green manure strategy, min-til?

[sickle hocks]

Newbie farmer question…. I have a field of mostly oats and red clover with a bit of fall rye and some sunflower (leftover from the winter bird feed).
A lot of my fields have pretty heavy pressure from wild buckwheat, lamb’s quarters, and volunteer canola…but this patch has stayed pretty clean, I think because of the timing of spring cultivation and seeding.

I had intended this field as a plow-down, but before I trash it I am wondering if i could min-till row crops into it. It seems like whenever I stir the soil on this place I get hammered by the weed seedbank. I’ve got a cold winter…the oats will winter kill and I could mow it so it didn’t set seed. The red clover is nicely (perhaps too nicely) established and should survive.

I would like to grow dry beans, fava beans, dry peas and quinoa in rows in this area. I’ve been hand-planting or using an earthway seeder. I’m wondering if i could rip rows open with a potato plow or something and plant in them, and leave the clover be. Maybe mow it if i had to…i think it would still beat fighting buckwheat with a wheel hoe.

The following year if it was still relatively clean I’d like to go to wheat, hulless oats, or flax.

Any ideas, or should I stick with plan A and start disking? thank you!

(thinking of the nordells, but my climate is so different and i don’t have the same tools..)

[Andy Carson]

My opinion is to do whatever is going to reduce weed pressure the most. If you have time to do a summer fallow and plant a late cover crop, that seems great. A fallow does alot to reduce (and change!) your weed pressure in suprizing ways. If your land is like mine, the fallow takes time and many passes. If you don’t have that kind of time, I wouldn’t try it, because a half-job on a fallow just leads to a bunch of weeds. I get hammered by weeds a lot too and I suspect that it will be years before my land is Nordell-style. Doing whatever I can to control weeds in a way that leads down the Nordell-type path pretty much dictates my farming practices right now. You climate is different, though, and you might have greater concerns about erosion during a fallow. I am unfamiliar with your land… I am not planning on doing fallows all the time, but I think they can be very helpful when the weed pressure is very high.

[sickle hocks]

Thanks for your thoughts, Andy. You’re right, it’s all pretty site-specific isn’t it? Definitely no additional summer fallows this season, I’m swamped.

I think I can afford to leave this patch out of production for another season, so I’m leaning towards just mowing it and hoping it fills in nice with clover for next summer. That will give me fewer acres to deal with next year which would probably be smart. I might try potatoes in rows of straw mulch on part of it.

I’m almost tempted to let the oats set seed, and turn the cattle in to pick it over and trample seed in a bit later in the fall, but that might nuke the clover in the process.

[Author]

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