To plow or not to plow

[jeff9366]

Another option is to move your 1 acre garden around in your 2 acres of ground, so about 2/3 of the garden area is fallow each year.

You can heap leaves, compost and animal litter on the fallow part and shallow cultivate it into the soil each Fall.

 

[mgraham112]

get a tiller and a subsoiler or chisel and you will be set. Don't bother with the moldboard. If I could do it all over again, I would pick a spot, disc a few times the first garden season every few weeks or each month and let the seed bank reserves germinate and then kill with disturbance. One acre is a lot of ground to handle. If you get overwhelmed by weeds and let them go to seed, you are only making the problem worse for future years. I had to learn that the hard way. Its better to spray an out of control garden with glyphosate than to let the weeds go to seed. If you are going organic without any herbicides or synthetics, then do your research and good luck. I have been overrun with sicklepod and amaranth from the prior years mistakes. Don't take on more than you can handle.

 

[AGRIMAN]

What is the downside of using a moldboard plow every year?

In your case, I would say not much. For many years we broke (plowed) corn and peanut land every year. With the invent of heavier tillage tools and higher hp tractors to pull them many have gotten away from every year. I have a lot of heavy clay so I still try to break most of my land every 5 years.

For the past few years, we have had problems with wild rye. One of the only things that you can do to control it in oats is break the land deep and bury the seeds. I have some fields that will be broke for the third year in a row.

The disadvantages are on a larger scale are the added cost and time.

 

[RSKY]

A quarter acre of garden will do one+ families very well. A one acre garden gives me nightmares!

 

[sweettractors]

I am confused. I have a disc harrow, box blade, bush hog and single row cultivator. I have been thinking that I need a moldboard plow and I will be ready to get started gardening. Seeing how I have never gardened before I wanted to read up and I watched a few videos on everything attachments. Read a few posts on TBN here and a few articles I found on Google. Watched a video or two on YouTube.

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My confusion started when I read that plowing would not be a yearly event. That made me scratch my head because if it's not an implement used annually I could not see sinking that kind of money into something used so infrequently. Then I started reading that it was bad from a conservation stand point.

So my question is what is the truth? What would you recommend concerning tillage. I do not plan on a large garden, an acre or two at the most.

The 2 disc plow in the link below would be a good option and then use your disc harrow to prepare the final seedbed. For what it is worth a 1 or 2 acres plot is a "big" garden to me. I keep pretty busy on a 50 x 75 ft garden. Ken Sweet
Used 2 Disc Turning Plow 3 PT Hook We SHIP Fast and Cheap | eBay

 

[Egon]

What is the downside of using a moldboard plow every year? My current practice with my garden is to use the plow to turn over all the left over garden plants/stuff in October-November and let it sit over the winter. Come late April or early May I get the pto tiller out and hit it once and it's ready to plant.

Biggest problem=erosion Soil gets broken down into finer particles and with no detritus on the surface it easily blows away.

 

[PatrickS2222]

Hi If I can add my :2cents: ... The one downside of a mould-board plough I can readily think of is this - the very action of its operation:

If your topsoil is not deep enough, a mouldboard will lift some sub-soil, which has comparatively poor nutrient value and leave it on top of, or mixed with, your highly-nutritious topsoil or garden soil. This will notably reduce crop growth.

Farming practices of years gone by were similar to this - using such a plough (mould-board or deep-disc) in winter or early spring, leaving a few weeks, then planting a fodder crop for livestock. After several years, the land was almost useless - a perfect example is our block, as well as all our neighbours - all ex-farmland with zero goodness left, water-repellent, very, very hard when it's dry and struggles to grow any grass at all in places! :ashamed:

I would suggest to criss-cross it with a single-leg deep-ripper first, this will loosen it without mixing it up, letting air and water deep into it. Then, if necessary, same with a chisel plough (5 or 7 tyne), depends on the soil type and condition. I would certainly then use off-set discs as Jeff describes above. In subsequent years you may not need to deep-rip, and maybe chisel-plough and disc just once each ... rely on your judgement. :thumbsup:

My father lived on the land all his life and was a very astute and successful farmer. That was how we prepared many, many paddocks for planting - we were dairy farmers. He also understood the importance of regular use of fertiliser - although we rarely used lime - we apparrently didn't have a soil ph problem, we frequently spread superphosphate (to add phosphate) and nitram (for nitrogen-enrichment). I would love to know how many hundred tons of this I have spread whilst growing up - almost all of it with the MF135 we now have here! However he would not ever use a roto-tiller (we know them over here as a rotary-hoe). We never, ever owned one. I don't know why, but I guess he knew more about agriculture than I'll ever know!:laughing:

Hope this helps somehow; and may all your fruit and veggies grow high & huge!

 

[oosik]

You have plans for a one-acre garden, wow. I have a garden - 80 x 120 = about 1/5 of an acre and it produces enough to feed three families. Just the thought of a one-acre garden makes my poor back ache - weeds.

I've tried opening virgin land with just a disk harrow and its very difficult & time consuming. I even put a 400# block of concrete on the disk harrow and it only cut marginally deeper. I ended up buying and using a single bottom moldboard plow. By turning the soil only 6" to 8" deep, the disk harrow then did an excellent job.

However, if you are serious about a one-acre garden then I would forget the moldboard plow/disk harrow and purchase a pto driven rototiller. Its definitely an all-in-one implement. It will be used annually to prepare the site for planting and in the fall to combine the soil/crop residue.

 

[budepps3760]

Based on all the comments about the size of a garden I am definitely reducing the size.

 

[oosik]

Unless you have a lot of "willing" helpers to weed its a lot easier to start smaller and then increase if you see the need, in the following years. The first year my garden was BIG - 100 x 150. We blanched and put up 65 quarts of cut corn, 85 quarts of zucchini and had untold sacks of spuds down in the basement. We got so tired of weeding & picking that after we had put up 45 quarts of frozen green beans the wife begged me to till them under. That was 34 years ago and I still have nightmares of crawling around on my knees - weeding.