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This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqdaY38YgcA

Featuring

Lou Lego, Elderberry Pond. Auburn, NY.

Audio Text

One of the things that we think is unique that we do here is that we use a lot of hybrid mulching. We’ll have a living cover and then within that living cover crop area we’ll put rows of plastic within a living mulch and use the advantage of the living mulch to keep the plastic covered and to give it longevity and also again to make it a more workable environment so there is no bare soil between those sheets of plastic.

This is the first year of one of our hybrid mulch fields it was planted in rye in October, the way we would normally do this, is we would plant the whole field in rye and then come in on the same day and lay the plastic. This year we tried something a little different we tried planting the rye between the rows of plastic. And don’t really like that as well because we ended up with a bit of a band along the plastic.

Plastic in these plantings is all 1½ ml embossed plastic, in this case it's black although other colors work also. We lay it with a mulch layer - the most basic plastic mulch layer that you can lay, it’s not a raised bed, it’s flat on the ground as far as moisture. And after the fifth year the plastic, amazingly because it’s been protected by covers and by high growth in the aisles, is very flexible, so we come through here with a mulch lifter, it comes out in one piece.

In this case we’re planting tomatoes into the hybrid mulch system. So the way we’ll do this is to burn holes as a three-foot spacing. We then take a shovelful of manure and a shovelful of mulch on either side of the hole. Then we come in and set the plants with manure mixed into the soil and then cover the plant with mulch to keep any weeds from coming up in the hole. We then set a cage on top of that hole for the tomato to grow up into.

With the rye it’s important to let it grow as tall as it can and as vigorously as it can. The rye is cut, the reason it is cut is to protect the plastic from the sun and to make it last a long time, it also is a good crop with improving the soil and keeping the weeds down. There are two ways to mow the crop, either with a tractor mounted sickle bar mower or a large tractor mounted sickle bar mower, or what I prefer to use is a smaller walk behind sickle bar mower, where you get a little better control and can determine where the straw is going to fall a little better. The goal was to try to get it to distribute somewhat evenly between the plastic and the ground.

In this particular planting of tomatoes we will let this rye that’s been cut, re-seed. Later in the summer when it thins out a little, we will go through and seed annual rye grass with clover, over-seed it right on top of what’s here. Then that annual rye grass will die next year, the clover will take over and that’ll be the permanent alleyway mulch for the next five year rotation. The clover is mowed several times a year to keep it down depending on the crop. With a high crop like tomatoes, clover can be allowed to grow pretty aggressively. With a low crop it’s useful to keep it fairly well mowed, it actually likes being mowed, it comes back with increased vigor, so it’s a good crop for that.

These strawberries are growing in our hybrid mulch system. They’re growing on black plastic in here, the plastic has been in now, this is its 5th year, it’s had 4 previous crops on it, including melons and tomatoes and peppers and cabbage. Now it’s in its final cropping with these strawberries.

To maintain the fertility in the plantings for the four or five years under the plastic, it’s very necessary that the field have been in alfalfa or in a good nutritive cover crop for three years prior to placing the plastic in the strips. Then in addition to that we’ll use pelletized chicken manure in the holes at planting to give it a boost for the growing system. It’s amazing when you rip this plastic up in the final year, next year when we take this up, the soil under this will be absolutely beautiful.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6036

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

 

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNwkg3AwNkc

Featuring

Lou Johns and Robin Ostfeld, Blue Heron Farm. Lodi, NY.

Audio Text

These beds have rye and hairy vetch blended together, broadcast together over the entire bed, these will get mowed generally twice if not sometimes three times with a flail mower and then turned under with a rotovator. The mowing is for two purposes, one is it takes the vegetation and breaks it down into smaller pieces so it incorporates better, the other purpose is to arrest the vigorous growth of the rye and hairy vetch. One of the things we’ve found with mowing the rye and vetch is, the timing and height can be critical in allowing it to re-grow and giving you sort of a whole other flush of vegetative growth sometimes really encouraging the vetch. On the first mowing cutting it to about 6-8 inches tall, taking it down from say a foot to two feet and that seems to give you a really good re-growth and encourages that vetch. Right before incorporation I try to mow as tight as I can get it cut, again to chop the material as fine as possible and so the stubble isn’t as much of a problem for breaking down.

