No till cover crops vs tillage cover crops

Abstract Background: Not sure this topic is of interest in this group.  I have been on and mostly off lurker on here for 5 plus years.  Used to be more into permaculture and fell into the allure of market gardening for a living.  Now that we have a customer base and known demand for what we grow.  I am getting back into my love for perennials and fruit trees.  Looking forward to all the variety we are bringing onto the farm thanks to the time savings of switching from 100% human power to using a tractor.  The plan to reduce the number of market garden "tarped" areas by over 60% to grow mainly greens and certain root crops and some solanaceous crops in the remaining "market garden" style beds.  

Experiment in no till cover-crop:
One major complaint with market gardening was the use of tarps essentially stopping any photosyntheisis and creating a lack of oxygen through occultation.  Another concern is the fact that we imported loads of compost to get CEC and OM numbers up.  So considering that we are not totally leaving market gardening methods. We decided to experiment an early spring cover cropped to a plot that was due for compost.  We had seen other farms crimp their cover crop, then transplant fall brassicas, for example, into the crimped residue.  (See photos below). The result was a fail in our context.  

We dry farm our veggies that are transplanted past the first 10 days to settle in.  In short, this is near impossible in crimped cover residue.  The heat of August was reflecting off the residue and killed the majority of the transplants.  The only way the would have survive would have been 2-3 watering a day (just seems a bit excessive).  (Important to note that I transplanted winter squash the same day (before rain) on the first set of transplants.  One set into the crimped cover and the other 100 feet away in a cultivated bare soil bed.  I did not do any additional watering to the bare soil transplants, yet the ones in the cover crimp all died.  Despite efforts to cool them off.  After two separate failed sets of transplants.. we had to rake the cover into the pathway just to get other transplants to set in.  Thus a total failure in terms of adding carbon to the beds.  Only positive note was the huge reduction of weed pressure.  But that was definitely not the goal considering brassicas are fairly easy to cultivate.  

Experiment with cover crops and tractor

As we try to figure out how to utilize the tractor on less than ideal land available due to slope.  Living tire paths have been implemented to carry the weight of tractor, allow soil life to repopulate tilled area, roots to catch runoff when bed tops are bare, leave spiders etc in the field and continue adding carbon whenever the sun is shining.  These long rows in the pictures with the pond beneath were first year beds.  The cover crop being the first thing planted in them.  There are still efficiencies to figure out and tools on the wishlist.  But, I was thrilled with the success of the early spring cover crop that was spaded in without any heavy labor beside attaching implements.  We harvested loads of winter squashes, watermelons, pumpkins and more without any cultivation tools even.        

Moral of it all is that my permaculture principles of never wanting to till, kept me from having the time to start an orchard..etc etc! But of course, starting small makes sense to build customer base before throwing money at tools!

Interested on your thoughts of the tractor beds or if you are able to make cover crops work with no till in quick rotations.  Always learning. And yes I know the slope sucks but at the moment this is what we are working with!

Also is it possible to imbed the photos in the writing to illustrate what your talking about?

Thank you for your quality post and starting this thread. If you have your photos already on line for example on a personal blog or site where you can generate a URL for each photo then you can use the Img button to place it in the text. Please keep updating your results. I will boost this for more attention.

Did you crimp and plant in the same day?

I'm assuming you've read Steve Solomon, since you're dry farming?

Mathew Trotter wrote:Did you crimp and plant in the same day?

I'm assuming you've read Steve Solomon, since you're dry farming?

No, I followed the method of crimp, tarp for 4/5 weeks then transplant.  Have you had any experience planting into freshly crimped cover?  

I saw some other farms further south try melons and squash like that and did not have great yields.  They used an actual crimping tool on their tractor.  I think that was the main deterrent from trying on the long rows.  It would have been a lot of work by hand!!

And yes, good call on the book.  Haven't read his older book, but definitely read Intelligent Gardener.  We lucked out in a sense and have the cows/sheep, and high tunnels on the same well as the house.  So that pump can only handle so much..thus learned how to dry farm and plant with rain without much say.

I honestly found Intelligent Gardener kind of underwhelming. Gardening When It Counts has the most information on dry farming, and that provided way more value for me.

I'm not sure what your rainfall patterns are, but my gut feeling is there's too much transpiration from the cover crop in a time of relatively high temperatures and low moisture.

Gardening When Is Counts has a pretty good explanation of evapotranspiration rates relative to rainfall and the plant spacing to use relative to the growing conditions. There's no way I could use cover crop that time of year in my climate if I were going to follow it with something that wasn't very, very drought tolerant. There wouldn't be any soil moisture left.

Also, long, slow irrigation is best when you do have to water. Solomon recommends 5 gallons of fertigation every 3 to 4 weeks during drought for crops like squash. It's applied with a 5 gallon bucket with a hole drilled near the bottom such that the water doesn't run off or create a wet spot larger than a dinner plate. The size of the hole depends on soil composition. This method puts a lot of water deep near the plant, whereas watering 2-3 times a day means most of the water is probably evaporating.

I'd probably skip the cover crop that time of year or kill it even earlier. But that's just a bunch without knowing more about your site.