Mother Earth News_December_2016_2017

44 Mother earth News December 2016/January 2017

alex chabot; top: earth tools (2)

blades welded onto it in a chev-

ron pattern (see photo, Page 43).

Rolled over a cover crop, the blades

crimp the stems of the plants, kill-

ing them in place to make a weed-

suppressing mulch that conserves

moisture while adding organic

matter to the soil as it and the cover

crop’s roots degrade. “It’s the biol-

ogy of the cover crop that’s doing

all the work,” says Moyer, whose

book, Organic No-Till Farming

(available on Page 80), describes

how no-till limits tillage, reduces

labor, and improves the soil with-

out chemicals.

“The cover-crop mulch has to be

fairly thick, at least 5,000 pounds

of dry matter per acre — 8,000 to

10,000 pounds is much better,”

says Moyer, executive director of

Rodale Institute. Timing is very impor-

tant, too: The cover crop is easiest to kill

when it’s in bloom, but before its seeds

have formed.

Gardeners and market farmers with

limited power tools can make their own

crimper out of simple materials:

Screw a 30-inch piece of angle

iron to the bottom of a 30-inch

piece of 2-by-4, drill a hole into

each end of the wood, thread a

rope through, and knot the ends.

To use a homemade crimper,

Moyer explains, “You put your

weight on the board and crush

the stem of the plant, then pick

it up by the rope and do it again.”

Kentucky-based Earth Tools has

seen steady growth selling small

tractors and implements to grow-

ers working 1 to 3 acres. The roll-

er/crimper offered by Earth Tools

is 30 inches wide, can be pushed

or pulled by a two-wheel, walk-be-

hind tractor, and is sized perfectly

for market-garden beds.

Not all vegetables are suited to

planting in a plot that’s been cover-

cropped and rolled. Crops that can

easily be seeded into a crimped

mulch by hand or with a seeder

include corn, squash, beans, cu-

cumbers, melons, and anything

that’s going to send up a strong,

sturdy seedling. If the mulch is too thick,

“you may have to reach down and make a

little window for it to come through,” says

Earth Tools’ Joel Dufour. Vegetable seed-

lings that can be easily transplanted by

hand into a crimped mulch include toma-

toes, peppers, and broccoli. Crops

that come up out of the ground

with small leaves, such as spinach

or beets, can easily be smothered

by heavy mulch. For these crops,

use a flail mower or no-till slicer-

planter with opening discs that lay

a small strip of ground bare for the

seedbed (see numbers 2 and 3).

2 Slicer-planter. For larger no-

till growers, cutting through the

mulch layer to direct-seed crops

can be a problem. In his field tri-

als, Moyer uses a four-wheel tractor

with a 10-foot-wide roller/crimper

in front, and a weighted planter

with slicer attachments behind

(pictured at left). This equipment

combo kills the cover crop and in-

stantly plants into rows cleared in

the mulch.

Moyer worked with Pequea Planter to

design the slicer attachment for no-till

planters. Still in the early stages of de-

velopment, the attachment consists of

rubber tires mounted on each side of a

coulter — so it looks like a round slicer

resembling a big pizza cutter. The

rubber tires pin down the cover-

crop mulch, the slicer cuts a row in

the mulch, and the planter plants a

row of seeds.

3 Flail mower. Leafy, low-

growing greens, such as lettuce

or spinach, are best seeded into a

residue-free bed to prevent pieces

of old cover crop from spoiling

a future salad. For this purpose,

Dufour recommends a flail mow-

er (pictured at left). The mower’s

many pivoting blades will chop

cover crops into little pieces that

will then need to be tilled into the

top inch or two of soil, where mi-

crobes will break them down. This

type of surface cultivation still fits

into a no-till philosophy because

it doesn’t disturb the soil structure.

“The flail mower is also an ace in

the hole if you didn’t get your tim-

ing right with your roller/crimper,”

says Dufour. Roll too early, and

there may be too much energy in

the plant for it to die. Hit it with

the flail mower, and it’s done.

Slicer-planters cut through the layer of cover-crop mulch,

creating an opening into which seeds can be planted.

Flail mowers’ blades pulverize cover crops, producing small

pieces that are easy to work into the top inch or two of soil.

PHOTOS

Top: Rodale Institute (2)

Bottom: Earth Tools (2)

earth tools (2); top and page 43: rodale institute (3)

p 43-45 NoTill.indd 44 10/5/16 2:21 PM