Plant Productivity Rates and Cost Effectiveness for Different Soil Tillage Systems

Plant Productivity Rates and Cost Effectiveness for Different Soil Tillage Systems

Summary

Windfall Farms is a one hundred forty two acre farm in Orange County, NY with fifteen acres under cultivation growing vegetables, specialty greens, and edible flowers. Our products are sold exclusively at the Union Square Greenmarket and to restaurants in New York City. The farm was established in 1980 and has always adhered to the strict principal of not using insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or chemical fertilizers. We have always been interested in topics related to practices with minimal effects on the ecosystem, and going above and beyond to try and reduce our impact on the environment. We currently convert waste veggie oil into bio diesel to run our tractors on the farm and our buses that transport our produce to markets.

We proposed to set up test plots to determine whether tilling or using the organic no-till method under varying circumstances would provide us with a clear picture of the most economical and environmentally sound system for a small farm in the Northeast. We understand that the results will probably not point to one best way, but we hope that by compiling data on different practices that a resource can be created for us and other farmers to draw from when deciding how to pursue a management plan.

Objectives/Performance Targets

The goal of this project was to assess what type of tillage program, in conjunction with a mulching system, produced the highest plant productivity rates and was the most cost effective. We wanted to test three types of tillage systems (tilling with a tractor, roller-crimper, and flame weeder) in a field seeded with a cover crop of winter rye. We planted pepper transplants and seeded winter squash into each type of row preparation and also examined how the use of mulch compared to bare ground in all three systems.

Results were measured by calculating the economic costs (time put into preparation, planting, weeding, and harvesting) and measuring the productivity (number and weight of fruits per plant throughout the season) of the plants. Outreach consisted of postings on our blog, hosting a Hudson Valley Growers meeting, and preparing a presentation to take to conferences in the Northeast.

Accomplishments/Milestones

We did have to make a couple of changes to our study. Originally, we were planning on flame weeding the rye cover crop in the third test row, but because of the height of the winter rye we did not feel it would be safe to flame weed it. We ended up with three test rows; one was rolled-crimped, one was tilled, and one was tilled and then flame weeded before planting. Each test row was divided into two sections; one section was mulched with rye straw and the other was left bare. Each section was planted with pepper transplants and seeded with winter squash. We kept track of the time that went into preparing and maintaining each row, and measured the harvest from the different test plots.

Although all the data has not been fully analyzed, the results were not as we had expected. We had hoped that rolling and crimping would create a natural mulch which in turn would keep the weeds at bay and prevent the soil from drying out as quickly. However, it was very difficult to plant into the rolled/crimped row. The flattened winter rye stalks had to be pulled aside in order to put in the transplants and seeds and once the rye was moved for planting it wasn’t possible to rearrange it to its original position and it no longer served its intended purpose as a weed suppressor. The soil in the rolled-crimped row was also much more compact than the tilled rows. All in all, we ended up spending more time and energy on the rolled-crimped row and saw diminished health and productivity from the plants in that row.

We noticed that the row that had been tilled and then flame weeded before planting had the most vigorous plants and required the least amount of labor to maintain. We gave a tour and brief description of our experiment at an outreach day in October but unfortunately it was poorly attended.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The growing season was very dry and the field where we conducted the experiment didn’t have any irrigation for a good part of the early growing season. We are waiting on the soil samples, and believe that the difficulty we had with compaction in the no-till row may be in part due to the soil in the test field.

We haven’t looked at all the numbers yet, but there’s no doubt that the no-till row involved more labor and produced less. It also involved the maintenance of extra machinery. Although we had already purchased the roller-crimper previous to our experiment, we had to deal with the added cost of having it repaired when we couldn’t get it working properly.

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