Comments on: Cover Crops and Rototilling

By: adam gaska

adam gaska — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:16:11 +0000

I’m a big fan of cultivation. With that said, I’m not a big fan of rototilling. I’m assuming you have a walk behind rototiller. I have a walk behinf tractor, with a diesel engine, and use a Italian made spader. It gives you a nice seed bed with inverting the soil or the same level of drag that causes hardpans.

I also use a regular tractor with a disc to till up large areas. I basically do a Elliot Coleman style system, with cover crops under sown veg crops with a full field cover crop in between each crop. I also try and integrate grazing the cover crop with animals or running broiler chickens on it. At any given time, half our area is in full field cover crop, and the veg is undersown 4-6 weeks before its ready. Some examples are:

1.winter veg w ryegrass-chickens-sudan/cowpea/buckweheat-winter veg
2.summer veg w/mustard,cereal tye/rye grass-potatoes-sudan/cowpea/buckwheat-winter veg
3.spring veg-sudan/cowpea/buckwheat-fall veg w/cereal rye/vetch-spring veg

We also dig around to check for hardpans. If the ground seems packed, we’ll subsoil.

In my case, our soils not the greatest so we are trying to build it fast. We are also trying to dual purpose irrigation for the veg to help feed the sheep.

Usually I find, unless we are direct sowing, we don’t need a perfect seed bed for transplants. We will end up hoeing a few times anyway which will break up any clods left.

By: Autumn

Autumn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:38:49 +0000

Some people are trying 3 years of cover crops (no-till, just cut ‘em down and use it as mulch) followed by sheet mulching (manure, straw, cardboard, and the likes). You might not get as much nitrogen this way, but you’d be cultivating the soil microbes which do amazing things for your garden! I highly recommend the book “Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web” at http://www.groworganic.com/item_BF104_Teaming_With_Microbes_A_Gardener.html

By: haikuluke

haikuluke — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:29:07 +0000

It seems to me like your situation represents the two most common modes of thoughts about tilling vs. no-tilling, and my interpretation of it is this:

If you have sufficient nitrogen (like the first garden you mention), perhaps you can try the no-till method.

If you are trying to build nitrogen the word I’ve heard is that you should till it in.

Read a long discussion about this issue at this post:

http://intheloop.groworganic.com/2009/03/questions-answers-cover-crop-no-till/