I would love to see more videos on your methods. This was really well put together. The no till farming community needs more information sharing like this.
Thank you for encouraging us to document our other methods. Be forewarned that the only vegetables we plant directly into a cover crop are garlic and onions. For the rest of the vegetables in the market garden we incorporate the cover crops with different types of tillage depending on the crop and time of year. We like to think that we use a “know-till” system.
This is wonderful. You have done such a fantastic job of documenting your farm over the years. I remember buying your DVD many moons ago. UA-cam has the potential to be the most powerful format to share your methods. Thanks for all you've given and retained for future generations 🙏 A quick video that could be helpful is how you set your moldboard plow to achieve the skim plow effect. Hope you and Anne are well, take care.
Thank you, Ricky, for your encouragement to make more videos and for the suggestion of one about skim plowing. We have replaced skim plowing with the sweep-and-furrower cultivator setup shown briefly in the garlic video when discussing repeated shallow tillage. Although not as efficient as skim plowing 2-3” deep, it inverts the soil less and keeps more of the fresh organic matter on the surface. We occasionally use the moldboard plow for incorporating a ryegrass-clover sod, but in this case it seems necessary to go 4-6” deep to do a good job of plowing. If we return to skim plowing, we will film how we set the plow. Thanks, Eric
Just listening to your comments on the Farmer to Farmer podcast. Solid gold! Here's with appreciation for your comments and shared wisdom. Blessed to have found your channel!
Wow, what a nice surprise to stumble across your channel. I have heard a lot about your farm through various small scale farming resources, but it’s great to get information “straight from the horse’s mouth.” This video was very well done, and I hope you plan on making more. We have gleaned many useful tips from your pamphlets and Growing for Market articles, but video really allows for deeper understanding (and we get to see your beautiful systems at work in full detail). OK, I’ll stop gushing now. Greetings and gratitude from market farmers in Michigan.
Hi Calimeh, Anne and I are glad you see merit in the widely spaced ridges. Widely spaced rows for garlic and the other vegetables we grow in the bio-extensive market garden allow the roots to explore a large volume of soil for moisture and nutrients, improve air circulation for the plants, and are a nice fit for the traditional row crop equipment we use with the horses. However, if we were more limited by land than labor, planting multiple rows on a bed would make a lot more sense. Intensive planting would also be more efficient for irrigation and for application of pest controls, foliar sprays, row covers, insect netting, etc..., materials that we have not needed so far for growing garlic. -Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Thanks for the feedback. I fully agree with you. I'm interested in this topic because a few years ago, here in the german-speaking countries, a small but very interesting trend in organic farming emerged. It's called the Turiel-Dammkultur. Turiel is the name of the inventor. He is from Spain and got the idea from traditional spanish farming. In the past, there was only very shallow plowing and everything was grown on ridges. Grain is also successfully grown with this device. But also vegetables. The cover crops are also grown on ridges. The device always guides itself, as it runs in the initially pre-set tracks. This allows it, to work very precisely without complex technology. Everything can be adjusted very flexibly. I sound like an advertising guy. But I just think it's awesome. There's a whole philosophy behind this method. I just thought you might be interested in this. Here are a couple of videos about it. Greetings from Austria! ua-cam.com/video/9puuFuD7anc/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/FdaJDe4pC2U/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/LesYZqDTb3I/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/6knyzsWby8I/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/qkP32lbg6cc/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/OdTgcNz7hvQ/v-deo.html
@@CalimehChelonia Thank you for introducing us to Turiel-Dammkultur and the videos with the excellent camera work of the cultivating tools dislodging well established weeds right next to the rows of lettuce and other vegetable/field crops. I found dammkultur videos of making and renovating the ridges which gave me some ideas on how we could improve our system. In our situation, we find that ridge culture works best with mulching. Without the mulch, the ridges dry out too much for reliable production without irrigation and the valleys are prone to erosion. Unfortunately, we do not produce enough cover crop straw to mulch all of our crops, so we plant the vegetables without mulch on low single-row beds which are interseeded with a cover crop as soon as practical. The dammkultur tools may improve rainfall infiltration so that erosion is less of an issue. Thanks again for the great advertising! We will pass on the dammkultur info to others, Eric
@@CalimehChelonia calimehchelonia, thank you for introducing me to the "turiel-dammkultur" you speak of. It seems like something I'd want to learn more about. So far from what I can gather, it looks like a simple chisel plow or subsoiler but with the addition of some prongs that shoot the stirred soil off to the sides to form the ridges. Can you give more detail about the philosophy behind this method that you speak of? Have you been able to use this device yourself yet?
