Category Archives: Radish

Push seeders for no-till seeding: No-till seeding Part II

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Step two after calibrating our seeders was to put them to action in the field. Here’s a short video. This was on a pretty wet day when we never would have tilled the field. It was even a little wet … Continue reading →

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How many seeds is your seeder putting in the ground? No-till seeding Part I.

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Truth be told, I like vacuum seeders. They plop down seeds at nice even intervals in a perfect furrow, and then close the furrow with press wheels, creating good seed-soil contact. But vacuum seeders are wicked expensive (I’m living back … Continue reading →

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Sometimes, less is more when it comes to cover crop residue

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow in Maryland, and fields are neither drying out nor warming up quickly. Unlike a living cover or mulch that prevent the soil from drying in spring, low-residue winterkilled cover crops can facilitate faster … Continue reading →

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Results are in: Radish 300, Phacelia 200, Weeds 50.

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

How much N can cover crops capture? Cover crops planted in late August of last year captured up to 300 kg of N per hectare (270 lb N per acre)! The experiment station in Clarksville, MD where they were planted … Continue reading →

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A forage radish by any other name

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Before I ever worked with forage radish as a cover crop, I knew it as the vegetable daikon, which has been grown by farmers in Asia for centuries. In fact, some of the characteristics of forage radish studied by researchers in the … Continue reading →

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What about Brassica pests and diseases?

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

A very common question we receive about using forage radish as a cover crop in vegetable systems is: what about Brassica pests and diseases? The biggest pest of concern in the mid-Atlantic is harlequin bugs, and this post is devoted … Continue reading →

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Cover crops change everything.

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

There was a nice summary of Joel Gruver’s 12 ways to manage cover crops in Farm Futures. Joel has been working on cover cropping in the Midwest at Western Illinois University, but got his start in  Maryland. One of his … Continue reading →

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