Eastinlet
Bronze Member
sunspot said:Let me see if I have this right.
Use soil additives if needed
Plow
Disc Harrow
Drag Harrow
Cover crop
Crop rotation
Did I get that right?
Edit; I see that I've moved up from new member to member.
Well the first 3 items could be covered by the general term of tillage. Using a tiller they would be accomplished in one step. You do whatever it takes to make the soil mellow and prepare a seedbed. In my light soil I could plant after plowing and disking except for a rough surface. I often run a light drag behind the disk to level and smooth.
Cover crop or "catch crop" in the fall covers the soil and scavenges excess nutrients to be re-used by the crop when the tissues later decay. i use winter rye because it makes good growth in cool weather. Some guys fall plow and let the frost break up clods (soil is bare), but this is usually in heavy soil.
What I like to do in fallow is to plant 2 successive crops of buckwheat followed by oats. The oats are left to winterkill and protect the soil. This smothers weeds and cleans the field while promoting fertility. Not surprisingly, this is called a 'smother crop'.
Rotation involves both time away from a crop (i.e. potatoes could use 3 years) and the order in which crops follow one another. Potatoes do well after corn, for instance, or corn follows red clover. Often a rotation in the NE is several years of hay then corn-oats, etc. This helps break disease and pest cycles and generally improves the soil.
A great way to make a garden in new ground, if you have room and time, is to open twice as much as you need. Lime if needed. Then disk for part of the summer at 10 day intervals to kill emerging weeds. Plant to smother crops and end up with an overwintering ground cover. By the next spring the ground is in fair shape for tillage and planting, and you smother-cover one half while you garden the other. Then rotate gardens each year thereafter.