In Row Spacing/ Measurement

[dominiquer60]

I don’t have any experience with draft power on raised beds, what kind of equipment do you plan on using to cultivate and to keep them raised?

I can advise, that what ever you want your row width to be, ideally you should have the same width of neck yoke and evener. However if you have large horses, less than 36″ puts them rubbing bellies and that is not good either. If you decide to go with 30″ between rows, and have big horses in a 36″ evener/yoke, I suspect that the horses will be walking on the edges of your raised beds and have a negative impact on their structural integrity.

A 3′ cultimulcher on a raised bed-

The first thing that comes to mind is stability, how level are these raised beds? With my limited experience with a 5′ and no raised beds, I would worry about trying to keep the culitmulcher balanced and centered on the beds. Any slope could cause the cultimulcher to list to the downhill side. I suspect that they will be a challenge depending on your conditions. Next, cultimulchers and mowed cover crops are not the best of friends in many cases. How are you mowing the crop? Without a good flail mower to break up the cover crop into small short pieces, you are likely to drag crop residue instead of incorporating it. I like to use a disc harrow to start incorporating crop residue, once it has broken down, then I can use my cultimulcher. Also the cultimulcher is a leveling tool. Taking it over a raised be may result in deeper penetration than on flat beds (do to potentially looser soil structure), and could easily ruin the sides of a raised bed, potentially flattening the raised formation of the bed.

I hope this helps some. I would be interested to hear from anyone with raised bed and draft power experience, as the above is just a guess based on my experiences and mistakes without raised beds.

Having transitioned from tractors to draft animals, there are now some things that just take more time, such a cover crop incorporation. With a tractor I used to be able to mow, spade (rototiller like results without the rapid beating of the soil), and plant the same day. Those days are long gone with horses. I really have to plan ahead for proper decomposition and incorporation before I can plant into recent cover crops that are not plowed down. Depending on the weather and the crop to incorporate, it can take days or weeks of break down before planting or seeding into it. I like to use winter kill crops for no-moldboard tillage areas, a pass or two with the disc, then a pass of the cultirmulcher once it has warmed enough and I am ready to seed peas and spring crops into former oats and peas, or sudex and crimson clover. This year I am experimenting with winter kill sun hemp and annual rye.

Best wishes with your new adventures in draft animal-power farming

Erika

[Billy Anderson]

Thanks for the advice. You have confirmed my worries at using the cultimulcher on a raised bed system. I have been doing a lot of research on the 30″ wide beds for intensive market gardening, namely Jean-Martin Fortier book where he farms intensively on 1.5 acres and turns over annually six figures. It certainly seems to be a great system which is getting great recognition.

He has the garden laid out with 16 permanent beds in each plot. 30″ wide with 18″ between them. so there is 48″ center to center all 100′ long. The reason i was drawn to this system is, i have about the same area i can put into vegetables and obviously the potential of what could be earned for that amount of land usage. The guys using the raised beds use the walk behind two wheeled tractors. all with implements 30″ wide. They prepare the bed with a power harrow. When it comes to mowing cover crops, this is done with the flail mower attachment and worked in with power harrow. Obviously the cultimulcher isn’t going to do what the two wheeled tractor can but i am just looking to pick the brains of knowledgeable horse powered farmers and see if there was some other tools out there that could be used to work on an intensive system close to this.

[dominiquer60]

I am familiar with this system, but only thru reading the book. So what you are really asking about is a 48″ bed (center to center of wheel tracks) with a 30″ raised portion. This is going to change your evener and neck yoke set up to 48″ to keep the animals in the middle of the row tracks. In this case you will not have much animal interference with the edge of you raised bed, but the 3′ cultimulcher could still be tipsy and potentially level the beds, or drift off the sides.

Jean-Martin’s system works for his small space and financial goals, but I find it a little too bio-intensive for a draft animal system and my goals. I prefer Anne and Eric Nordell’s bio-extensive model. It takes a larger land base (or reduced percentage of cultivated ground) because half of the ground is in production, the other half in cover crops/mulch. However their system requires less off the farm inputs (mostly cover crop seed at this point) and the soil benefits greatly from the long term cover crops in a variety of ways. The Nordell’s practices fully embrace the space and time needed to garden with horses (yet can be applied to machine farming). For me and my non-irrigated soil, there are greater advantages to a flat bed system because of the improved moisture conversation over the raised beds that dry out faster. I am also a fan of the long term cover crop vs. needing to buy in compost that I can’t apply to my ground anyway (too much P in our soil already). This is just what works for me after a few years of experience, I am sure that I will being doing things a bit differently down the road, as I find tweaks that make it custom tailored to the land and my needs.

[Crabapple Farm]

One option with a cultimulcher/roller harrow that I have considered but not implemented is to build a custom roller with larger diameter packer wheels (or rubber wheels) on the outside edges to run in the pathways, like the Guide Cones in raised bed 3ph cultivator systems. The larger diameter packers would hug the bed sides and keep it tracking well, I think. Don’t know anyone who’s done it.
If you want to go down the custom fabrication path, you could even incorporate adjustable hilling disks in front of the wheels to help build and maintain the raised bed. I’m not sure how to get those disks out of the way quickly and easily for transport, though.

[ethalernull]

seems to me that using the traditional mcd or JD 2-horse straddle cultivator would work on raised beds. just set the wheelbase out as far as possible so the wheels don’t ride on the raised bed, but make sure the evener/neck yoke are 48in to keep the horses centered in pathways. i would suggest that three 1ft V-sweeps (row crop or goosefoot sweeps) in a staggered pattern accompanied with hilling discs at a 30″- distance apart or greater (to account for scooping/throwing soil) and angled so that they are not very aggressive. i think that would give you quite a range of bed renovation possibilities. the 1ft sweeps work very well for stirring/conditioning the soil for seed bed prep, and if there is enough space for trash to move through the sweeps i have had decent luck tilling under beds with slight residue like lettuce/salad greens post harvest. you could drop down to smaller width sweeps/shovels that could go deeper and catch less trash for experimenting with handling larger residue volumes. mounting several individual hilling disks together, maybe up to six total could be possible on the cultivator frame for chopping up residue and blending.
then I would just consider a smoother/roller option to build onto the back. a section of chain link fence weighted with rebar or some heavy boards could be a simple option, or a rolling type, or the pioneer crumbler if you wanted some heavy metal on it.
the old cultivators would probably be a great place to start and to me seem like a really good option. you’d have big sturdy wheels in your paths and even a steering system, while keeping lots of weight off of your bed-tops.

[ethalernull]

hey erika,

can you tell me a bit more about your sudex/crimson clover experience. looking into that this year seems like a really nice aggressive long-term summer cover. are you seeding at the same time? what time of year? do you need to be careful of sudex not getting to big/shady for crimson to pull through after mow-down?

thanks,
evan

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