New/updated @ eXtension

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-11HTAydqQ

Chuck Mohler, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell University. Ithaca, NY.

My name’s Chuck Mohler. I’m a researcher at Cornell University in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. I’m working on an organic cropping systems project funded by USDA. This is a ridge-till system for vegetables we’re trying to develop. These ridges were originally built two years ago. Since then they’ve been scraped down and re-formed several times, but the idea is that we keep wheel traffic in the same lanes all the time and that allows the bases of the ridges to develop good soil structure by earthworm channels and dead root channels. That improves the ability of the crop to root and improves disease management. It doesn’t look like much now, but three weeks ago in mid June, these ridges had vetch about that high all over them. We flailed mowed the vetch and about a week later came through and scraped off the tops. Then mixed the soil in with the vetch a little bit to help speed up the decomposition. A week after that the ridges were reformed, we’re now ready to scrape the ridges again and plant cabbage.

The reason that we scrape and re-form the ridges is to get the vetch incorporated so that it can decompose and also to maintain good weed management so that the weeds are relatively under control. These are our ridge scrapers made by Sukup. They don’t make them anymore but it’s a fairly simple design. There’s these canted wheels that keep the scraper on the ridge and then we’ve got a double coulter that cuts through any residue, and finally this snowplow arrangement scrapes the soil off to the side. The parallel linkage here holds the implement at a constant depth, the adjustment is up here in front, you can adjust it up and down by setting these four bolts into different holes. The goal is to scrape about two to three inches off the top of the ridge.

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 5994

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYo00KcSCco

George Ayers, FreshAyr Farm. Farmington, NY.

My name is George Ayres. My wife and I are partners in Fresh Ayr Farm in Farmington, New York. We farm 550 acres, about 100 acres of vegetables, sweet corn and pumpkins, we grow about 5 acres of small fruit that we u-pick and the rest of the farm is small grains and hay. We moved to this farm in 1988 and the tillage system was mostly moldboard plow and chisel. And I was concerned about the quality of the soil, the amount of tillage I was doing, the drying, it dried out so much in the spring. And when I began to see the zone till introduced in this area, I became quite interested in it. And it solved two problems I’d had with no-till when I’d tried it. One was to get the seed slot closed and to get good germination and the second problem was how to put fertilizer down with that seed with no-till. In zone till you are tilling an area of about 6 inches wide every 30 inches and the area in between is not tilled. So the planter and the fertilizer equipment works like it was intended and the area in-between doesn’t grow weeds because you’re not tilling the soil. It’s really worked well for me and so we’ve gradually worked through the whole farm till now everything we grow is zone till.

This is my two-row zone builder that I built a couple years ago for our strawberries. I started with a commercial unit that was four or six rows wide, I needed a small machine for the berries, because they are on 48-inch centers and the commercial machine is 30-inch centers. And it’s so big that it is very difficult to move so this was a project just for our strawberries. This was originally a tool bar that was 15 feet long and I cut it in thirds. I bought a two channel irons and just welded the frame, the hitch of course was already there, I already had it was an old tool bar that used to be on a rotary hoe that we don’t use anymore. These two shanks were from a chisel that I don’t use anymore, I bought years and years ago and I took two off once to make it a little smaller and they just were around so we just simply they just fit right on this. These parallel linkages are just rejects from the commercial zone builder that I had, I just changed it a little bit and I had two of these left over. These can be purchased from the company that built the zone builder. We made the brackets to put it on here and I just steal these coulters, 13 wave coulters from the commercial zone builder, I just put them on when I’m doing strawberries and take them off and put them back on that machine when I’m doing my other work. I did not buy these, you could, but it doesn’t take very long to change them.

This thing goes about 12 to 14 inches deep, the disks just form a ridge right up over the slot, the key to the zone builder whether it's this one, the commercial one, or whatever you do with zone tillage, the key is to do vertical tillage not horizontal tillage. We don’t want the tool that you’re engaging in the soil to be pushing the soil sideways like a moldboard plow, a disk, a field cultivator with sweeps on it cause that’s where you get a compacted layer right where that shearing action is from that sideways motion. Everything on this thing and with zone tillage is a vertical form of tillage - it doesn’t have any sideways shearing, that’s the key.

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 5993

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdnr7ymlpKs

Anu Rangarajan, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University. Ithaca, NY.

My name is Anu Rangarajan and I’m in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell and we’re here at the Homer C. Thompson Vegetable Research Farm. We are doing some research here on trying to figure out how to reduce tillage in vegetable production systems for the northeast. So we are focusing on primarily zone tillage systems because we think they are the best for our conditions in the upper northeast where it’s cooler. In zone tillage we’re only disturbing about an 8 inch band of soil across the whole field where we’re going to be planting. You can work that zone fairly shallow in sort of traditional zone tillage which is a 3-4 inch depth using a set of coulters or we can work deep. We’d be wanting to work deep where we have some compaction layers that we want to break up.