So this is what it’s all about, growing cover crops, when you get soils that look like this that are just impregnated with roots from the cover crops, like spider webs through this thing making habitat for earthworms and then you have soil nodules from vetch there that are just going to feed a crop that’s coming later.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6035

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

 

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO1GiPg0cPw

Featuring

Lou Johns and Robin Ostfeld, Blue Heron Farm. Lodi, NY.

Audio Text

These are oats and field peas that were planted about mid April. They fit in to our cropping scheme, because we grow a lot of late fall harvested crops. They’re harvested in late October or November when it’s too late to establish a rye and vetch cover crop. So they’re left open over the winter and as early in the spring as possible we get the oats and field peas on. The oats are broadcast just by hand. We put the oats in a bucket and we use other small grains that we might have around. We walk down the tire tracks and throw handful and directly apply them to the bed. Then the peas are drilled with our four row Planet Jr. seeder - the reason we do that is because the peas need to be drilled more deeply than the oats and the peas seed needs to be economized because it’s quite expensive, so we like to plant just the four rows rather than broadcast the peas over the bed. The oats are incorporated before we drill the peas. By drilling the peas with the seed drill, we are planting them directly where the vegetable crops will be planted, so the nitrogen is right where it needs to be. The pea seed is inoculated before planting. We like to let it get at least a foot high, then we mow with the flail mower that chops it up and makes it break down more quickly so it’s incorporated more easily. Then we’ll use the rotovator and till it under. Normally the succession that we use because these beds would be ready to be plant in July, is then we would follow it with transplanted Brassica like broccoli or cabbage without any additional compost being needed.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6034

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3uhf3ZtqH8

Featuring

Lou Johns and Robin Ostfeld, Blue Heron Farm. Lodi, NY.

Audio Text

About 10-12 years ago we started converting our fields to what you see now in a permanent bed situation. Primarily because our soils are quite heavy and we stared running into a lot of problems with compaction. So the answer we came up with was to create permanent tire track to carry all the weight of our tractors and all the foot traffic that is very common in vegetable production, you just have constant traffic, so it's been very effective. The tire tracks on the farm may look like nice grass and green growth but for the most part what you’re seeing is a whole host of native grasses, weeds, clovers, you see a lot of dandelion, which may seem like it would become a weed problem in the beds but it doesn’t.

One of the advantages we’re finding and we had kind of hoped for in our permanent tire tracks, is they’re becoming a very viable habitat for beneficial insects, spiders, a lot of people also talk about them being a haven for soil bacteria that might not be staying in a permanently cropped farm soils. Even though it may be anecdotal evidence our use of control sprays for insect pests has dropped to almost nothing over the last, say 10 years. I think that it has a fair amount to do with the amount of habitat we’re creating for beneficials. Within the permanent bed system, we do maintain a fairly rigorous rotation system with our cover crops and our seeded and transplanted vegetable crops, using spring-seeded cover crops, fall-seeded cover crops, sometimes summer-seeded cover crops.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6033

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.

eOrganic T867

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.

eOrganic T879,867

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQElJLlng9M

Featuring

Eero Ruuttila, Nesenkeag Farm. Litchfield, NH.

Audio Text

This is my spader, which is the primary tillage tool on the farm. I use it for incorporating pretty much all of my cover crops. It needs to operate at slow speed and so that’s one disadvantage that when you’re bringing that organic matter into the soil that I can’t move very fast, because there’s a lot of biomass that’s chopping in there. But once it’s in the ground and I’ve made a couple of passes, then I can go in with a field cultivator and do a very rapid pass, make a nice smooth seedbed and then I’m ready to go. It’s like a number of shovels and it just cuts clods does a good job of chopping the straw into the soil but you get nice clods in that and over time they can break down slowly and that’s much gentler on your soil structure and it doesn’t oxidize all that organic matter you’re trying to bring into the soil.

When I first came here there was a rototiller so that’s what I learned on for primary tillage, but I really didn’t like what it did to the soil it really beat the soil up like an eggbeater, and I heard about spaders being much better for soil structure and better at incorporating biomass without oxidizing it. So this seemed to be a much better implement for improving my soil quality and that’s really important for me as a, doing the best I can for my soil.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6032

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE3grcRv3Rs

Featuring

Eero Ruuttila, Nesenkeag Farm. Litchfield, NH.