I appreciate your video. I keep inadvertently bumping into your content whether it be articles, or now your video, and I'm glad for it. I hope intend to keep on producing instructional videos like this to demonstrate other aspects of your methods. For example, I'm interested to know more about your sweep-and-furrow cultivation tool for plowing down cover crops and how that works.
We are glad that bumping into our content has been welcome and we appreciate yourencouragement to make a video about the sweep-and-furrower cultivator attachment we use for shallowly tilling cover crops. You can find details about this tool in our article “Organic Surface Tillage” posted at Cover Crops Incorporated: covercropsincorporated.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/organic-surface-tillage/
I'm astonished by how well those horses maintain a straight row. It's almost like they are equipped with a GPS guidance system, LOL. Great video, I look forward to viewing more.
Apologies for the delay. We have been busy catching up with fieldwork and planting after a very wet spring. I like your suggestion of equipping the horses with GPS! We use a more primitive guidance system which takes advantage of the horse’s natural inclination to follow a path such as the valleys between the garlic ridges. Also, the old riding cultivator we use for building the ridges, making the furrow for planting, etc... has pedal steering for fine tuning the rows. Thanks for your compliment about the video!
A very good video. Like your approach. I have grown garlic for quite a number of years but never tried sowing directly into an oat mulch. I do have a Farmall cub and the attachments which I think can duplicate some of the work that you are doing. I think I will try this approach on some of next year's crop. Thanks for the video.
Hi Cliff, please let us know how planting garlic into a oat cover crop works for you. We are glad you are only trying part of the crop with this system so you can make a comparison and because, like any new method, there is a learning curve to no-tilling garlic. We compared no-tilling to our standard practice of planting garlic into tilled soil and covering with straw mulch for several years until we were convinced that no-tilling into an oat cover crop provided superior results with less cost. -Eric
Will do, won't be able to do it for this fall's planting. I already have a cover crop of mustard coming up that will be tilled in prior to planting garlic. I am slating it for next year's crop. @@EricNordell-ld6wp
Your newest subscriber. From British Columbia, Canada. You are a terrific teacher/instructor. Would love to see you do additional videos. Just getting ready to plant our first garlic on 1/4 acre of our tiny hobby farm. Your wisdom is hugely helpful! Quick question - what would you suggest is your average number of bulbs/pound?
Thanks for your support and encouragement to do additional videos. We are working on one about onions, but we may need another year of filming to complete it. Most of our garlic bulbs weigh a quarter pound.
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Wow - huge thanks for your response! I have so much admiration for what you are doing. I'm very much looking forward to learning more from your future videos. And, the weight of your bulbs is absolutely amazing. One last question and I promise I won't 'keep coming back to the well' for more free advice. What type/cultivar are you growing. I did view your episode but I must have missed it. Again, huge thanks. Your thoughtful way of providing instruction and perspectives is truly commendable.
The taller garlic in the video is German White. The bulbs contain five to six large cloves, which our customers prefer, but we need to save back more bulbs for planting than the shorter garlic, a locally adapted Rocambole with eight or more cloves per bulb. We started with a handful of each variety almost 30 years ago and keep selecting for the largest, healthiest bulbs. We appreciate the questions, Howard, and trust you realize it may take a few years to adapt each aspect of our unusual garlic growing system to your situation. It may be wise starting out to try it on just part of your quarter-acre of garlic.
