Terminating Cover Crops in a No-Till Garden, March 22, 2022

Learn how to terminate cover crops in a no-till vegetable garden. Join Kevin Allison of the Marion County SWCD for an in-depth presentation on:
- Cover crop termination
- Use of tarps for bed preparation and weed control
- Use of compost and mulches
- No-till vegetable planting
This work is supported by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. The USDA-NRCS is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender.

[@sheldonfrank1893]

Thanks for this presentation - all the way from AB Canada!

[@diegop5572]

What kind of tarps do people recommend using

[@timkinrade9533]

Amazing presentation. Some thoughts:
Since the microbes that depend on root exudates (including mycorrhizal fungi) die off or go dormant within 27 days of no photosynthesis, I feel like alternatives to tarping should be strongly considered. Maybe even a weed torch or even an herbicide (mixed with a high diversity compost extract to buffer the damage to soil life) would be preferable. I've heard tell that farmers who use glyphosate + compost extract show 0% glyphosate in their produce, which is less than even organic farmers have (because glyphosate is in the rain), so apparently the microbes handle both the herbicide used as well as what's in the rainfall.
Cultivating indigenous mycorrhizal fungi harvested from known mycorrhizae host plants in the wild using the Trap Culture method and C4 grasses is a really good way to get the preferred species into your soil.
Using the Soil Food Web School (Dr Elaine Ingham) approach to get compostable materials from the local environment (as opposed to food scraps, which are high in non-indigenous microbes that will just die in the soil) running them through a worm bin (or a Johnson Su Bioreactor), and using the finished compost/castings to create indigenous, high diversity extracts to coat seeds is a really good way to get indigenous microbes in your soil, and feeding them the exudates of cover crops is a good way to get them to proliferate and thrive
So, what I believe is the future of food production:
1) Indigenous, high diversity, fungi dominant castings from worms fed a diversity of mostly woody, local materials
2) Indigenous mycorrhizal fungi inoculant from a trap culture
3) Mix the two finished products to make a high value extract and soak seeds in the extract before sowing
4) Follow Kevin's cover crop advice, making the bold attempt to use alternative termination methods to tarping, so that mycorrhizal fungi and other exudate-dependent microbes don't go too long without photosynthesis to feed them
5) Prioritize increasing the plant family diversity while making the bold attempt to shy away from legumes, since it's been shown that the presence legumes and rhizobium bacteria inhibits the growth of free living nitrogen fixing bacteria, and indeed it's been shown that soil in which polycultures are growing without legumes sequester even more nitrogen than when legumes and rhyzobia are present
6) Make the bold attempt to move toward low growing perennial options to decrease labor and for the sake of mycorrizal fungi, while continuing to interplant annuals into the perennial cover for the sake of diversity
7) Use foliar sprays (appropriate nutrients and micronutrients + a high diversity, fungi dominant compost/casting extract) at appropriate stages in plant growth to optimize plant brix/photosynthesis/quality of root exudate compounds

[@wilkindom1269]

🤗☺

[@clintonmclean9621]

💖 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐦