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Helen Atthowe, BioDesign Farm. Stevensville, MT. 

System Overview

This cover crop I have here is most of my fertility and it’s going to provide the nutrients for next year’s crop. After harvest, we basically come through and mow everything down. In the spring, the compost is applied over the living mulch from the previous year, which is where the crop will go next year. Then I rip it with a modified potato cultivator. Then we make beds with the bed maker and there’s quite a bit of residue in the beds. If you were trying to plant directly into the bed without having the black plastic mulch, it would be very difficult, because there would be so much residue. We try to get the plastic on a couple of weeks before I transplant so that residue has a chance to break down within the bed. The clover recruits from last year and the newly-seeded living mulch start to come up. So about the time the transplants are eight to ten inches tall, we’re already getting cover. We try to make sure that soil is bare or uncovered for less than three to four weeks every year. Then the plants start to grow, we continue to irrigate the cover crop and drip irrigate the crop and there’s constant mowing of the residue.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.

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Helen Atthowe, BioDesign Farm. Stevensville, MT. 

Composting

This is the composting operation. I don’t use as much compost as I did eleven years ago. I’ve slowly decreased the amounts, so that we use about two tons per acre now, sometimes less. The way I make the compost is to add green succulent legumes, like this red clover, with straw bedding and sheep manure. Sometimes I’ll add other things, crop residues, but mainly these are the basic ingredients. I used to chop the clover and add it to the compost, but I have finally learned, after 20 years of composting that it's much easier to plant the clover where I’m going to compost, then keep it watered, put the other ingredients, like the manure and the straw on top of it and then I will be mixing it with the front-end loader. After the initial mixing of the compost ingredients, this pile will be turned many more times. But with this initial turning, I’ve mixed the manure, sheep manure, the bedding straw, the green succulent clover and I’ve gotten soil from underneath or associated with the clover root. But also this soil is where the compost was made last year. I’m adding a portion of composted material and a portion of regular soil to help balance the water relations within the compost pile.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This presentation was recorded live at the 2019 Organic Grain Conference, organized by the Land Connection with funding from NIFA OREI. Dr. Walter Goldstein of the Mandaamin Institute discusses his work on breeding corn with high protein quality and N efficiency/Nitrogen (N2) fixation, and ongoing efforts to test the hybrids on organic farms. According to Dr. Goldstein, the basis for N efficiency and protein quality in the Mandaamin Institute cultivars appear to be due to shifts in root efficiency, microbial relationships and metabolism. These may be based on the corn plant’s responses to reducing fertilization, including fostering beneficial plant/microbial partnerships. Results indicate the potential and importance of breeding under organic conditions.

The Organic Grain Conference 2019 theme was theme was “Exploring advancements and issues in organic grain farming, together.” Over 30 presenters and panelists delivered sessions on organic grain production, marketing, transition, certification, and emerging research. Twenty-two companies gathered at the trade show, and over 185 farmers, researchers, educators, and industry members attended.

Download the 2019 conference proceedings at https://thelandconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/OGC_2019_Conference_Proceedings.pdf

The conference program is available at https://thelandconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/OGC_2019_Program_0.pdf

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.

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Helen Atthowe, BioDesign Farm. Stevensville, MT. 

I’m Helen Atthowe, BioDesign Farm, Stevensville, Montana. The field that we’re in was in hay for about 30 years, and then about eleven years ago, I started doing vegetable production. I had started in Masanobu Fukuoka's approach to minimum till, do-nothing kind of farming. Obviously, Montana was a bit more of a challenge than Japan. So what we’ve done here is tried to mimic the natural systems in Montana with quite a bit more water. We’re doing minimum till, we’re doing living mulches in between the crops so that our residue application is constant, rather than all at once in the spring.

The main crops on this farm are solanaceous crops. Basically we don’t have to market at all because solanaceous crops are hard to grow in Montana. That’s the reason I do it. Eggplants, tomatoes, green and red bell peppers are the main crops here. We throw a little broccoli in, so that we can grow something besides solanaceous crops but mainly, this farm grows solanaceous crops. We sell at Missoula Farmer’s Market and wholesale to local supermarkets in Missoula as well.

The way that I’ve designed this system is minimum labor, so I’m keeping it very small. You can see that I have very wide rows. That’s so I can get my equipment in here and mow. I do very little hand labor. We don’t weed at all. When I say “we” that’s kind of a misnomer. I don’t have as many tasks to do, and so I can run the place myself.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA.

