While the Lewis Road ranch has been in production mode since late January, Steve’s just now working up most of the ground at our home farm and the Redman ranch for our next round of planting. The cover crop had grown tall. The ground was dry enough for tractor work. But alas, the disc-harrow was in pieces in the workshop. The disc blades and bearings needed to be replaced and to get to them the entire implement needed to be dismantled. So several weeks ago he had launched into a project to revamp the disc.
He ordered the parts he needed, but when they came in, they were the wrong parts. He brought the disc harrow to the equipment dealer in town and they ordered parts that they thought would work. Those came and still were wrong. It was non-standard equipment and nobody could figure out the correct specifications for new disc parts. In the end, time got the better of him, and he had to reassemble the whole thing with a mix of old and new parts. This led to some sun-up to sun-down days on the tractor this week, especially with the added time to fix a flat tire on the tractor and the irrigation riser that the tractor accidentally ran over on Monday. Overall, a typical week on the farm.
Last week we planted 3 acres of potatoes. This week we’ll get another batch of starts from the greenhouse planted out–greens, lettuces, and peppers are all ready to go. But the big news is that the strawberries are now coming in strong and we should have plenty for everyone! We’re delighted that these second year berries are producing so well. We’re thinking of holding over some portion of the berry crop every year. They may not continue to produce as strongly for the entire season, but there are savings in the costs of buying new plants and mulch and planting labor, plus it uses fewer resources so there is an environmental benefit. A combination of 2nd year and 1st year berries each year should ensure that we have enough nice berries all season long.
Preparing a cover cropped field for planting:
Step 1: mow down cover crop.
Step 2: Follow immediately with disc harrow to incorporate the organic matter into the soil. This step must be done shortly after mowing to obtain the maximum benefit from the cover crop. The freshly mown cover crop immediately starts to lose nutrients to the air if left sitting on top of the soil. We want all those nutrients to stay in our soil so we often have two tractors going at once, the first mowing the cover crop and the second coming right in to each section as it is mowed to disc the crop into the ground.
Step 3: wait for at least 2 weeks for the organic matter to break down enough to work the soil into beds.
Steps 4, 5, 6, and 7: There are several more tractor passes that happen next, generally a pass over the field with a lister to raise the soil into beds, then a Perfecta harrow grooms the bed, we usually apply fertilizer, and finally we use a bed shaper to shape the soil into the final beds.
Step 8: Now it’s time to plant, either by planting seeds directly into the ground or transplanting starts from the greenhouse into the prepared rows.
————-
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