Very well made video. I appreciate it so much and I am going to try to mimick your system on my land in Southern Illinois this year. As a matter of fact I have oats growing right now and I'm hoping this will help the issues with irrigation and weed control that I had last year. If you don't mind me asking, how wide are your rows? 30"? 36"? Thank you again for documenting this very useful information so well. ~Alan
@@workin350 Our rows are 34” apart, which is the narrowest spacing that works for our old riding cultivator. 30 or 36” rows should work just as well if they are a better fit for your equipment. Thanks for your encouraging words!Please let us know if planting garlic into oats on ridges is a benefit for irrigation and weed management. Eric
Our farm is in the mountains of north-central Pennsylvania. This location was growing zone 4b when we started this system of growing garlic, then revised to 5a about 20 years ago, and was recently changed again!
Great video Eric. Thank you very much. I'm interested in the direct seeded vegetables in what is left of the oats you used as mulch. I thought that oats were known to be allelopatic. Don't you have problems with sowing carrots or other small seeds? Michiel
@@WijveldZelfoogst Hi Michiel, I am glad you liked the video. We have not had problems from seeding carrots, spinach, salad mix, beets or other small seeded vegetables in the shallowly tilled oat stubble. This may be because the topgrowth has been removed for mulching the garlic and the little bit of allelopathic chemicals in the roots and stubble have the whole winter to leach out of the topsoil. We have seen issues with insufficient nitrogen for heavy feeding vegetables since a lot of fertility is removed with the oat topgrowth, so we make sure to apply compost or an organic soil amendment to the oat stubble before incorporating it in the spring. -Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Eric. Thank you very much for answering! We have lots of grassclover to mulch with. But I doubt using it to cover the garlic because of the low C/N ratio. Greetings from Wijveld CSA in Gent, Belgium.
Hello, I heard about you when reading Joel Salatin's book "Polyface Micro" and this video lives up to the ingenuity and creativity he credits to you in the book! I have one question about repeated shallow tillage you mentioned. You said that it helps keep weed seeds out of the soil. I have a pasture filled with Sericea lespedeza and Fescue and was wondering if this tilling method would work to control the Sericea?
Hi Daniel, I am afraid we are not familiar with Sericea lespedeza. Our weed books make it sound like this invasive species is adapted to dry soils with low fertility. Before resorting to repeated shallow tillage (or moldboard plowing, which may be necessary to kill this perennial), consider improving soil fertility to give the desirable pasture species a more competitive advantage, and use targeted, repeated mowing to weaken the Sericea. Maybe another class of livestock (goats?) would help manage it? One source suggested that mowing, burning and herbicides were not effective at controlling Sericea when used alone, but together they were effective. We are not suggesting the use of herbicides, but this research underscores the need to use several tactics together to manage this weed. So even if you use a short or extended period of tillage as a substitute to herbicides to setback Sericea, you made need to employ other strategies to keep this weed at bay. If you use tillage, make sure to be mindful of both water and wind erosion. And definitely talk to holistic livestock farmers in your area about how they have managed Sericea. I am sure their advice would be more helpful than our wild guesses! -Eric
I'm trying an oat cover crop (as a trial) on part of my crop this year. I don't think it was mentioned in the video, and if so I apologize. What is your crop rotation sequence like? How long do you plant garlic in the same spot? How long before you plant it there again? Thanks!
To minimize the risk of disease, we like to wait at least six years before planting crops in the allium family (garlic, onions, leeks, etc...) in the same spot. Rotation is especially important with garlic when replanting your own seed stock. We have been been replanting the German White variety for over 25 years and the Rocambole for almost 35 years. All of our fields rotate between a year with a vegetable crop and a year of cover crops. In addition to soil building and weed management, alternating between vegetables and cover crops provides another line of defence against disease. Hope this is of some help, Eric
@@bjepple82 Looks may be deceiving because we grow our garlic in widely spaced rows. We plant seven rows that are about 380’ (116 meters) long, with the cloves spaced 6-8” (15-20 cm) apart in the row for a total of roughly 4500 cloves. Garlic occupies less than 3% of our six acres (2.4 hectares) under cultivation, so it is not difficult to practice a minimum six year rotation between garlic crops. My understanding is that six years is the minimum to prevent the build up of fusarium and other soil diseases. However, planting garlic more frequently in the same spot does not necessarily mean disease will be a problem, especially if other aspects of of improving soil health are practiced.