Audio Text

What we’re doing here with green manure cover crops is I’m using them to confuse Colorado potato beetles. I cut strips, plant the potatoes, I try to do my weed cultivation and hilling so that the potato plants are well established and then at that stage I knock down the rye and vetch and usually by then it’s late June early July and by then that’s the first of the potato beetles coming into the field. They don’t need to have a big mulch on the ground like I would put on the tomatoes, I just want to have some contact with the straw on the potato plants.

With this method I’ve never had to spray more than twice for potato beetles and at best it’s a spot spraying - I don’t spray the whole field because in a good portion of the field there won't be potato beetles at all. It’s usually on an edge where they’ll come in at the end of the rows, or on an edge where solanaceous crops were the preceding year and you’ll find a few rows.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6031

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

 

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiUL6p8vF0k

Featuring

Eero Ruuttila, Nesenkeag Farm. Litchfield, NH.

Audio Text

So what we have here is a strip of hairy vetch and rye, I started to turn it over probably mid April and everything was broken down enough that I was able to transplant my tomato plants probably about the third week in May. And meanwhile the rye and vetch on the beds next to it were continuing to grow. Just about at this stage is the point when you want to knock it down. What I’m looking for is for the vetch to start to go to flower or for the rye to be at pollen stage. And what I like to do ideally is to cultivate once with my tractor and then I’ll knock it down with the mower and then once it’s down we’ll use the straw as a mulch for the tomato plants and then we’ll bring in some stakes and do a basket weave system to bring a trellising for the tomatoes up out of the mulch. I’m using the straw from the strips to start with the mulching process but I try to have a block of rye and vetch nearby as you can see behind here and I’ll mow that down as I start to mulch these - I’ll have a good close by area where I can bring in more mulch without taking a lot of labor moving mulch from one area to another area of the farm.

I look at the cover crops as biomass, two things that are very important for the farm is nitrogen, the nitrogen fixing from the legume that’s part of the green manure, and biomass is very important so I want to maximize my biomass which is bring it to full maturity. Strip system with hairy vetch and rye overwintered and then cutting strips in the springtime I use it for wide spaced crops or crops that I choose to grow at a wide spacing that may not traditionally be grown at a wide spacing. Pumpkins and winter squash easy to plant at ten foot centers that works very well so I can have five foot wide beds with the adjacent 5 foot wide strip of hairy vetch and rye. Tomatoes I have a wide spacing so I can get a good air flow for disease.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6030

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoL4sbjrHKM

Featuring

Eero Ruuttila, Nesenkeag Farm. Litchfield, NH.

Audio Text

As soon as I can get on the ground, I’ll seed field peas and oats, spin it on and then lightly harrow it in. And one of the things I really like about it is that it also brings in an early income, our earliest income in the spring, because the young pea shoots are very popular with the restaurant trade and also with Southeast Asian or Asian chefs. And usually within about 4-6 weed of seeding I have something I can start to harvest. That’s a really good starter for the springtime. The pea tendrils, pea shoots, pea tips different names for it, its not something you can sell tons and tons per acre, I have tons of and that’s one of the reasons I’m growing it for, the biomass of the nitrogen that the peas are fixing. But in a normal year I can realize gross sales of between 8 and 10 thousand dollars on 5-7 acres that might be seeded to field peas and oats.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6029

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

 

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIHIE64--cU

Featuring

Cliff Hatch, Upinngill Farm. Gill, MA.