On June 3rd, I sowed this field into a bi-culture of foxtail millet and forage soybean. It grew very lush, it was approximately three and a half feet tall. Two months later, on August 3rd, I rolled this with a flail mower that was disengaged and it laid the residues flat. After a few days, I realized that the soybeans were still growing, so 10 days later, we took the flail mower, this time with it engaged and mowed off the growing soybean. As you can see, we have a very nice killed mulch, which should produce a good crop of broccoli without having to manually weed or use herbicides.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Danielle Treadwell, Center for Environmental Farming Systems. Goldsboro, NC.
 

We’re developing an organic, no-till, sweet potato production system for our growers here in North Carolina. Compost was applied in the fall. Cover crops were seeded using a Brillion cultipacker, which served two purposes: seeded the cover crops as well as flatten the tops of the hills that were made following compost. In the spring, when vetch was at mid-bloom, the cover crops were killed by rolling with the Brillion cultipacker. Ideally, the cover crops should be rolled in all the same direction for ease of transplant. Over the three years that we’ve been working on this system, the dry matter production of the rye has ranged from 3000-8000 lbs per acre. We’ve found that we get the most weed suppression with an increase in dry weight of rye.

This is the residue remaining sixty days after transplanting sweet potato. Mostly what remains is the rye, although we do have some vetch re-growth. I don’t perceive this to be a problem. We’ve had a fair amount of this residue remaining at harvest, which generally is about 100 days after transplanting for Beauregard.

This area has been hand-weeded three times. These plants are about sixty days old now. They were planted in late-June. The foliage growth that you see here is right about maximum.

These sweet potato transplants are actually sections of vine that are known as slips. Generally they are without roots and they were transplanted using a no-till transplanter designed by Ron Morse of Virginia Tech. The transplants are spaced about ten and a half inches apart and you can see here how the residue was cut with the coulter and slightly moved to the side, but yet it remains fairly well intact and undisturbed following the day of transplant.

One of the biggest concerns for organic growers is weed suppression. Beauregard is the dominant variety for sweet potato growers in our area here in North Carolina, but it’s slow to vine out, so we’re not really convinced that this is the best variety to use. Other varieties such as Jewel are very quick to vine out, but they have less yield than Beauregard. Fernandez might be another option. It has an intermediate vining speed between Beauregard and Jewel. It also has an intermediate yield.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

On October 3rd of last year, we sowed cover crops in the no-till plots and in the conventional we left the soil bare. During the winter, the cover crops grew very lush and of course, the conventional was basically just a few weeds. May 6th the soil was prepared in the conventional plot. We took my sub-surface tiller/transplanter, which is equipped to plant into very high residues. A lot of the residues were three, four, five feet high. We planted a twin row of potatoes right through the residues and we put the seed pieces about 5 inches deep in the raised bed and the transplanter virtually knocks over the majority of the residues. After about two and a half to three weeks, we will take a flail mower and keep it quite close to the ground just as the potatoes are emerging through the soil. We’ll then mow off anything that’s still growing. At that point, it basically controls all the living residue. The plants quickly emerge at that stage. In two weeks, you have two beautiful rows of potatoes, about a foot tall. Within another 3-4 weeks, you have complete canopy closure. We will harvest this crop in the next 2-3 weeks. We’ve had great luck with this system. The conventional has not proven to be the best treatment; in fact the no-till has out-yielded the conventional on an average of 17% over the last 8 or 9 years. Another beneficial effect is that no-till mulch controls Colorado Potato Beetle. We’ve seen it year after year. In these thick residues, the Colorado Potato Beetle simply do not thrive in these plots.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Let me show you why pumpkins are becoming so popular in a no-till system. This is a young pumpkin that’s been set a week or two weeks. And notice that it‘s sitting on this mat of straw. As this thing matures, this mat of straw will stay there of course, and by the time this pumpkin is ready to sell, the quality then will be superior compared to one that is laying on the bare soil. This is a distinct advantage, and a driving force, for no-till pumpkins in the United States.

You always want to make sure you have a very good, uniform, high-density planting of cover crops. Normally, I use rye or rye/vetch, but I was extremely busy and so I didn’t have a field prepared. This year we produced oats and field peas. The amount of residue was three tons per acre. Normally I get up to four or five tons of rye or rye/vetch.

I have cut a section of residues out to show you the depth. Now remember this is oats and field peas and we only had 3 tons. But still you can see a nice, maybe ½” depth of residue. If this were rye or rye/vetch, there’s a possibility it would be almost double that and often times it is up to an inch and that gives you real good weed suppression and fruit quality.

An advantage of the enhanced amount of biomass or resides is that you get improved weed control. If you look in this field here, you’ll see the understory does have a few weeds, but because of the quick canopy closure of the pumpkin, we will still get excellent weed control and all of the weeds that emerge later, they won’t reduce yields.

