animal power and that the “old time methods” can be improved in some cases with modern techniques and knowledge, including minimal tillage. I think it’s worth taking substantial time thinking about and understanding the reasons for why each techniques was performed with animal power in the past, how these fuctions are performed on big “modern” tractor-based farms, and how either method might be adapted to draft animal power today. I think that modern technology and plants can improve these techniques alot, which might result in modifications to old tools and the developement of altogether new tools. I think it the future most animal based farmers will use a mix of old and new tools, both designed for use by animals, which are capable of taking full advantage of the last centuries agricultural research and development.

[Tim Harrigan]

jac;20876 wrote:

Surely horse farmed land doesnt have the same pan problems as the tractor boys ??….
John

Actually plow pans have been a problem in many fields and are related to the compression of the soil right beneath the normal depth of the moldboard plow (plough :)). Vehicle compaction is another issue.

[jac]

This is interesting.. I have wrongly assumed it was the weight of the tractors causing the pan.. or at least the pan Im thinking of. I take it plowing deep now and then, for potatos example,would help. I had wondered if land cress would be any use as a cover crop. Thick coverage and easy to incorperate ?..
John

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