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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

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

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Nutrient Management

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

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

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Rotational Tillage Option

There are two options to rotational tillage. One is to either purchase a no-till drill or borrowing or renting a spading machine. They are very effective in incorporating residues without disturbing the surface. They do leave a relatively good seed bed that would allow you to get a good stand.

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

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Ron Morse, Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Rotational Tillage

After the vegetable crop is grown, you will lightly till your no-till bed to enable you to produce the next cover crop, get a good stand, and also incorporate the residues of your vegetable crop, which often times will improve disease management. Here we’ve taken a rotivator and tilled approximately two to three inches deep to loosen the soil and also incorporate residue from the last vegetable crop. It’s really a compromise; by doing what we’ve done, we’ve probably reduced somewhat the soil organic matter. On the upside, by tilling it, we’re able to get a very nice cover crop, which will enable us to pour in a lot of biomass. Often times, you need to lightly till in order to get a good stand of cover crop.

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

Weed Management

High residue mulch, living or dead, improves weed suppression by capturing growth inputs, particularly light. We want the plants to basically germinate very quickly and close the canopy. Drip irrigation is also a very useful weed control strategy. Placing water near the roots of the vegetable crops and not irrigating the adjacent weeds, we have found it to be very efficient. In some cases, you have such a serious weed infestation, that before you enter into a no-till system, it’s probably beneficial to spend a year or even two years to grow cover crops that are known to minimize weed pressure. Two of the crops that we have used successfully are sorghum-sudangrass and also buckwheat.

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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Mark Schonbeck. Virginia Association for Biological Farming. Floyd, VA. 

Compatibility
Another important thing that we’re looking at is what I call compatibility. And that is that any cover crop and its residues are going to affect the next vegetable in a number of different ways. One is how cool do they keep the soil and how moist do they keep the soil? Is this favorable or unfavorable. Another one is allelopathy. Any crop residue has a specific set of chemicals that it gives off, that it will favor some plants and it will suppress others. And finally, there’s a microbiological effect that’s becoming more and more well known. Every plant species puts somewhere between 10-30% of its photosynthate, its solar energy converted to biomass, goes out into the soil as soluble food. And that’s feeding a range of organisms and different species of plants favor different ranges of organisms. That is partially responsible for the rotation effect.

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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Mark Schonbeck. Virginia Association for Biological Farming. Floyd, VA. 

Mow-killing or roll-killing requires a fairly precise time, you have to wait until the crop has bloomed, but hasn’t set mature seed. Whereas these crops, we don’t care if they’re vegetative or if they’re flowering, or if you can roll them or not. The old man winter is going to do it. And we have two strategies. One is to plant a really tender, fast-growing, tropical, heat-loving crop in the middle of the summer, and at the first hint of frost, it’s dead.

Semi-hardy Cover Crops

Another strategy is at the end of summer, plant crops that are semi-hardy, things like black oats and purple vetch. These two cover crops will fairly reliably frost-kill at twenty degrees. One of the things that has happened is that farmers in Virginia and some of the warmer climates and even as far north as Kentucky, have observed that when they plant oats as a winter-kill crop, that some of it will come through and be growing in the spring when they wanted a dead mulch. These two are just a little bit less frost hardy than the spring oats and the Lana vetch, which have been our standard cool-season semi-hardy crop. We’re going to look at them in comparison and see if these are more reliable about forming a dead mulch.

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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Mark Schonbeck. Virginia Association for Biological Farming. Floyd, VA. 

Winter-Killed Cover Crops

What we have here are some cover crops that were planted in the middle of July, with the objective of growing a lot of biomass and then allowing it to frost-kill. The advantage to this is that it leaves a mulch in place at the end of winter, so that a farmer can plant early spring vegetable crops without tillage. So many of the systems that have been studied and researched and developed and utilized, involve either an over-winter cover crop, which is suitable for May and June planting of vegetables, or an early summer cover crop, which is mowed or rolled about this time of year for late summer and fall crops. And what this opens up is the possibility of planting no-till peas, onions, spinach, lettuce, early broccoli, early cabbage, in the early spring. Another advantage of this system, is you’re not depending on being able to mechanically kill. That means farmers who are operating on a small scale with limited resources and only have a limited range of equipment, don’t have to worry, “How am I going to mow or roll this thing down so it won’t come back?” because the winter will take care of it.

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

What we do, we plant different cover crops in strips to accommodate the need for nitrogen as well as weed control. In the center and also on the two borders, we plant a grass crop, Sudex or sorghum-sudangrass. This is a type of crop that grows very tall and produces a large amount of biomass and is known to control weeds very effectively. Then next to the Sudex, we planted sunn hemp or Crotalaria and this sunn hemp is a leguminous crop and produces large amounts of nitrogen. One of the disadvantages of sunn hemp is the seed is very costly, up to $4 per pound. Other legume crops that could be grown are cowpeas or forage soybean. In this particular system, these are summer cover crops and they will winter kill and leave the biomass for the following spring.

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Cover crops can be and normally are crop specific. One is cereal rye bi-culture with hairy vetch. This can be used successfully for fruit crops like tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins it is widely used. Another combination is foxtail millet and soybean or foxtail millet and cowpea. Other people have used different millets. I tend to use foxtail, but other people prefer Japanese and some even pearl. The millets work really good, they produce a huge amount of biomass in a short time. They work really well as summer cover crops in preparation to receive fall broccoli or cabbage. Another thing that I found is crimson clover and barley. You can get huge amounts of biomass and nitrogen from crimson clover and it will come in earlier, like 3 weeks or more earlier, than hairy vetch. So you can use this for your early summer crops and we’ve been very successful.