This is our zone builder. It is made by Unverferth - there are other types of zone builders made by other companies. This requires 30-50 horsepower per shank, and a tractor with a high clearance hitch. In the front you have a pair of cutting discs that cut through residue in the soil. Following that is this deep tillage shank. This shank is a very hard steel that allows it to travel 12-18 inches deep even in the soil. Behind that it’s followed by hilling disks, these actually hill up the soil and create a mound. That creates a very nice planting zone and then these rolling baskets break up any clods in the soil.

Zone tillage is an improvement over conventional tillage because you are only working a narrow piece of ground. Using an implement like this allows us in one pass to prepare a planting area for a particular crop. We’ve done this with a lot of large seeded vegetable crops including sweet corn and beans and pumpkins which are the most popular vegetables right now to do in zone tillage. We are also exploring transplanted crops including peppers, tomatoes and cabbage. In the future we hope to be able to do this also with root crops and smaller seeded crops. It’s a big advantage over conventional tillage because here you only make one pass - you don’t have to plow or disk. The advantages of that is you conserve fuel, you conserve time, and you enhance soil quality by not inverting the soil.

Here we are demonstrating the zone tiller in a Sudex cover crop, we’ve used it in a killed cover crop as well as a living cover crop, because it’s quite aggressive and can handle that type of residue.

Zone tillage doesn’t require fancy equipment. We started out with this simple tool which involves three wavy coulters that create that shallow zone, mounted on a tool bar, and we have them spaced 30 inches for our crops and the way we plant here.

We make the decision on how deep to run our deep tillage based upon soil compaction. Because that deep shank that you saw, it’s important that that goes just below a compaction zone so it's important to have a penetrometer in the field with you when doing this type of work.

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 5992

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSvLkh5oOsY

Jay and Polly Armour, Four Winds Farm. Gardiner, NY.

I’m Jay, my wife Polly Armour and we farm at Four Winds Farm here in Gardiner, New York. We have a 24 acre farm of which about 4 acres is in a market garden. We sell primarily through a 30 member CSA and at 2 regional farmers markets. When we started farming here in 1988 we used conventional tillage: plow, disk, rototill. And about 10 years ago through a serendipitous relationship with a not-for-profit we figured out a way to do no-till farming, raised beds on a large scale. We farm four acres of vegetables without using a rototiller. We put compost on top of permanently formed beds and then we plant right into the compost. Some crops we plant directly into the compost. Things like lettuces, beets, carrots, parsley, various herbs, basil. Some of the crops that we plant you transplant like your tomatoes, your peppers, your onions, leeks. We plant the transplants right into the compost.

After doing it for a number of years we’ve seen less weed pressure, we have a lot more free time during the summer, we end up spending more of our time actually just harvesting than we do just trying to deal with weeds and a lot more relaxed environment. The first section of the garden we converted to raised beds we did sort of the backyard garden way using a shovel. After that we figured out a way to use a tractor mounted adjustable back blade that then was able to convert large parts of the garden, you know, acres at a time into raised beds. And that has allowed us to convert a four-acre garden into permanent raised beds.

Coming from a conventional background I had a hard time adjusting to the idea that we don’t need to till every year, but as long as you don’t walk on the soil, or you don’t drive a tractor on the soil, you don’t compact the soil, it will stay nice and loose and you can get away with not tilling year, after year, after year.

We’re adding a great deal of compost on to our fields at least initially and you might think that’s going to add to the weed burden but since it’s composted manure, the weed seeds have been killed during the composting. And what we're doing in the garden, is we’re covering up the soil, the soil that has the weed seeds in it, we’re putting a layer sort of a blanket of compost that doesn’t have a lot of weed seeds in it and we’re sealing that off so we have a much lower weed pressure here. The one weed that we do have a problem with is dandelion, because the seeds blow in rather than are there naturally. Sometimes other airborne seeds can come too, thistle, milkweed, but those usually aren’t a problem if you can get on them right away.

During the wintertime our cows and sheep stay up here in the barnyard. Since they’re up here we’re able to collect their manure, this time of year in the spring time I come in with a tractor, we dig out the manure that’s collected in the barn and pile it up in this pile here and mix it up with horse manure that I bring in from another farm. The cow manure is just a little too heavy, a little too wet to get generating any heat. So the mixing it with the horse manure will give us that heat that we’re looking for. This is a pile I made a couple of weeks ago, we can put this thermometer right on in here and check the temperature, something I do everyday, just to monitor the temperature. After the manure’s been sitting here for about 5 months, I load it into a rear discharge manure spreader that helps mix it up aerate it and then I pile it up over here. It will sit here for the about 6 or 7 months during the course of the winter. The following spring, we use it as finished compost, it goes right on to the garden.

Here’s one of our raised beds that hasn’t been tilled in 5 years, you can see how light and fluffy it is - I can put my and right into it. The soil maintains good tilth and as easy as I put my hand in the plants can put their roots right down. This last got compost last spring, a year ago, we’re not going to put any compost on it this year, because it doesn’t need it. In the beginning when we first started doing this, and also when we first turned over new ground, we put on a lot of compost, sometimes a couple of inches thick, but since then we’ve really cut back, we’ve found that we don’t need as much in subsequent years and also we don’t want to put too much down because then that’ll increase the amount of phosphorus we’re putting onto the 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 5991

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOrzuu5I_gc

Ed Person, Ledgewood Farm. Moultonboro, NH.

