What happens when you plant forage radish in spring?

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Like apple cider and pumpkin pie, forage radish is mostly a fall thing. Farmers ask about spring planting frequently, and I have always dutifully answered “doesn’t work the same- it bolts” but truth be told I had never tried it myself until this year. And it bolts. The radish flowers are great for beneficial insects, but the plants don’t have the other beneficial effects associated with a fall-seeded forage radish cover crop. Continue reading →

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No-till vegetables in New England

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me no-till vegetables aren’t possible in New England, I’d be… well, I’d have about $5. Still, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me it is possible in New England, I’d have only $2, and one of those would be from my mom. Continue reading →

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The right cover crops for no-till spring and fall peas

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

The right cover crop might be a better soil preparation prior to peas than tillage. At a farm meeting in Maryland in May, farmers and researchers said they had seen as good or better yields of no-till peas following specific cover crops compared to conventionally planted peas, and this goes for both spring and fall pea crops. Continue reading →

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No-till seeding into forage radish with precision seeders

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Precision seeders are a major investment for a farm, but for larger, mechanized farms, they can decrease seed costs, thinning time, and they can enable very easy no-till seeding into low-residue cover crops. We have had the opportunity to work with Monosem and MaterMacc seeders at our research farms and with collaborating farmers. Here’s a video featuring the MaterMacc:

Continue reading →

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Two ingredient cover crop cocktails

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

Someone branded cover crop mixtures as “cocktails” and it has stuck. Even NRCS has adopted the “cocktail” label:

NRCS cocktail

Regardless of what they’re called, the new multi-species mixtures are very exciting, results are intriguing, and these cocktails are probably the cover cropping way of the future. I don’t want to seem old-fashioned (cocktail pun intended), but I do want to take some time to discuss some very simple cocktails and why/how they work. Continue reading →

Posted in Cover Crops, Nitrogen, Nutrient Cycling, Radish, Rye, Soil microbes, Soil moisture, Soil temperature, tomatoes, Vegetables, Vetch | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Two ingredient cover crop cocktails

Mud season in New England can be tempered by cover crops

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Natalie Lounsbury

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 different world. In New England, spring is generally a week or so before summer and after a protracted “mud season.” Getting on the fields in mud season can be tricky.

But what if your fields didn’t have to be so muddy?

After the recent thaw, Julie went out to get some soil samples and found this:

Soil after radish vs. weeds

The soil on the left was pulled straight from the no cover crop plot and the soil on the right was from the forage radish cover crop plot (planted 8-22-13). Photo credit: Julie Stultz Fine

Enough said.

If you want to read more about how forage radish affects soil moisture in spring, read the recent post about effects on surface and subsoil moisure and our page about cover crops and soil moisture.

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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 for seeding, but with the forecast of warm temps and rain for the following days, we thought it was worth a shot.

Take home messages:

  1. No-till seeding is possible with push seeders!
  2. A double-disk opener really helps for no-till seeding.
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