Audio Text

Delayed planting of strawberries reduces labor costs by reducing the time that you have to tend the berries in the field. Berries have to be hand hoed every seven days to keep the weeds out of them. Every week we shorten the season we save that hoeing and that labor. We developed our delayed planting system with the aid of a SARE farmer grower grant. We received two, two year cycle grants on which we basically trialed planting densities. We’ve trialed everything from 6 inches up to like 36 inches apart for planting systems and basically what we’ve found is that if we’re going to plant in July we need to reduce our spacing down to about 6 inches. If we’re going to plant in June we can have what you see here which is about 10-12 inches. If you’re planting in May you can go with the customary spacing, which is about 24 inches apart with your plants. If the rye comes off early we can plant our plants farther apart, if the rye come off late we take more plants we just put them in closer to compensate for the lack of season. Usually we harvest rye first of June and get it baled in the first week of June. But some years, this year is a wet year, we’re into the second week of June and we don’t have all of our rye harvested yet, we’re still getting that put by.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6028

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyLMh4p2epc&t=7s

Featuring

Cliff Hatch, Upinngill Farm. Gill, MA.

Audio Text

This is rye left from last year, last year’s crop, we harvest this in June. It’s mowed when the plants have reached maximum height and they’re just casting their pollen, it wants to be mowed before there’s any seed set cause otherwise you’re just spreading weeds on your field. But the early mowing gives you a chance that any weeds in your field won't have set any seed. And they’ll be green if they’re in this bale but it’s the most weed free mulch available, June harvested rye. If it’s mowed with a mower conditioner you’ll have much better drying results it’ll usually go through your chopper a lot better too.

What we try to do is mow our rye, bale it up, have it ready for our fall when we have to put it on as mulch. Most years we’re not planting berries till June or July depending on how the season goes.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6027

Introduction

Ten farmers from five Northeastern states describe their innovations in cover cropping, including over-seeding, living mulches, summer cover crops, and cover crops for pest suppression.

Contents (links to video clips and audio text) Hank Bissell, Lewis Creek Farm. Starksboro, VT.

• Winter Cover Crop - Hairy Vetch and Rye
• Winter Cover Crop - Hairy Vetch and Oats
• Inter-seeding Rye in Fall

Will Stevens, Golden Russett Farm. Shoreham, VT.

• Winter Cover Crop - Wheat
• Frost Seeded Red Clover
• Summer Seeded Hairy Vetch

Cliff Hatch, Upinngill Farm. Gill, MA.

• Winter Rye for Strawberry Mulch
• Delayed Berry Planting after Rye Harvest

Eero Ruuttila, Nesenkeag Farm. Litchfield, NH.

• Spring Cover Crop: Field Pea and Oats
• Hairy Vetch and Rye Strips Between Crops
• Cover Crops to Suppress Potato Beetles
• Soil Spader for Incorporating Cover Crops

Lou Johns and Robin Ostfeld, Blue Heron Farm. Lodi, NY.

• Permanent Ground Cover for Wheel Tracks
• Drilled Field Peas and Broadcast Oats
• Mowing Hairy Vetch and Rye

Lou Lego, Elderberry Pond. Auburn, NY.

• Living Mulch: Cover Crops Between Plastic

Lockwood 'Pooh' Sprague, Edgewater Farm. Plainfield, NH.

• Summer Cover Crop: Buckwheat
• Summer Cover Crop: Japanese Millet

Bob Muth, Muth Farms. Williamstown, NJ.

• Long-term Rotation with Cover Crops
• Summer Cover Crop: Sudex
• Leaf Mulching and Cover Crops

Eileen Droescher, Ol' Turtle Farm. Easthampton, MA.

• Permanent Beds and Cover Crop Rotation
• Sudex Undersown with Red Clover

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.

eOrganic 3449

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW8ZahOVJ04

Featuring

Will Stevens, Golden Russett Farm. Shoreham, VT.

Audio Text

Another way I’m working legumes into my rotation is using hairy vetch. This was a field of winter squash last year that I over-seeded the hairy vetch on the fourth of July last year and then rotary hoed it in, and it was dry then so I irrigated that in. The vetch is able to live in the shade throughout the summer as the squash vines over it. Then at harvest time, we come in and we harvest, frost takes the squash out, the vetch continues to grow in a typical fall for a couple months, way into November in some years.

So now it’s the end of May about 10 months have gone by, it’s not quite budded up yet, but I’m ready to use the field so I’ll be plowing this down. Traditionally organic systems have recommended 50% of your acreage into vegetable production and 50% out of production in a given year. If I can do 40% as a cover crop fallow and 60% vegetable production, that’ll be good for me.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6026

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

 

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzLXrBc3vqk

Featuring

Will Stevens, Golden Russett Farm. Shoreham, VT.