I’m Ed Person in Ledgewood Farm in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. The farm consists of 100 acres, 22 are tillable and we sell at a farm stand on a busy road. I use cover crops on all my fields. I plant them in the fall, the oats winter kill and the winter rye is a green residue in the spring for those fields I can't get on until later in the spring. We used to use moldboard plows and a rototiller to do all our fields’ very small residue. We used a Planet Jr. planter so we had to use a system that had very little residue. Then as I changed planters we were able to go to a reduced tillage system, which includes a chisel plow and a Perfecta field cultivator.

This field that we’re standing in here is winter killed oats, I prefer them over winter rye because it does leave a dry residue in the spring. There’s enough residue to keep the weed pressure down, but with this amount of pressure I am still able to till the way I want to. We plant the oats at about 100 lbs per acre and we broadcast them with a spin spreader and then we use the Perfecta to turn them under at about 2 inches deep. The weed pressure that’s left here is not a problem for us, these will incorporate very easily, if there’s a lot more weeds, then we will mow it so the length of weeds doesn’t tangle up in the chisel plow.

This is our chisel plow, we converted to using this about 20 years ago - before that we moldboard plowed and harrowed and then we moldboard plowed and rototilled as the rotovator or rototill became more prevalent. This saves us a lot of time and it reduces the fracturing of the soil or the beating up of the soil, I guess is what most people think of when you rototill. This is a set of chisels that go in the ground about a foot. They’ll make a furrow that tills the soil about 12 inches wide, the shanks are 12 inches apart so the entire field gets tilled. After that happens, these smaller spring points will make it so that the big furrows are wiped out or smoothed over and then the rake on back smoothes it out so that it’s almost a perfect seedbed, but it’s still a little too coarse to plant in.

This is our Perfecta that we use for final tillage after we’ve either used the chisel plow or the moldboard plow if there was a lot of trash that the chisel plow couldn’t handle. This is the same principal as the chisel plow, we have a set of aggressive tines in the front that are spaced about 4 inches apart and they will fracture the soil more than what the chisel plow did. Then we have another rake that will flatten the ridges that the chisels make and we’ll also aerate with these slanted tines. And then after they have passed, a roller is the next in line, and that packs and textures the soil so that it will stay in place and we can plant into it.

This brand is a Perfecta by Unverferth there are many other brands out there that you could buy. We use a heavy-duty S tine and a 7 ½ inch shovel. You could also get it in a lighter S tine and a narrower shovel. We use this particular set-up because of our heavy soils and the rocks that we have to bounce around.

This is what we’d like to see after the Perfecta is finished, a little bit of texture, a bit of trash that’s scattered in between, but my planter will certainly plant into this without any trouble. Over here this is a little too trashy, but the planter will still work but it may be hard to cultivate later.

This is a Matermac air planter. We went to this a few years ago from using our Planet Jr and our 71 Flexi-Planter because it allows us to plant in heavier trash, and using the chisel plow and the Perfecta which are really fast tools to prep the soil, this is the next step in doing that. The concept is, it has fertilizer hoppers, seed hoppers, which are the same as any other planters, and then when we get down to the working unit, there’s a shovel that clear the trash out of the way, a set of discs that opens the trench, and then another set of discs that presses the trench closed with the seed in it. So it really moves the trash out of the way and we can plant in really tough going. This is the plow that actually moves the trash and rough ground out of the way for the discs so that they can set the seed at the proper depth. Half inch for carrots and beets for example, two inches for the corn and beans. These are the drive wheels, they actually turn the gearing that allows the seed plate to turn and dispense the seed at the right locations, the vacuum holds the seed on the plate until it is ready to be dropped. The openers are these discs that are hidden inside, they will cut the furrow, these wheels maintain the depth. These two wheels are the covering mechanism. They are angled so that they put pressure with a spring to cover in the furrow. The benefit of these press wheels rather than a shovel to cover the seed, is that they can work through the trash and that they can actually get the clods to just press in rather than having to move them around. Any planter that has the ability to move trash will work, I happened to buy a Matermac because the price was right and it was a unit I had seen actually working.

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 5990

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch this video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycadZjZ1Vnw

Jean-Paul Cortens and Jody Bolluyt, Roxbury Farm. Kinderhook, NY.

I’m Jean-Paul Cortens and we are at Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, New York. It’s a 250 acre farm - we’ve been here since 2000 and we bought it from a potato farmer. I’m Jody Bolluyt and each season we have 40 acres in vegetable and 40 acres in cover crops, different grasses and legumes so that we can have a good rotation. We grow for a 1000 member CSA and we deliver from New York City all the way up to Albany. And each season we grow a wide variety of vegetables, we also include some strawberries and some herbs.