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

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Ron Morse. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Proper selection, establishment and production of high-residue cover crops is the key to organic, no-till. An ideal cover crop is moderately priced, easily established, you must be able to establish it without difficulty; highly productive, which means, a lot of biomass or residues produced; easily killed mechanically, which of course is required by organics, and lastly, is not allelopathic to the cash crop. It’s fine to be allelopathic to the weeds, but it can’t be allelopathic or interfere with crop growth.

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 video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOGzjWJ1kqs&list=PLB4AE9DB8C30652F3

Ron Morse. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. 

It’s an interesting thing for me how I got into organic no-till. I’ve been doing what I label sustainable no-till for 26 years, but about 5 or 6 years ago, I started to become very much aware that many people who attended my talks were intrigued because of the weed control I was able to get with these high residue systems. If you get enough tonnage, 2-3 tons is kind of a minimum, you can suppress weeds. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any weeds. But there is a concept that is very important and that is this minimum weed free period, which is the time that the field needs to be relatively clean before canopy closure. And with these heavy residues, we can achieve that. Especially with vegetable crops that have a quick canopy closure like broccoli. A major reason why high-residue systems are being used is it tends to amplify or enhance all the benefits of low-residue systems. Key examples would be weed suppression and the build-up and improvement of soil quality.

Proper selection, establishment and production of high-residue cover crops is the key to organic no-till. An ideal cover crop is moderately priced, easily established, you must be able to establish it without difficulty; highly productive, which means, a lot of biomass or residues produced; easily killed mechanically, which of course is required by organics, and lastly, is not allelopathic to the cash crop. It’s fine to be allelopathic to the weeds, but it can’t be allelopathic or interfere with crop growth.

Cover crops can be and normally are crop specific. One is cereal rye bi-culture with hairy vetch. This can be used successfully for fruit crops like tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins it is widely used. Another combination is foxtail millet and soybean or foxtail millet and cowpea. Other people have used different millets. I tend to use foxtail, but other people prefer Japanese and some even pearl. The millets work really good, they produce a huge amount of biomass in a short time. They work really well as summer cover crops in preparation to receive fall broccoli or cabbage. Another thing that I found is crimson clover and barley. You can get huge amounts of biomass and nitrogen from crimson clover and it will come in earlier, like 3 weeks or more earlier, than hairy vetch. So you can use this for your early summer crops and we’ve been very successful.

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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Tim Miller, Washington State University.  Mt. Vernon, WA.

Tim Miller’s Tips

Stale Seedbed
We have tried using this technology, using a scale seedbed concept. The idea on this with our annual crops is we leave the soil after our final seedbed preparation, leave it alone and let the weed seeds germinate before we actually plant either seed of our crop or transplant into it. That gives plenty of time for the weed seeds to germinate that are up close to the surface. These are up then at the cotyledon stage of growth and we can use the flamer to remove those weeds either after we’ve seeded or just prior to transplanting.

Optimal Weed Size
Optimal time to really hit these weeds with this type of technology is at that cotyledon stage of growth; before we see true leaves start to show up. This small seedling is called smartweed. We have two cotyledons, it’s also a broad leaf plant, so the growing point is located up here at the top. This would be a prime candidate, right now, to control with flame technology.

If you look on the side, you can see that we have a pretty extensive root system, even on a plant this small. We’re down probably two inches to where the bottom-most roots are located in this soil. If you look next door to it, this is a common groundsel, another winter annual, it looks like 5 or 6 leaves, and its also starting to spread out, you can kind of see that here, amongst this soil, and a lot of these roots are well down deep. You can also that see we’ve got a pretty good mass on that stem, which is another indication that this plant would probably be able to survive the flame operation.

It’s very difficult to get control of grasses using the flame technology. The problem is that the soil is a very good insulator, and we just don’t get the heat that we need immediately around that crown to really cause those cells to desiccate. We can kill the top part of the plant, but we don’t really kill the bottom part.

Flaming Blueberries
We’ve used the flamer pretty effectively in blueberry production for instance. We’re able to get right underneath the crop itself, which is pretty effective. It does a pretty good job of actually removing the top growth of some pretty tough perennials like Canada thistle, horsetail, curly dock, things like this that are growing out in the field. We’ve found that this has worked pretty well for us. Obviously with a perennial crop like that, we are going to get re-growth, and we always do get re-growth, but we just plan on using the technology many times during the course of the growing season and we end up getting a pretty good level of control, or at least suppression of that perennial weed out there.

Now we do have to be a little bit careful, particularly in blueberry culture that uses sawdust and wood shavings out there in the row, to do this at a time when we’re not going to be setting the field on fire. I kind of joke about it but, we’re very careful to make sure that we have nice wet conditions in the sawdust. So springtime and after fall rains have started are when we really like to use the technology.
 

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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Louie Murgg, Forevergreen. Langley, BC, Canada.

Audio Text

These two machines are designed and manufactured by a company in Holland called Hoaf. They do not have ceramic plates, however, they have a jet system, which heats the tile and has an apron in here and with the reflection of the flame you create also infrared heat which is being used the same as a ceramic tile machine. However they are noisier and they do use more fuel as compared to the tile machines. The next larger model is a Hoaf 75, approximately 2.5 feet wide. It has 8 jets in there and its quite an efficient machine. You use approximately a tank like this in 45 minutes. Its designed for walkways, driveways, interlocking brick, and where you have a smooth, flat surface. Hoaf also produces machines on a larger scale, which can be mounted on a 3-point hitch or in front of a Bobcat attachment for agricultural use. 

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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