@@EricNordell-ld6wp, you're right; it does look like a lot more with those spread out! I'm thinking I'll be doing about 2,000 cloves this year. One more question (for now 😂), what is your seeding rate for the oats? I've heard 3-4 bushel per acre and I did 4. They are just coming up but that seems like a little sparse to me. I guess I'll know for sure in a week or so.
@@bjepple82 Four bushels per acre (.4 hectare) sounds about right for broadcast seeding, although more may be needed for varieties with very large seed. A higher seeding rate may also be necessary for early weed suppression. Otherwise, 3-4 bushels per acre is plenty for producing a lot of cover crop straw when seeded two months before planting the garlic.
Hi Evgeny, our plant hardiness zone is 5a which means “the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature” is -15 to -20 F (-28.9 to -26.1 C). In recent years the low has only been -5 F (-20.6 C). So far this winter, the lowest temperature was 15 F (-9.4 C). Hope this helps, Eric
I'm astonished. The health of that garlic is absolutely extraordinary. Not to mention the elegance of your system..
I would love to see more videos on your methods. This was really well put together. The no till farming community needs more information sharing like this.
Thank you for encouraging us to document our other methods. Be forewarned that the only vegetables we plant directly into a cover crop are garlic and onions. For the rest of the vegetables in the market garden we incorporate the cover crops with different types of tillage depending on the crop and time of year. We like to think that we use a “know-till” system.
This is wonderful. You have done such a fantastic job of documenting your farm over the years. I remember buying your DVD many moons ago. UA-cam has the potential to be the most powerful format to share your methods.
Thanks for all you've given and retained for future generations 🙏
A quick video that could be helpful is how you set your moldboard plow to achieve the skim plow effect.
Hope you and Anne are well, take care.
Thank you, Ricky, for your encouragement to make more videos and for the suggestion of one about skim plowing. We have replaced skim plowing with the sweep-and-furrower cultivator setup shown briefly in the garlic video when discussing repeated shallow tillage. Although not as efficient as skim plowing 2-3” deep, it inverts the soil less and keeps more of the fresh organic matter on the surface. We occasionally use the moldboard plow for incorporating a ryegrass-clover sod, but in this case it seems necessary to go 4-6” deep to do a good job of plowing. If we return to skim plowing, we will film how we set the plow. Thanks, Eric
Just listening to your comments on the Farmer to Farmer podcast. Solid gold! Here's with appreciation for your comments and shared wisdom.
Blessed to have found your channel!
Wow, what a nice surprise to stumble across your channel. I have heard a lot about your farm through various small scale farming resources, but it’s great to get information “straight from the horse’s mouth.” This video was very well done, and I hope you plan on making more. We have gleaned many useful tips from your pamphlets and Growing for Market articles, but video really allows for deeper understanding (and we get to see your beautiful systems at work in full detail). OK, I’ll stop gushing now. Greetings and gratitude from market farmers in Michigan.
Thank you, Mason! This was our first attempt at putting together a video so we really appreciate your encouragement to make another one.
Great video Eric! Thank you for sharing your experience! Knowledge is meant to be shared! 🙏
Awesome work! This should be future of agriculture.
Beautiful shot film, well explained and quite inspiring. Many thanks
Wow, a really great system. I like the wide spacing of the ridges. This definitely has some advantages. Really nice garlic!