Well, our goal here is soil health and soil heath to produce healthy cash crops. In order to do that we need to till the soil, we cannot do no-till because it is too cold where we are. We need to expose the soil and in the process we are aerating the soil. We incorporate our cover crops for nutrients and we create a seedbed.

Because we’re an organic farm we have to get most of our nutrients from our cover crops and our compost. So before we till for our vegetable crops, we’ll either mow our cover crops that are really lush like sweet clover, red clover, or hairy vetch and then we’ll spread twenty yards of compost to the acre. For winter kill oats and peas we don’t need to mow, so we just spread the compost and then spade that in.

In our rotation we’re growing two years of cover crops that is followed by two years of cash crops. In order to prepare land for our cash crops we are using a spader. We chose a spader because it minimizes passes and we are able to incorporate a full standing cover crop almost immediately before we plant our cash crops therefore minimizing inputs from other sources.

This is the spader consisting of two components, in the front there are the spades themselves that are mounted on a rotating axle and they move around at a relatively slow speed and grab big chunks of soil and invert that deeper down. Then it’s followed by the power harrow which is also relatively slow moving, and these tines here, they push the larger chunks of soil deeper into the soil along with that the debris, the plant debris deeper into the soil. So what happens here by moving it further, by pushing it deeper into the soil, it will be able to decompose, then when we come back a week later we are not dealing with dried up plant debris that can clog up our seeders. So the action of the spades is actually very slow compared to say a rotovator. The rotovator moves at high speeds and would destroy the aggregation of the soil. What it does it leaves the soil in very large clumps. This is like one clump where you can see that not a lot of damage has been done to the natural structure of the soil. So the whole idea is that we want to have an inversion, we want to incorporate, what we don’t want to do is destroy the aggregation, and this is possible with the action of the spader.

This field was spaded a week ago. The hairy vetch was worked in and hairy vetch has been starting to break down, and when it’s broken down, which can take anywhere from one week to two weeks depending on the warmth of the soil, we’ll start making beds.

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 5989

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Sustainable Tillage Practices video clip.

Watch this video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCj58isK1xE

Harold van Es, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell University. Ithaca, NY.

In the last 50 years or so, we’ve focused a lot of our attention on the chemical functions of the soils and we’ve established a good info structure for soil testing and providing advice to farmers about the chemical functions of the soils. But the physical and the biological functions have not been developed very well and as a result we have seen many of our soils have become physically and biologically degraded.

Farmers have a real challenge with managing the physical and the biological health of the soil because traditionally tillage is a very integral part of the cropping system. Yet we now know that tillage also has a strong negative impact on the health of the soil and certainly if tillage is repeated year after year for many decades we see tremendous degradation of the soils. So we need to focus on finding alternatives tillage systems to build up those soils again and make them productive for our crops.

Tillage affects soil health in a complex way; in the short term tillage provides benefits by loosening the soil and allowing for water infiltration and oxygen to enter into it. The long term however, repeated tillage oxidizes organic matter that’s critical for soil aggregation and structure, and so what we see after decades of repeated intensive tillage that the soil degrades and become dense and compacted.

The moldboard plow has been used for centuries to invert the soil. It’s a very effective tillage tool, but it also breaks up soil aggregates, oxidizes the organic matter which is critical to good soil aggregation. It also causes plow pans that reduces root proliferation into the subsoil.

The rotovator is a tool that does an excellent job of creating a seedbed and has been used in vegetable systems for that reason. The concern about the rotovator is that, much like the moldboard plow, is that it’s a very intensive tillage tool and in the long run it causes the destruction of soil aggregates.

The disc harrow in a way performs less intensive tillage which is good, but it has one particular problem, that it causes a lot of pressure at the bottom of the discs especially when it’s offset at a wide angle and this causes some compaction which results in what we call a disc pan.

To build healthy soils we need to use good management practices and I look at it as a balance sheet. Tillage and intensive mono-crop production are practices that reduce the health of the soil - they degrade the soil. Other practices, like cover cropping, good rotation especially those including sods and legumes, and the addition of organic matter like manure and compost help build the soil. In general, what a farmer wants to achieve is a good balance between those practices. One of the interesting things we’ve found is that these soil-building practices can also mutually reinforce each other. For example combining reduced tillage or no tillage with cover cropping, enhances the benefits of both.

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 5988

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xgxRugpYjQ

Jake Guest, Killdeer Farm. Norwich, VT.

There are actually four components to the flamer, there are the flame heads themselves, there’s the frame, there’s the tank and then there’s the regulating mechanisms. The regulator consists of a solenoid-activated valve, which simply turns the machine on or off. This tank, the tank is really important, it has to be, you can’t just use a regular propane tank that you see standing around greenhouses it has to be a motor fuel tank and they’re not too easy to locate. This is a used one we got pretty cheap, but new they cost about 700 dollars. You know, as you can see it holds about 40 gallons of fuel. I figure it takes about 19 or 20 dollars an acre worth of fuel. This device uses liquid propane as opposed to gas and that’s very significant because one of the difficulties that some of the European burners have is that using gas means that they get too cold from the evaporation of all the gas. These burners are much different - they move the propane in a liquid form all the way down to the burners before it's actually burned so that there’s no super-cooling of the lines. The expansion of the gas just before it burns all takes place right down at the bottom of the burners.

