Category Archives: Soil

Mud season in New England can be tempered by cover crops

Our colleagues Masoud Hashemi and Julie Fine at UMass Amherst have decided to join us in seeing how far north no-till early vegetables will work. We’ve seen that this system can work in the mid-Atlantic, but New England is a … Continue reading

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

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.

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

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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Cover crops change everything.

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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