plowing in covercrop

[mitchmaine]

i’ve always been a slow learner, but if I’m not the last to know this and it may help someone out, so much the better. Seems I’ve always knocked down our cover crops and field debris with a harrow and cut it up a few times before plowing. Not the prettiest job when your done, but most of it gets covered and seeded over and rots down nice over the winter.
This year, I decided to try something new, and mowed it first. Buckwheat. Full of honey bees. They didn’t seem to mind us and no one was stung. First, we cut off the tops and then flattened it, second time around. Looked great. Harrowed it a few times to chop it up a little more and went to plowing. All it does is roll up in the throat of the plow and pull it(the plow) out of the ground. Very frustrating. Tried the sulky plow and then a walking plow, each with coulter wheels, but no luck. So, back to the harrow, I guess. I could rake it up and dump it on the compost pile, but that sounds like a lot of work, and it may come to that. Any advice?

mitch

[goodcompanion]

I remember a situation like what you’re describing. Lots of harrowing will eventually solve it, once the cover crop breaks down enough. It cost me a few weeks as I remember. Very frustrating.

Now I use a cultimulcher with the rollers fore and aft, danish sweep tines in the middle. It is the end-all of cover crop termination and general purpose harrowing tools.

[Ed Thayer]

Mitch,

I am no expert, but would a jointer work better in cutting the top and burying the trash instead of a coulter wheel?

I had some frustration on a new piece I plowed a couple of weeks ago for a new potato patch next year. It was a piece of old pasture that had gone by.
I mowed it real tight before attempting to plow it. The jointer would cut the sod where there was grass but there was also some sort of wild berry that had a vine like growth to it. That stuff would ball up and peel off the soil like carpet. Awfull stuff to deal with.

Mind you this was done with the Farmall cub, not a horse driven unit. But it was still frustrating just the same. i guess no matter what pulls the plow, the results would have been the same.

Ed

[near horse]

I know some old timers here still complain about trying to plow under sweet clover in the fall – they say it was up to the tractor hood – same problem with it balling up on the plow shares.

Erik – what exactly is a cultimulcher? How does it work?

[jac]

Mitch I know this wont help you one little bit this time but in Sam Moore’s book “implements for horse farmers” there is a mention of an attatchment called a weed rod.. i think thats what it said .. my copy of the book is at Kilmarnock College.. It was a rod that hung down from the frame and trailed in front of the mold board and pushed the tall stuff down in front of the turning soil.. absolutly useless for you now but mabey worth a try next time….best of luck and try not to loose the old temper:D..
John

[mitchmaine]

thanks for the help, guys. all points taken.
geoff, never had anything that high to plow down. two or three feet mostly. and the harrow would knockit down forward, so to speak, but still rooted to the ground so it would strip out from under the plow and disappear still in the root. cut like it is, it starts to look like small round bales of straw after ten feet.
we used to find bits of chain attached to some plows similar to what your saying , john, least i guess thats what it was for.
right now, i’m going to try and harrow up some soil onto the veg and see if it stays put.
funny thing about that temper, john. thought it might have disappeared by no.
thought i might have seen one of those cultimulchers at i & j. three point hitch, twenty feet long section of 18″ rolling tube with 4″ standing iron bar welded spirally around it. quite a tool. looks expensive.
thanks again, all.

mitch

[near horse]

Mitch,

What you describe sounds like a crop roller that was supposed to flatten a greene manure crop so that one could plant directly into the crop w/o tillage. I think there was some data on success on Rodale’s “New Farm” website. Results seemed pretty variable.

Can you afford to let buckwheat breakdown a bit (maybe overwinter?)?

Discing that stuff didn’t help much? That seems to be the best option – some way of macerating the stuff to reduce size and get it mixed with a bit of soil. That might make the plowing easier.

Farming = Advanced Problem Solving.