Each burner is a 250,000 BTU burner and that’s well its pretty arbitrary, what you need depends on the width of the bed. This seems to be sufficient for my uses, it covers a 52 inch bed quite nicely. Sometimes I use the burner for a single row crop in which case I don’t even use the outside two burners, the outside four burners, only use the two inside ones and tilt them so they direct the flame right down to a single row right down below there. So it’s very versatile there’s lots of different uses for it.

This is a good example of what the flamer does. On my left here is a bed, this bed here was prepared, these beds were prepared, the one on the right and the one on the left were prepared at the same time. They were tilled and rolled and marked, I used this roller you can see it just barely, there are marks, three rows are marked out, that’s to guide my planter when I plant out, I plant by hand with a push planter. And I flamed this bed about three days ago and it looked identical to this bed over here and as you can see there are hardly any weeds left, now there are new weeds emerging. What I’ll do now at this point is plant the crop in this bed and then wait a few days before this crop comes up and flame it again. That’s going to get any weeds that germinate between now and the time I flame, it also will get rid of these few little ones, you can't even see them, they're tiny little weeds that have germinated since I flamed it last time.

I think one of the few downsides to using this machine concerns safety. There’s a lot of energy in here and it has the potential for being pretty dangerous. I think that it’s especially important that all the valves are tight and the pins are all in and everything, if this thing dropped off or something broke it could be a real disaster.

I think the flame weeder has a real place in our operation here. There are some improvements and there are some techniques that I need to work on but I think it's not enough alone, but in conjunction with a proper and appropriate and timely tillage I think it’s indispensable, I find that I’m using it, finding more and more uses for it every year and I am certainly very encouraged by what I’ve discovered.

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 5987

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBsEgE7ldc

Jake Guest, Killdeer Farm. Norwich, VT.

My first experience, practical experience with flaming was with this little device here. The idea is that I can apply flame to a bed, I mean to, to anything, to a row what I do is I actually go over the rows that are planted just before the seeds come up. This thing is very useful for times when a crop is, for instance a crop that comes up much sooner than other crops, where there's just no point in going to get the tractor and putting the flamer on and doing the whole thing just for radishes or something, something that’s quick. So all the beds are prepared ahead of time and then I just take this flamer out just before the crop comes up and go along in the mark, and flame the mark made by the seeder, the seeder mark. It kills everything that’s germinated and the crop comes up just behind it. Sometimes it literally the crop is coming, it’s actually cracked the soil, when I flame it it’s literally hours before it emerges but when it comes up there’s no weeds left. The flame is very effective on weeds that are newly emerged, small weeds that are just emerged, it’s less effective when the weeds are a little bit bigger 2-3 inches tall or so, still works but sometimes you have to go a little slower and use more heat. It’s also not particularly effective on grasses unfortunately, because any grasses any weed that comes from deeper in the soil, it doesn’t get hit or can re-grow.

I’ve found the flatter the surface of the stale seed the better the flamer works. It’s really important, if there are any ridges or lumpy soil the weeds manage, the flamer deflects off the lumps of the ridges so I’ve experimented with different ways of preparing the bed and flat is important, that’s the way it works really well. I’ve found that grasses are a real problem; the problem is the growing tip of the grasses is slightly below the surface. The flamer goes over the top, kills what’s on top what’s visible and then a few days later the grass re-emerges. One way that I think I’ve dealt with the problem is to flame a little later where grass is a problem, for some reason at a later time grasses, the growing tip has come out of the soil and is vulnerable and I can hit it with the flame.

The ideal way to use this technique is to prepare the beds way ahead of time. Many weeks even, ahead of time. What I try to do is get an area all fertilized and ready to go and all the beds actually physically made then I start at one side and you know I have to plant some early crops early, I plant them and do whatever flaming I can and then flame ahead, I always flame a week or so ahead of the actual planting. For those beds which have been, which I’m not planning to plant for say 4 or 5 weeks I may actually go do a tillage with a rotovator a very light tillage with the rotovator before I even get to the flaming. And then they're part of the sequence. I actually have some fields where I make it a cycle and I start back at the beginning again, re-prepare the beds and start all over again.

Spinach is a crop for instance where I, every week I plant two beds and I always flame the week before and flame right after the planting and have flamed a couple weeks for the beds yet to be planted and tilled 4 weeks ahead of time.

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 Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDpeHp_98zQ

Steve and Ray Mong, Applefield Farm. Stow, MA.

