What you write makes sense. However, it's important to protect the soil diversity. It exposes the good microbes and bugs as much as it helps to dispose of the undesirable bugs - squash bugs, stink bugs, et al.

This takes me back to the warning about over plowing. Of course, I know you're aware of the over plowing issue. I consider the book Teaming with Microbes by Wayne Lewis essential reading because he talks about, literally, everything going on under the soil including those oft-annoying tree roots that are, really, providing rich sources of fungus that plant roots needs. He wrote a 2nd book, too, but it's very dry and I don't recommend it unless someone really wants to get into chemistry.

I do think this plowing method would be good for a new plot as long as it has a trustworthy eco which most land out in this area seems to have. I know you're attempting to ready as much soil as possible in large areas to feed the needy. Keep up the good work.

bon

Bon,

You are exactly correct. I always plow and amend to start a new plot, usually in the worst soil in Oklahoma. I do so with the goal of reducing tillage every season.

Most of the soil I work with is extremely poor and very hard. I have found plowing the only way to both make a crop and build soil. That is why I focus on cover crops and green manure.

The experts are still struggling to develop techniques for growing veggies in a no-till cropping system. I can absolutely guarantee you that I spend at least one day per week reading articles on no-till cropping systems.

I am always open to ideas. Please don't hesitate to pass on new or old information. I may not have seen it.
One of the challenges I face all of the time is working with old fashioned equipment and very poor land. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.

I have recently learned (and personally verified) that grass plants are little affected by herbicide carry over. I am already moving on that information as regards this year's corn and grain sorghum crops. I plan to move dozens of large truck loads of stall muck this year based on that new information.

Johnny

Johnny Coleman,

I have witnessed this many times in my life and not read this from a book written by someone else. I am talking about land that has not been amended with compost and had layers of organic material piled on it. I know that everyone is against plowing the soil, but no till gardening on a small scale is one thing and trying to farm a large plot of land is quite another. I was born and raised on a farm and did farm for most of my life and know for a fact that plowing clay or gumbo land is helped by plowing it early in the winter so it can have several months to freeze & thaw before spring planting. This lets the hard clay/gumbo soil mellow out and it will pulverize later in the spring when disking before planting. If the soil is allowed to dry out ahead of planting it will pulverize the clods and will be in better shape for planting. Also instead of having just a couple of inches of top soil you will have top soil as deep as you have plowed and it will let the roots grow down into the soil and will let any rain soak deep into the soil, rather than sit and pond and drown out the plants, also the plants can withstand dry weather better and longer than soil that has not been turned. Very poor land will preform much better if worked this way.

The grasses being tuff makes sense as I know corn can be grown around black walnut roots. Pretty hardy stuff. I've read that Johnson grass isn't really affected by direct applications of direct herbicides even when done correctly.

I've seen some of your soil and you've seen my good soil. Still, I must lift that dirt in the beginning, somehow. After it was plowed I kept it covered and it's very easy to see how keeping roots underneath is all that is required. However, it's good soil. This year will be a new challenge since I uncovered and leveled it. I'll be working on contour this year with swales, berms and as many hugels as I can build topped with food or soil-enhancing perennials. Build it and maintain. Hopefully, the berms and swales will keep the good soil around. The small berm I created last fall in an eroded area has really been sprouting green every time the weather warms. It's working. The real test will be during the air summer.

That red dirt you have with must be worked, no other way around it. Even that doesn't provide permanent results unless organic material is included (and preferably mulched).

You got it.

bon

authereray,

I try to borrow from all of the techniques that work well from farming, gardening and common sense. I even study the failed techniques from the past. Sometimes those failures contain gems of wisdom.

Another benefit I find with Fall or Winter plowing is water absorption. I find rough plowed clay is better than plowed and disked or plowed and harrowed.

I would guess that three years of cover crops, planted in September, will give me a good start. Then I can start reducing the tillage passes or I can start to transition to minimum till or strip till.

As a refinement to disking, I will be creating long raised rows with my home made row hipper.

Planting on raised rows has many benefits in the spring.

Bon,

Yes, that is why I feel the need to do both, to make a crop and to build the soil.

There are many folks being laid off in the oil patch. I would guess we'll have more to feed in the coming months.

I hope we are ready.

Johnny

I'm afraid so. I hope, too.

I don't blame you for plowing. We rototilled our garden soil every year for our first 10-12 or so years here in a constant effort to get more organic matter down deeper in the soil. When we first moved here, the dense red clay was so bad that the rototiller just bounced off the surface of the soil, and you could only work a shovel, fork or mattock and inch or two into the ground and that took incredible effort (and the effort resulted in Tim breaking the handle of every tool we bought). Once our garden soil was workable and easily diggable by hand 8-10" down, we stopped rototilling and cultivating the soil mechanically, and now just build it from the top down with mulch, but I don't regret the years we spent improving it.

One of the fun things about rototilling every spring is that before our very eyes, bit by bit, the red clay turned brown. At first it was only brown in the upper few inches, but now it is brown as far down as I can dig by hand. Without constantly working in organic matter more deeply with the tiller, I think it would have been impossible to get the high yields we get from our garden, but for the sake of the soil structure and all the life in the soil, I'm glad we got to the point that rototilling or mechanically cultivating no longer is necessary in our front garden. No-till sounds a lot easier than it is, at least initially, but it works well for us now in our raised bed garden. I still use the Mantis cultivator in the newer back garden, which is more than a decade behind the front garden in age, so hasn't been worked nearly as long.

I cannot imagine farming here in OK without plowing. I am sure some folks do it, but I wonder how in the world they fight the ever-present Johnson grass. Well, unless they have feral hogs, in which case the hogs will do all their plowing for them.

I'd like to have a " row hipper " on my roto tiller.

That looks to be the deal.