In this field, the spring oats and field peas, and in some areas of the field we also have Austrian winter peas, were seeded the first week in April. Then grew about four to five feet high. We rolled them approximately the 10th of June. We then waited about three weeks and in the first part of July, we seeded with the Monosem seeder. This is late however; we normally would have seeded earlier. With rye, it tends to mature a little bit faster and so we can get in the field and seed around the middle of June. With oats, it took a while for them to mature, so we have to wait awhile. We plant in two-row systems. As you can see, we probably have a real good crop here, a real good stand.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

 Some of the folks make issue with the fact that they can’t afford this transplanter and they want me to develop something small for one to five acres.  The basic no-till planting aid would contain an upfront coulter and some kind of fertilizer knife. At least the larger ones would have a second toolbar or maybe even a third toolbar that would hold either a small seeder or a trash-clearing device. The types of seeder that I have seen work on a toolbar behind a tractor - the cheap Earthway seeder, you can get it for $75-90; there’s a lot of old seeders out there, a lot of John Deere 71 Flex seeders and equivalent types that will seed very well in these situations for a relatively cheap amount of money.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

This is the Alamo Mott flail mower. We’ve been using it for 10 or 15 years on the farm. We originally used it just for flailing. Then, I, by accident one day discovered that it would roll. So we either flail or roll or sometimes both as necessary. What rolls really well is very mature cereal grains, like rye, wheat, barley. We’ve had excellent success year after year with a combination of pure rye or rye/vetch. The millets really roll well. We mix them with soybeans or cowpeas. You have to make sure that the millet and the cowpeas or soybeans are into the mature stage, preferably flowering. If you do that and can roll them with even the flail mower here, they will stay down with very little re-greening. Some legumes also roll very well, like mature crimson clover. Hairy vetch does not because it needs to be crimped. We’re really sold on the combination of flail mowing and rolling. This is economical because it does both. We have had good luck as long as our cover crops are mature.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Nancy Creamer, Center for Environmental Farming Systems. Goldsboro, NC.

The undercutter was designed to kill cover crops and leave them on the surface as a mulch. By leaving cover crop residue intact versus mowing them into smaller pieces, growers can get longer weed suppression from the cover crop mulches. The first tool in the undercutter is this coulter that cuts through the cover crop. A lot of times we use hairy vetch which is quite viney, so we need to really have a clean cut so the rest of the implement can work. The second part of the undercutter is the cutting blade. And this we actually used a motor grader blade upside down and it cuts the whole width of the raised bed about 2” below the soil surface. Finally the last tool on the undercutter is this roller, which is just some notched steel and it just rolls the cover crop down nice and flat as it moves through the field.

There are several existing implements in agriculture that can be modified to do the same job as this, for example, a beet lifter might be used. While this system can work well in lighter soils and with good soil moisture, some further engineering would help it be more applicable with a broader range of soil types and soil moisture conditions. Weed suppression can last about 6 weeks, but it really depends on the thickness of mulch that’s left on the soil surface. Another thing that this system can really benefit from is a cultivator that could work underneath the killed residue if weeds do get out of control later in the season.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

I’m standing in front of the transplanter that we developed here at Virginia Tech. We call it the sub-surface tiller transplanter. Many years ago, as I found out that no-till systems work, we had to do it all by hand. Of course, that’s fine for a small plot, but its impossible for anything commercial. We set out then, to find someone who would make it and no one would. Eventually I began tinkering myself and eventually put together several models. It has two distinct components, the upfront sub-surface tiller part and then the transplanter that trails behind.

This here is the fertilizer coulter and oftentimes, you need an even wider coulter. This one is 20 inches. The residues sometimes are very, very thick and so you have to slice them. But sometimes when you get real high residues it’ll get caught up in this hub and the newer models we sell of the sub-surface tiller transplanter come with a 24-inch coulter. And even sometimes to give better soil loosening capacity, we can put a wavy coulter also back there. That’s what this is here.

This is a fertilizer knife that’s used to loosen the soil. This particular one has a wing on each side, about an inch wide. This, as it works through the soil, loosens it. In a heavy soil or any compacted or rocky soil, this soil-loosening device is absolutely essential. When we plant no-till, organic potatoes, we need a very large, in-row area loosened and we use a shank that’s much more aggressive. It has wings out here about four inches on each side. And when that runs through the soil, it will really loosen the soil. You can put your hand down in it and it’s just like a sand pile. And that’s needed to allow the potato to grow without restriction.