I heard about flame weeding a couple years ago from a fellow farmer and I thought it sounded really intriguing, mainly because I love killing weeds, but also because it does a nice job in some problem areas that we have. Mostly I use it for stale seed beds, and on certain crops - carrots, beets, slow germinating crops. And the other purpose I’m trying and trying to develop the right tools to build the right tool to do the edges of plastic and the walkways in between rows of plastic, which is a very difficult area to cultivate, you can hoe it and hoe it and hoe it and you just keep on doing that all year long. It's working out pretty well although we have a pretty good crop of crabgrass and red purslane and it takes a lot of heat to kill it. The crabgrass especially comes right back. The tall broadleaf weeds are easily killed, pigweed, lambsquarters all those weeds are easily taken care of and just to alleviate those weeds for us has been a great help. Although I’d prefer if the crabgrass and the purslane didn’t go to seed this year - I’m going to have to do some hand weeding in there and hopefully in the future I’ll put my plastic where there is no crabgrass or purslane.

The two weeders I have are a tractor and tool bar mounted one which is used for the wide space in between the plastic, it gets the bulk of it in the walkway. And this is quite a bit hotter as I’m running a 100-pound can as you can see it’s a homemade tool. The other weeder is a backpack mounted one and my theory on that is to get up close to the edges of the plastic and it’s a fine line between burning plastic and killing weeds. But with the proper speed and the proper angle and the proper distance from the ground and the flame adjustment, it's effective, not on grasses but on those broad-leafed weeds we talked about. I’m burning only vapor, I’ve tried to get into the liquid burning, my local propane company got really scared when I talked about that, they tried to help us out a little bit, but once they realized what I was doing and saw this set-up, they took their tanks away, and they ahhhh..... So basically, if you’re going to burn liquid you’re on your own. They’d be happy to fill my vapor tanks anytime and sell me more fuel, but when you talk about liquid I believe you’re on your own because of the liability.

Another thing, this little backpack weeder is really handy for those little problem areas - it could be where your spacing was wrong on your transplanter or your cultivator sweeps just don’t quite hit the very center of the walkway. There’s an area like that here and you can just walk and just kill all those weeds without walking the rototiller or something slower or pulling them by hand - you can knock them down with this and you can get them basically anywhere on your farm as easily as you can throw on a backpack and take a walk it doesn’t take that long. You’ve gotta get the weeds when they’re small though like anything else.

My toolbar mounted flamer needs quite a bit of work, mainly it's not hot enough because I’m burning vapor. I’m extracting so much vapor at a time I get ice-ups and my flame cools down with time. And that’s the big thing I’ve gotta do maybe go to a bigger tank and maybe use some smaller burners and a gang. The other big change needed on my tool bar flame weeder is the ground clearance problem, once your crop gets big, this has to be, the fire has to be so close to the ground, I’m knocking blossoms off peppers and bending tomato plants, so I’m going to put a yoke toolbar and hopefully get a 250-300 gallon saddle tank and give it a shot for next year.

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 Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ky1gVERQ8

Steve and Ray Mong, Applefield Farm. Stow, MA.

I’ve got a set-up here of Bezzerides or Bezzerides or however it’s said, that we’ve had for probably 4 or 5 years now and for the most part it works pretty well for us. We’ve got fairly bony ground, a lotta, small gravelly soil, and even some fairly good-sized pieces of gravel. So, I had a Lilliston cultivator and the first time I put it out in the soil it clogged right up with some stones caught in the tines and I sold that for what I paid for it so, that was one experiment. I got a piece of equipment in that had some Buddingh basket cultivators on it and I knew right away that it wasn’t going to work in my soil so I got rid of that. Initially we started out with just sweeps. You could put, when the corn was still small, just starting, the first leaf coming out, you could go could go in about as slow as the tractor could go, with the cultivators real close trying not to throw dirt at it and you'd just go blind after a little while. Just all that corn you just have to watch it so close and killing half of it. What I like about the Bezzerides set-up, is that once you spend the time and get it set up right, it does take a little bit of trial and error, getting things adjusted and leveled out right for the soil, but once you got it set up your cultivation speed can be, can be quite high. When the crop gets bigger or on crops that don’t mind being hilled, those spyders can be turned the opposite direction and like a straight disc they throw dirt in, but they don’t throw it real heavy, they’ll do a, make a rather shallow hill but they’ll do a nice job hilling up and smothering weeds that way. So you can get in and do it a couple times without the hill getting too high to get at.

Now we use the Bezzerides setup for an awful lot of the crops on the farm. You know, primarily corn, peas, beans in particular, but all the flowers, we do 20 different varieties of cut and dried flowers. Peppers if we grow 'em in dirt instead of plastic which we do sometimes, pumpkins. And we grow almost everything there is, so we use the Bezzerides for almost everything. We run the spyders mounted up front so the spyders are going along catching weeds, moving dirt. The way they’re set up for the initial cultivation they’re actually pulling dirt away from the crop, catching any weeds that are there. And then the spring hoes which are behind are set up relatively close to the crop, they do a little bit of soil movement and they also hill up some dirt in between the rows so you’re actually getting cultivation 100% through the row. You’re not leaving a blind space down the row center which every place else is easy to get, it's between the plants in the row that’s always the hard place to get the weeds. And I have found that the spyder spring hoe set-up does that better than anything I’ve ever tried before at a fairly decent rate of speed, which at one row at a time, speed has some advantages.