Hi Calimeh, Anne and I are glad you see merit in the widely spaced ridges. Widely spaced rows for garlic and the other vegetables we grow in the bio-extensive market garden allow the roots to explore a large volume of soil for moisture and nutrients, improve air circulation for the plants, and are a nice fit for the traditional row crop equipment we use with the horses. However, if we were more limited by land than labor, planting multiple rows on a bed would make a lot more sense. Intensive planting would also be more efficient for irrigation and for application of pest controls, foliar sprays, row covers, insect netting, etc..., materials that we have not needed so far for growing garlic. -Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Thanks for the feedback. I fully agree with you. I'm interested in this topic because a few years ago, here in the german-speaking countries, a small but very interesting trend in organic farming emerged. It's called the Turiel-Dammkultur. Turiel is the name of the inventor. He is from Spain and got the idea from traditional spanish farming. In the past, there was only very shallow plowing and everything was grown on ridges. Grain is also successfully grown with this device. But also vegetables. The cover crops are also grown on ridges. The device always guides itself, as it runs in the initially pre-set tracks. This allows it, to work very precisely without complex technology. Everything can be adjusted very flexibly. I sound like an advertising guy. But I just think it's awesome. There's a whole philosophy behind this method.
I just thought you might be interested in this. Here are a couple of videos about it.
Greetings from Austria!
ua-cam.com/video/9puuFuD7anc/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/FdaJDe4pC2U/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/LesYZqDTb3I/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/6knyzsWby8I/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/qkP32lbg6cc/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/OdTgcNz7hvQ/v-deo.html
@@CalimehChelonia Thank you for introducing us to Turiel-Dammkultur and the videos with the excellent camera work of the cultivating tools dislodging well established weeds right next to the rows of lettuce and other vegetable/field crops. I found dammkultur videos of making and renovating the ridges which gave me some ideas on how we could improve our system.
In our situation, we find that ridge culture works best with mulching. Without the mulch, the ridges dry out too much for reliable production without irrigation and the valleys are prone to erosion. Unfortunately, we do not produce enough cover crop straw to mulch all of our crops, so we plant the vegetables without mulch on low single-row beds which are interseeded with a cover crop as soon as practical.
The dammkultur tools may improve rainfall infiltration so that erosion is less of an issue.
Thanks again for the great advertising! We will pass on the dammkultur info to others, Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp I'm glad you liked it. I think your methods are very inspiring. Thank you very much!
@@CalimehChelonia calimehchelonia, thank you for introducing me to the "turiel-dammkultur" you speak of. It seems like something I'd want to learn more about. So far from what I can gather, it looks like a simple chisel plow or subsoiler but with the addition of some prongs that shoot the stirred soil off to the sides to form the ridges. Can you give more detail about the philosophy behind this method that you speak of? Have you been able to use this device yourself yet?
I appreciate your video. I keep inadvertently bumping into your content whether it be articles, or now your video, and I'm glad for it. I hope intend to keep on producing instructional videos like this to demonstrate other aspects of your methods. For example, I'm interested to know more about your sweep-and-furrow cultivation tool for plowing down cover crops and how that works.
We are glad that bumping into our content has been welcome and we appreciate yourencouragement to make a video about the sweep-and-furrower cultivator attachment we use for shallowly tilling cover crops. You can find details about this tool in our article “Organic Surface Tillage” posted at Cover Crops Incorporated:
covercropsincorporated.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/organic-surface-tillage/
This is real natural farming! Very impressive.
I'm astonished by how well those horses maintain a straight row. It's almost like they are equipped with a GPS guidance system, LOL. Great video, I look forward to viewing more.
Apologies for the delay. We have been busy catching up with fieldwork and planting after a very wet spring.
I like your suggestion of equipping the horses with GPS! We use a more primitive guidance system which takes advantage of the horse’s natural inclination to follow a path such as the valleys between the garlic ridges. Also, the old riding cultivator we use for building the ridges, making the furrow for planting, etc... has pedal steering for fine tuning the rows.
Thanks for your compliment about the video!
This is an amazing video!!! Thanks so much for sharing. :)
A very good video. Like your approach. I have grown garlic for quite a number of years but never tried sowing directly into an oat mulch. I do have a Farmall cub and the attachments which I think can duplicate some of the work that you are doing. I think I will try this approach on some of next year's crop. Thanks for the video.