Audio Text

Another option I’m trying with wheat is to rest the field entirely the second season and the way I‘m doing that is to frost-seed clover. This clover was frost-seeded in April last year. I then went in in June and mowed the wheat off to release the clover seedlings and then let the clover go and let it grow all season and I’ll let it grow again this season before plowing it in next year for a vegetable crop.

Some of the advantages I hope to see coming from this fallow system are nitrogen fixation with the clover here, weed suppression and better tilth and soil health.

One of the things I like about putting legumes in my rotation is that I need the nitrogen source. The supply of manure that we’ve had in the past is drying up as ag economics change and so I’m going to need to find alternatives.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6025

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ga3z46uwlU

Featuring

Will Stevens, Golden Russett Farm. Shoreham, VT.

Audio Text

This is a field of winter wheat that followed a corn crop last year. We planted it in September. We have a clay-loam soil here, which is one reason I grow wheat. In the spring time when it gets quite wet, we don’t have a great window of opportunity to plow it under. Rye would go to stalk a lot quicker than wheat, at least two weeks earlier than wheat and wheat stays shorter and more leafy. So that helps me in my management especially in a wet spring. Because I can plow it down and still end up with a nice seed bed without having to mow it and then plow it.

One of the things to be aware of when growing wheat though, is that it is an alternate host to thrips, onion thrips, which in our case is becoming a big problem.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

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.

eOrganic 6024

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFniQHo8ZBU

Featuring

Hank Bissell, Lewis Creek Farm. Starksboro, VT.

Audio Text

I like to get all the fields covered with a cover crop, but some crops come off too late in the season to get a cover crop in. The last seeding date for winter rye is October 15th, so for crops that are harvested after that date, you either have to leave the field bare or you can inter-seed them.

We came in with buckets of rye seed, each person taking one row and scattering seed up through the row. One person could do an acre in 40 minutes. I use this technique of inter-seeding rye on most of the late season cole crops: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts.

This was a field of cauliflower, the rows are closer together than brussels sprouts, you have to be a little bit careful not to get rye seed into the cauliflower plants. You don’t want to get the rye to get in the plants because it will actually grow in the head, just from the moisture of dew alone.

This is a field of brussels sprouts that was protected through winter by winter rye. We got the rye on here the first week in September, cultivated it in, and now we have a good crop of rye protecting the field and something to plow down as well.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).  

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.

eOrganic 6012

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BCjdPNfA6g

Featuring

Hank Bissell, Lewis Creek Farm. Starksboro, VT.

Audio Text

This is a field of oats and vetch, what’s noticeable is there’s no oats. This is the spring the oats have winter-killed. What’s good about that is that you don’t have that coarse grassy matter that takes so much time to break down.

The major thing I like about oats and vetch is that when it’s plowed, it leaves a lot less stemmy trash and makes a nice fine seed bed. It’s good for direct seeding, the rye and vetch is better for transplanting.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).  

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.

eOrganic 6011

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agNPQyXCpRo

Featuring

Hank Bissell, Lewis Creek Farm. Starksboro, VT.

Audio Text

Winter rye is the basic cover crop that most people use. I used to just grow winter rye and about 10 yeas ago I started growing hairy vetch in with the rye. Hairy vetch is a winter annual, it’s planted in the fall, puts on a little bit of growth, stays alive through the winter and then puts on a lot of growth in the spring, much the way rye does.

Without nodulation the vetch wouldn’t fix any nitrogen. When I first started growing vetch, I inoculated it every year. I’m much more casual about it now, sometimes I don’t inoculate it at all. This field was not inoculated last fall and it does have nodules on it. Now that I’ve grown it all over my farm the inoculant is resident in the fields.

When I plow rye and hairy vetch down at this stage for a crop, sweet corn for instance, I find that I can do without most of the nitrogen, normal nitrogen applications. I do put on a starter, I put on about 30 pounds with a starter mix, 30 pounds of nitrogen, then I keep track of it with a pre-sidedress nitrogen test. To see, if we’ve got heavy rains, we might lose a lot of it. I find that the amount of nitrogen that rye and hairy vetch produces will feed early to mid season varieties of corn completely. So corn up to about 5 feet high. When you get into those big late varieties they seem to be using enough more nitrogen that it requires an additional side dressing.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).  