This is the Holland 1600 model transplanter that has been modified to plant in high-residue systems. This double disc coulter up front is used to slice the residues and slice the soil. This is the shoe and inside the shoe we have a little ring that holds the drip tube as it comes through. These are the press wheels. This is not the press wheel that came with the planter. Normal press wheels have the pressure on the outside. We had to reverse that. So we made a very heavy-duty press wheel with inside metal pressure here. That way when soil is loosened and opens it, you press it back with this press wheel.

This is a weight basket. In tight situations, you have to have extra weight for it to close the soil around the plant.

The sub-surface tiller also has the capacity to lay drip tubing. This is the drip-tubing reel that holds about 7000 feet of drip tubing. This then goes down and goes through the transplanter.
 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ken Fager and Robert Walters. Center for Environmental Farming Systems.  Goldsboro, NC.

This piece of equipment is a roller and it’s a tractor-mounted tool designed to knock over and flatten cover-crop forages. The second purpose of this roller is to intermittently damage the stems of the cover crop, so that they resist the tendency to spring back to the original, vertical position. The damage, also known as a crimp, renders the forages vulnerable to desiccation and permanent wilt. The third purpose of the roller is to position the forages in one direction so that planting is facilitated without dragging in tangled stems and leaves.

We’re not sure exactly who invented it, but we do know, or it’s been reported that it has been in use in Latin America, particularly the countries of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay as a residue management tool by subsistence growers there in conservation tillage systems.

This roller/crimper was custom-built by the Kelly Manufacturing Company for North Carolina State University. It is not an implement that you can go out and purchase on the market. Most growers who have a shop and some mechanical ability can build one of these just like this.

The crimping action of the roller/crimper is dependent on three factors. First and foremost, the weight of the roller itself. This is all constructed of heavy-gauge steel, however there is an ability with this roller to add water to the drum and thus increase the ballast and therefore the down pressure. Another factor is the lift mechanism. The three point hitch, we found, needs to be in a lowered position, so that you maximize the down pressure on the parallel linkages and on the drum as it rolls across the surface. Now ground speed is also important, and we’re not exactly sure what the ideal ground speed is. But we feel that a speed of somewhere between three and six miles per hour would be optimum for maximizing crimping action of the roller. One of the unique design features of this roller/crimper is the incorporation of a set of parallel linkages that serve to pivot the roller/crimper drum vertically as it moves across the soil surface.

Normally when one’s trying to kill a cover crop, one would look for flowering in the cover before trying to roll kill it. The millet standing here before me, most of it has either flowered 2 weeks ago or is currently flowering. Consequently it would be a good time to roll it.

This is what the pearl millet mulch looks like after it's been rolled and crimped. You can see we have a nice layer of living mulch. The stems and the roots are intact and it’s lying prostrate on the surface, which is what we want.

We’ve never actually tried to roll and crimp pearl millet. This is the first time. We are getting some crimping action on the stems as well, although not as much as we’d like to see and we expect to get on other small grains like rye and foxtail millet. But the crimping is quite evident and the stem is broken, which is what we want. This will make it very easy for us to come back in here afterwards and run the no-till transplanter through this field and set our plants.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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eOrganic T879,872

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

I don’t want to lead you astray, that no-till systems works perfectly under all conditions, because this is not true. Soil type can be a major factor. You’d need to have well-drained fields if you’re going to try no-tillage. Heavy clay soil is one to be skeptical about and to be aware that you probably then have to use raised beds. If you needed earliness, you would not grow it no-till. You would use black plastic in order to enhance earliness. If you lived in the northern states or Canada, you probably would want strip-tillage, in which you would till an area about eight to ten inches wide that would allow you to get in the field earlier and warm up the soil.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Nutrient Management

The first source of fertility is derived from our bi-culture cover crops. The second source would be a side dressing of feather meal or soybean meal. The third nutrient source is our liquid fertilizers, like Neptune’s Harvest that we inject through the drip irrigation system. And the final source is the use of compost, leaf mulch, and aged manures that we have applied and will continue to apply on the beds.

The long-term goal for organic growers is to build up organic soil fertility by increasing active soil organic matter. Using high residue, no-till, cover cropping systems is the best way to increase active soil organic matter. Active soil organic matter is like a savings account thus requiring less applied fertilizer amendments. A good example of that is this corn field. These plots have not been plowed. We’ve had a continuous series of cover crops, followed by vegetable crops, now in its eighth year. Because we haven’t tilled the soil very deeply, we see a very strong granulation and a build-up of soil organic matter. This beautiful crop of corn received only 50 units of nitrogen, but we’re getting nice yields because we have built up the active soil organic matter over time using these organic systems and that pool releases nitrogen to the plant as needed.
 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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