Hi Cliff, please let us know how planting garlic into a oat cover crop works for you. We are glad you are only trying part of the crop with this system so you can make a comparison and because, like any new method, there is a learning curve to no-tilling garlic. We compared no-tilling to our standard practice of planting garlic into tilled soil and covering with straw mulch for several years until we were convinced that no-tilling into an oat cover crop provided superior results with less cost. -Eric
Will do, won't be able to do it for this fall's planting. I already have a cover crop of mustard coming up that will be tilled in prior to planting garlic. I am slating it for next year's crop.
@@EricNordell-ld6wp
This is incredible!
So much good information. Thank you for sharing.
Beautiful
That is absolutely amazing!!!! Thanks for sharing so much. I would like to copy that in a small scale
What a great system.
Your newest subscriber. From British Columbia, Canada.
You are a terrific teacher/instructor. Would love to see you do additional videos.
Just getting ready to plant our first garlic on 1/4 acre of our tiny hobby farm. Your wisdom is hugely helpful!
Quick question - what would you suggest is your average number of bulbs/pound?
Thanks for your support and encouragement to do additional videos. We are working on one about onions, but we may need another year of filming to complete it.
Most of our garlic bulbs weigh a quarter pound.
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Wow - huge thanks for your response! I have so much admiration for what you are doing. I'm very much looking forward to learning more from your future videos.
And, the weight of your bulbs is absolutely amazing.
One last question and I promise I won't 'keep coming back to the well' for more free advice. What type/cultivar are you growing. I did view your episode but I must have missed it.
Again, huge thanks. Your thoughtful way of providing instruction and perspectives is truly commendable.
The taller garlic in the video is German White. The bulbs contain five to six large cloves, which our customers prefer, but we need to save back more bulbs for planting than the shorter garlic, a locally adapted Rocambole with eight or more cloves per bulb. We started with a handful of each variety almost 30 years ago and keep selecting for the largest, healthiest bulbs.
We appreciate the questions, Howard, and trust you realize it may take a few years to adapt each aspect of our unusual garlic growing system to your situation. It may be wise starting out to try it on just part of your quarter-acre of garlic.
Very well made video. I appreciate it so much and I am going to try to mimick your system on my land in Southern Illinois this year. As a matter of fact I have oats growing right now and I'm hoping this will help the issues with irrigation and weed control that I had last year. If you don't mind me asking, how wide are your rows? 30"? 36"?
Thank you again for documenting this very useful information so well. ~Alan
@@workin350 Our rows are 34” apart, which is the narrowest spacing that works for our old riding cultivator. 30 or 36” rows should work just as well if they are a better fit for your equipment.
Thanks for your encouraging words!Please let us know if planting garlic into oats on ridges is a benefit for irrigation and weed management. Eric
So smart!
Молодцы вы.
Ждём след видео
Excellent method. What part of the country is this?
Our farm is in the mountains of north-central Pennsylvania. This location was growing zone 4b when we started this system of growing garlic, then revised to 5a about 20 years ago, and was recently changed again!
Great video Eric. Thank you very much. I'm interested in the direct seeded vegetables in what is left of the oats you used as mulch. I thought that oats were known to be allelopatic. Don't you have problems with sowing carrots or other small seeds? Michiel
@@WijveldZelfoogst Hi Michiel, I am glad you liked the video. We have not had problems from seeding carrots, spinach, salad mix, beets or other small seeded vegetables in the shallowly tilled oat stubble. This may be because the topgrowth has been removed for mulching the garlic and the little bit of allelopathic chemicals in the roots and stubble have the whole winter to leach out of the topsoil. We have seen issues with insufficient nitrogen for heavy feeding vegetables since a lot of fertility is removed with the oat topgrowth, so we make sure to apply compost or an organic soil amendment to the oat stubble before incorporating it in the spring. -Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Eric. Thank you very much for answering! We have lots of grassclover to mulch with. But I doubt using it to cover the garlic because of the low C/N ratio. Greetings from Wijveld CSA in Gent, Belgium.
Just wow. This was a great how to. Its hard to find good info on using cover crops for garlic.
