Monday, September 28, 2015

Weed suppression in no till

Fine! Fine! I give up! Ill try this no-till nonesense! Now shut up about the friggin soil OM!

But really, the big reason that I've all but discarded the idea of no till is that I had, until today, never understood any no till weed control method aside from using large amounts of supposedly weed-suppressing organic mulch. If you want to know how well THAT experiment is doing, go ask the crab grass that is happily growing through the 12 inches (not exaggerating) of half-composted leaves.

Here i thought that the only way to eliminate a cover crop without freezing weather was to spray is with Roundup. Sure, I COULD break out the non-selective herbicide. I could also french kiss a cobra. Stupid people do stupid things, am I right? I was pleasantly suprised to stumble upon this site:

http://digginginthedriftless.com/2011/06/10/crimping-cover-crops-and-cramping-weeds/

that features a hand crimper (no tractor required) and explains what a crimper does in such a simple way that even a dip shit like ME can understand. A crimper kills the cover crop by breaking (not cutting) the stem, while leaving the whole thing attached to the roots so that it doesn't get blown away by the next typhoon.

Add in the fact that oat grass is aleopathic and you have sold me hook line and sinker on this no till+ cover crop deal.

This hand crimper, BTW, does not eliminate the possibility of using the goats for clearing a row, but that is a subject for another post which is going up as soon as we finally GET the goats to try this madness out with.

Oat grass and cow peas are in the ground already on a very small patch of the two new hugel mounds. Ill let you know how cover crop elimination goes in 8-10 weeks.

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