[mitchmaine]

disced it hard this morning and brought up a little soil and plowing is better now. all horses so going is slow.
you make a good point. somewhere in the fight to get it plowed so i can sow it to rye to cover it for the winter, i discovered many volunteer buckwheat from the mowing and on the crop side just as many bean plants. if i’d just let it alone with just the mowing, the weed and wheat and bean roots would have held it for the winter, and even though they wouldn’t have made it, the new beans and buckwheat were doing their job.

anyway, right or wrong, were halfway through( only a little better than an acre) so mkight as well finish up. toughest acre i ever worked up.

thanks for the help

mitch

[goodcompanion]

I got my cultimulcher from Shipshe Farm supply, saw it demonstrated last year at NEAPFD. It does have those rollers with the spirally-attached steel rods. I got the 5 foot wide model which pulls with 2-3 horses for around $1600.

I could add that the cultimulcher has been a great training tool for a horse I am breaking of running with equipment. You can apply or remove load by raising or lowering the sweep tines. Can’t run too far with those sweeps engaged!

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Buckwheat always seems to be sold as the miracle fast turn over green manure but my experience is that it’s ‘got issues’ which you’ve hit up against Mitch, it grows fast, provides good cover and is excellent for pollinating insects BUT;
the problem comes with those stems as you’ve found out and it seeds like crazy unless you chop it in straight away as soon as flowers appear which to me always feels like a shame when it’s covered in bees and hoverflies.
I know this isn’t of much use to you in terms of advice as I’m still cultivating with a tractor (my steers are nowhere near up to cultivations yet) but rotorvating twice seems to be the only to get the stuff worked down enough to plough.
It’s an easy crop to grow, but a tough one to get rid of.

Ed

[Matthew]

I don’t know what the area looks like but maby you could burn the stubble with out getting in too mutch trouble. I was talking to a guy last summer who was taking stone walls on my neighbors property. He farmed a bit out west and he said they would burn the fields after they were cut. He said they did not get enugh rain for the stuff to break down in the soil so they burned it off. They would drive a pick up with a drip tourch hanging out the window.

[mitchmaine]

thanks ed and matt, i did manage to get it under the ground in time for an inch and a half of rain. it was so green, matt, and soken now that burning is probably no use here in the northeast but i’ll remember what you’ve said. i harrowed it within an inch of its life and probably the light rains the day before the big winds knocked it down enough to plowe it down. now i’m trying to harrow it enough to bring up most of the moisture to drill it. i may have to broadcast and harrow it in, anyway you look at it, this peice of ground and the horses got more than its share of a workout. each plan seems to have to change for some new reason so now i have no plan and things are going better. the only thing we are missing is snow and i expect it daily. best wishes all, and thanks for the help.

your friend, mitch

[Anonymous]

Hi Erik,
I have a quick question for you in regards to your cultimulcher. I typically disc in cover-crops and then drag a spring tooth then spike tooth harrow to get my final seedbed. I would like to save time in the field so do you think I could achieve the same effect by using the cultimulcher after discing instead of both a spring and spike harrow?

Also how does it do with varying degrees of trash. Seems like a scary implement to try and unplug?

How do you use it in your cropping system?

Did you buy the additional component that allows you to turn the front roller?

Thanks a bunch 🙂

-Devin Hickman

[near horse]

@Matthew 21174 wrote:

I don’t know what the area looks like but maby you could burn the stubble with out getting in too mutch trouble. I was talking to a guy last summer who was taking stone walls on my neighbors property. He farmed a bit out west and he said they would burn the fields after they were cut. He said they did not get enugh rain for the stuff to break down in the soil so they burned it off. They would drive a pick up with a drip tourch hanging out the window.

Hi Matt,

I live in one of those “stubble burning” areas here in N. ID/ Eastern WA where wheat farmers worry about disease(s) being harbored in the decaying straw and so they often burn it – for now. It looks like that might be slowing down due to both air quality issues and erosion control requirements.

IMHO – burning off crop residues that you/your soil could benefit from by keeping them on the place is really watching your organic matter “go up in smoke”. Organic matter will break down eventually – Nature Happens!

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, is there so much straw out there that there is no value in baling it up for sale? we make alot of straw up in aroostook and new brunswick, but not enough to be able to buy it cheap. new growers are creating an even stronger demand for it bedding over winter crops and strawberries. its worth a fortune here. mitch

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