There’s a couple of adjustments we make, we carry the one wrench we need to do it with us on the tractor all the time. Other than the up and down just to be sure you’re riding in the dirt, the spyders themselves need to be adjusted in and out depending on the canopy of the crop. You don’t want to be yanking out the crop so when, let's say corn is very small, you run down and have them quite close together, as the corn gets larger and gets some leaf, you move them apart. The other adjustment is to turn the spyders the other way to actually do some hilling for those crops that don’t mind being hilled.

With our corn strategy, real quick is that the initial thing is that we rototill it to start out with a clean seed bed, plant right away, 3, 4, 5 days depending on the time of year depending on how quickly the corn germinates we’ll go in and run a Lely tine cultivator, it’s a blind cultivation well before the corn is even coming up through the ground. Like I say an average of about 4 days after we plant just to try to keep the weeds from flushing up. Shortly after the corn comes through, like at spike stage or just after spike, we’ll Lely blind cultivate one more time. And if the weather’s been good and the timing is right and we didn’t get caught up doing something else and lose track of the corn we can get it to where the corn is up 4, 5, 6 inches tall and the only weeds that are there are really itty-bitty. And you come through with the Bezzerides and do a bit of hilling and stuff and the corn can be real clean. We may Bezzerides twice, maybe hill, again it depends on the time of year, how quickly the corn is growing, whether it’s early planted corn or late season corn last time through we’ll just put discs on and do a rather aggressive hilling both to smother anything that still survived. Also to help hold the corn up if we get a thunder storm or whatever, it can make quite a difference. Corn I’d say by the time we do that final hilling, it’s probably about yea high just scraping underneath the belly of the tractor. What we try to do is two Lelys and I would say two Bezzerides through the field and then a disk hill so it’s probably five cultivations, two blind and two Bezzerides and one quick throw the dirt at it.

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 Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Hd8Fh1X50

Tom Harlow, Kestrel Farm. Westminster, VT.

OK, this is a roller that comes from off of the back of a field cultivator, the brackets have been cut off and we just mount it, mid-mount underneath this tractor. It’s ground driven, it rolls very freely. We use this in the initial preparation of a stale seed bed, sub-soiling first and then coming back with this roller to make a nice smooth and level seed bed, and then about a week to 10 days later we come back and hit the beds with this roller to kill any small weeds that have germinated just before we plant. Another very important thing to remember about tilling a stale seed bed with this, is that you don’t want to go so deep that you’re bringing up new weed seeds so we try to go no more than 2 inches deep for this, we also travel very fast to get a good stirring of the 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.

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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 webinar was presented on December 16, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8O0O-1CYY8

Handout of the slides: Download

Nitrogen management is one of many challenges that organic strawberry growers face. In this webinar, we will address the challenges of nitrogen management in strawberries, pattern of nitrogen uptake over plant growth cycle and synchronizing N supply, pre-plant amendments and leaching losses, and issues with fertigation efficiency.

Joji Muramoto is an Associate Researcher in the Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a soil scientist/agroecologist specializing in fertility and soilborne disease management in organic strawberries and vegetables in central coastal California.

Mark Gaskell is a Farm Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension. Mark joined UC in 1995 and since that time he has been responsible for research and educational outreach programs for Small Farms and Specialty Crops in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties of California.

Carol Shennan is an agroecologist in the Department of Environmental Studies. She has been working on management of organic cropping systems for many years, with an emphasis on cover crops, nutrient management and soilborne disease management; and is the Project Director of CalCORE - the California Collaborative Organic Research and Extension network - a consortium of researchers, farmers, extension and other organizations dedicated to organic agriculture research.

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 webinar took place on December 9, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YClztqxJg6A

Presenters: Rammohan Balusu, Ayanava Majumdar, Auburn University. Elena Rhodes, University of Florida. They are participants in a NIFA OREI project: Development and Participatory Implementation of Integrated Organic Pest Management for Crucifer Vegetable Production in the South.

A previous eOrganic webinar on the Yellowmargined Leaf Beetle described the biology and basic management approaches for this pest. This webinar will provide advanced IPM information related to trap crops, attractants, and biorational insecticides. We will conclude with a detailed discussion of organic integrated pest management strategies suitable for multiple pest problems in organic and conventional crucifer production systems.

For all other upcoming and archived eOrganic webinars, see http://www.extension.org/pages/25242

Dr. Rammohan Balusu is a Research Fellow II at Auburn University. He works on ecologically-based pest management tactics in fruit and vegetable crops. He has been working on Yellowmargined leaf beetle problem in organic crucifer production since 2006.

Dr. Ayanava Majumdar is an Extension Entomologist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and his work focuses on developing vegetable IPM recommendations for a variety of crops. He is also the SARE program coordinator at Auburn University and has established a strong organic educational program for small producers in Alabama.