5:31 It's impressive how he uses horses to plow
Legends. Have a nice day
Brilliant
great stuff
Hello, I heard about you when reading Joel Salatin's book "Polyface Micro" and this video lives up to the ingenuity and creativity he credits to you in the book! I have one question about repeated shallow tillage you mentioned. You said that it helps keep weed seeds out of the soil. I have a pasture filled with Sericea lespedeza and Fescue and was wondering if this tilling method would work to control the Sericea?
Hi Daniel, I am afraid we are not familiar with Sericea lespedeza. Our weed books make it sound like this invasive species is adapted to dry soils with low fertility. Before resorting to repeated shallow tillage (or moldboard plowing, which may be necessary to kill this perennial), consider improving soil fertility to give the desirable pasture species a more competitive advantage, and use targeted, repeated mowing to weaken the Sericea. Maybe another class of livestock (goats?) would help manage it? One source suggested that mowing, burning and herbicides were not effective at controlling Sericea when used alone, but together they were effective. We are not suggesting the use of herbicides, but this research underscores the need to use several tactics together to manage this weed. So even if you use a short or extended period of tillage as a substitute to herbicides to setback Sericea, you made need to employ other strategies to keep this weed at bay. If you use tillage, make sure to be mindful of both water and wind erosion. And definitely talk to holistic livestock farmers in your area about how they have managed Sericea. I am sure their advice would be more helpful than our wild guesses! -Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp Thank you for taking the time to look up the info, it's very helpful. Looking forward to more videos!
Beautiful. - T
❤❤❤
I'm trying an oat cover crop (as a trial) on part of my crop this year. I don't think it was mentioned in the video, and if so I apologize. What is your crop rotation sequence like? How long do you plant garlic in the same spot? How long before you plant it there again? Thanks!
To minimize the risk of disease, we like to wait at least six years before planting crops in the allium family (garlic, onions, leeks, etc...) in the same spot. Rotation is especially important with garlic when replanting your own seed stock. We have been been replanting the German White variety for over 25 years and the Rocambole for almost 35 years.
All of our fields rotate between a year with a vegetable crop and a year of cover crops. In addition to soil building and weed management, alternating between vegetables and cover crops provides another line of defence against disease.
Hope this is of some help, Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp, thanks for the reply. I didn't plan on 6 years in between. How much do you plant? I know it's a lot!
@@bjepple82 Looks may be deceiving because we grow our garlic in widely spaced rows. We plant seven rows that are about 380’ (116 meters) long, with the cloves spaced 6-8” (15-20 cm) apart in the row for a total of roughly 4500 cloves.
Garlic occupies less than 3% of our six acres (2.4 hectares) under cultivation, so it is not difficult to practice a minimum six year rotation between garlic crops. My understanding is that six years is the minimum to prevent the build up of fusarium and other soil diseases. However, planting garlic more frequently in the same spot does not necessarily mean disease will be a problem, especially if other aspects of of improving soil health are practiced.
@@EricNordell-ld6wp, you're right; it does look like a lot more with those spread out! I'm thinking I'll be doing about 2,000 cloves this year.
One more question (for now 😂), what is your seeding rate for the oats? I've heard 3-4 bushel per acre and I did 4. They are just coming up but that seems like a little sparse to me. I guess I'll know for sure in a week or so.
@@bjepple82 Four bushels per acre (.4 hectare) sounds about right for broadcast seeding, although more may be needed for varieties with very large seed. A higher seeding rate may also be necessary for early weed suppression. Otherwise, 3-4 bushels per acre is plenty for producing a lot of cover crop straw when seeded two months before planting the garlic.
Wow.u can't even get garlic to grow. This is very cool
Awesome
What is a winter temperatures in your place?
Hi Evgeny, our plant hardiness zone is 5a which means “the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature” is -15 to -20 F (-28.9 to -26.1 C). In recent years the low has only been -5 F (-20.6 C). So far this winter, the lowest temperature was 15 F (-9.4 C). Hope this helps, Eric
@@EricNordell-ld6wp , thank you, really appreciate it. I would like to try your technics in the cold climate, which is very close to yours.
respect