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 Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8reHVRqXZ8

Featuring

Anne and Eric Nordell, Beech Grove Farm. Trout Run, PA.

Audio Text

I’m Anne Nordell and this is my husband Eric. We’ve been farming here since 1983 in the village of Beech Grove, Pennsylvania. Our farm is about 90 acres but we are mainly farming about 7 acres under cultivation, managing for vegetables. We supply locally to Williamsport, Pennsylvania which is about 25 miles away, we do a farmers market once a week and we supply restaurants and grocery stores.

One of our goals when we started farming here was to keep this a two-person operation. Also we wanted to rely on horsepower completely, not only for tillage, but also for fertility. So that limits our labor, our power and our fertility source and consequently we rely on cover crops extensively. In fact we take half of the land out of production each year just to grow cover crops. This has helped tremendously with weed control, maintaining the tilth of our silt-loam soil, as well as preserving moisture, which is an issue for us because we don’t have irrigation. One reason we got into reduced tillage was really to optimize the benefits of the annual cover crops. Intensive tillage can also often destroy everything we’ve gained so by minimizing the depth and intensity of tillage we can preserve more of those benefits.

We like to use the horses for several reasons. First of all I just love working behind horses, that’s just what gets me going, it sustains my interest. They also save the fossil fuel and the pollution associated with that. And of course there’s less problems with compaction and so on. You can take anything we’re doing here and do it with a tractor, probably with fewer passes and maybe a lot less aggravation.

It was about ten years ago that we started experimenting with reduced tillage and using this ridge till system. For years before that we’d been using a winter kill cover crop, just working it into the surface of the soil for early-planted vegetables. That worked great for conditioning the soil, for erosion control, moisture preservation, but it was a problem in springs when it was cold and wet. So we started planting the cover crops on these ridges, it allows the soil to warm up and dry out faster in the spring, it also enables us just to peel the top off the ridge moving the cover crop residues into the pathway. If there are any winter weeds on the ridge-top it also sheds them off into the pathway where it’s easy to control them with mechanical cultivation.

One of the differences in doing this kind of minimum tillage with the horses is that we have to break it down into several steps. With a tractor you can do all the ridge building steps in one pass, I simply don’t have the physical strength to raise and lower that much equipment on the old riding cultivator so we do it in three steps. After broadcasting the seed, we build the ridges and then we come back and inter-seed the pathways and then the final step is to roll the ridges with a cultipacker. The idea is that we want to level them, make a nice, flat seedbed and also to create better seed-to-soil contact for the cover crop seed. It’ll bring the moisture up to germinate it.

Typically we plant oats like you see here and the peas coming up, this makes a nice mix of a small grain and legume. In this planting we also have sorghum- sudangrass to boost the carbon and cover crop biomass.

These steps we use for preconditioning the beds for planting in the spring. The residue cutter chops the residue, it also makes those slits in the soil where it kind of of hairpins the residue in. So then we can go over with this rotary hoe and just lightly till the surface of the soil. This makes it possible for us just to make a furrow for transplanting, we’ll just go right into it, or we’ll scrape the top off the ridges for direct seeding. It probably looks like these tools aren’t doing much, but that’s really the whole point, we’re just trying to loosen the top inch of the soil, the residue cutter slices the residue it also cuts about an inch deep in the soil. The rotary hoe loosens that up. You can see we have this sort of crumb mulch on the surface. When we peel this back to plant, you know, we’ll have a nice seedbed for planting.

Here’s a field where crops have been planted into our ridge till system. The previous fall we built the ridges and planted a cover crop of oats and peas, they winter-killed, they die back and then the following spring, what we did is we go through with the residue cutter to cut up the residue and then we went through with the rotary hoe to kind of loosen up the beds. And then all we did is we made a narrow slit in the soil and then planted the transplants of onions and leeks. Because the residue breaks down so fast it doesn’t really provide weed control or moisture control, so what we do is we put down wheat straw in the pathways in order to preserve moisture, but the weeds have not been a big problem here we have not done any hand weeding in this field at all.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).  

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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