Dr. Elena Rhodes is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Florida, where she specializes in integrated pest management in small fruit and vegetable crops. Her current major projects include the management of yellow margined leaf beetle, Microtheca ochroloma Stål, in cole crops and blueberry gall midge, Dasineura oxycoccana (Johnson), in blueberries. Major past projects include the management of twospotted spider mites, Tetranychus urticae Koch, in strawberries and flower thrips, Frankliniella spp., in blueberries. Minor projects include various efficacy trials, a feeding assay of stink bugs in blackberries, and assisting with grape root borer research.

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 webinar was recorded on November 17, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkrSpts2Qw

This webinar will discuss the impacts of extreme weather on organic farming systems in the Midwest region and explore opportunities for increased weather resiliency with an emphasis on soil management.

The content of the webinar will draw primarily from research literature, farmer interviews and the presenter’s personal experiences conducting large-scale organic row-crop research in Western IL.

Drainage practices, tillage systems, crop establishment and rotation, cover crop and weed management, and precision technologies will be discussed as components of cropping systems that have greater weather resiliency both in terms of crop performance and management flexibility.

Dr. Joel Gruver is an Associate professor of Soil Science and Sustainable Agriculture and director of the Organic Research Program at Western Illinois University.

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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Watch the webinar on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkrSpts2Qw

This webinar, by Diego Nieto of UCSC, took place on December 2, 2015. The webinar describes the role of predators and/or parasitoids in managing cabbage aphids, diamondback moth and cabbage root fly in organic brassica crops.

Diego Nieto has been a research entomologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz since 2001 and has studied issues related to pest management in cotton, cole crops, strawberries and olives.

Find all upcoming and archived eOrganic upcoming and archived webinars at http://www.extension.org/pages/25242.

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 webinar was presented by Jennifer Reeve and Earl Creech of Utah State University on November 10, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imvtu7OvSNA

Dryland organic wheat production in the arid West encompasses a large percentage of the organic wheat acreage in the United States. However, declining wheat yields and poor quality caused by lack of soil fertility and growing weed pressure threaten the economic and environmental sustainability of these farms. Composts have a strong carryover effect with potential to improve soil fertility and productivity of dryland organic wheat systems but the long-term benefits have not been thoroughly evaluated.

A new multi-state long-term project was initiated in the fall of 2014 involving a collaboration between scientists at Utah State University, Washington State University and the University of Wyoming. The long-term goal is to develop long-term on-farm research sites devoted to testing and showcasing organic dryland wheat management strategies for increased water use efficiency, weed management, soil quality, wheat yield and quality, and economic viability for dryland organic wheat growers. This webinar will present data from the original compost carryover research project in Utah as well as introduce the goals and objectives of the new multi-state long-term project.

Download a pdf handout of the presentation here

Earl Creech is an Assistant Professor and Extension Agronomist in the department of Plants, Soils and Climate at Utah State University.  Dr. Creech conducts applied research that addresses critical needs of Utah’s irrigated and dryland production agriculture. He works closely with agricultural producers, federal and state agencies, agribusiness organizations, life sciences companies, the media, and the scientific community concerned with crop management issues.

Jennifer Reeve is Associate Professor of Organic and Sustainable Agriculture in the department of Plants Soils and Climate at Utah State University. Her current research focuses on nutrient management and soil health in organic and integrated tree fruit, vegetable, pasture and grain systems. She is also chair of the Southern Coordinating Committee: Quantifying the linkages among soil health, organic farming and food. In 2012 she received an award for civically engaged scholar from the Utah Campus Compact for her work with the USU Student Organic Farm. Originally from England she earned a Bachelor of Science in Ecology from the University of Sheffield in 1995 followed by a MS in Soil Science from Washington State University in 2003 and a PhD in Soil Science from Washington State University in 2007.

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 webinar took place on November 4, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Kx7I4d4hU

This webinar is aimed at a general audience, gardeners, farmers, and ag professionals. Viewers will learn how to make consistent and safe compost teas for gardening and agricultural use. We will discuss how compost teas are viewed and regulated by the National Organic Program and Environmental Protection Agency. Viewers will leave with an improved understanding of compost teas and how they can be beneficially used.

Some of the pesticides discussed in this presentation were tested under an experimental use permit granted by WSDA. Application of a pesticide to a crop or site that is not on the label is a violation of pesticide law and may subject the applicator to civil penalties up to $7,500. In addition, such an application may also result in illegal residues that could subject the crop to seizure or embargo action by WSDA and/or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is your responsibility to check the label before using the product to ensure lawful use and obtain all necessary permits in advance.

Download a pdf handout of slides for this webinar

For all other upcoming and archived eOrganic webinars, see http://www.extension.org/pages/25242

Dr. Lynne Carpenter-Boggs is an Associate Professor of Sustainable and Organic Agriculture at Washington State University. Her work aims to improve global health and sustainability through biological and appropriate technologies for agriculture.

Catherine (CeCe) Crosby is a Ph.D. candidate in Soil Science at Washington State University. CeCe has led hundreds of pre-nursing students through chemistry and environmental science courses, and currently is researching the feasibility of composting for new uses in society.

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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