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| View of oats and peas in Field 1 |
Cover crops are an important way for us to maintain soil fertility and organic matter, but it can take several weeks to get ready to seed them. First, you need to mow in the crop that has finished producing. The next step is to go over the area with our disk harrow to break up debris. It usually takes several tractor passes over the course of 2 or 3 weeks to break most crop debris down enough, but some crops that are in the ground for shorter periods of time, like greens, go a little quicker. It gets more complicated, though, when the crop in question has been grown under black plastic mulch using drip tape irrigation. We have to pull the drip tape out of the ground by hand before we can seed a cover crop. Fortunately, we now use a corn-based black "plastic" mulch, so we don't have to pull that out of the ground as well, as it biodegrades over time just like our crop residue does.
In addition, in our watermelon, sweet potatoes and first cucumbers and summer squash we lay down black landscape fabric in the pathways to keep down weeds. The landscape fabric is not biodegradable, and it must get pulled out of the ground to be reused the next season. Pulling up landscape fabric is one of the crew's least favorite tasks! The fabric is held into the ground by metal staples, and the clever weeds manage to pop up through the tiny holes created by those staples. By the fall, these weeds are quite vigorous and do an even better job than the staples of holding down the landscape fabric, making the act of pulling up fabric extra challenging. After the landscape fabric and drip tape are pulled out of the field, we can begin working in the remaining plant residue and biodegradable "plastic" mulch.
Once the crop debris have been worked into the soil, we can seed our cover crop of choice. Whenever possible, we try to include a legume in our cover crop seeding (examples of legumes include peas, hairy vetch and clover). Legumes are important because they help fix nitrogen in the soil, providing an important nutrient for next year's crops. Up until about mid-September, we mix oats and field peas together. We really like this combination because these crops can't survive the winter in our climate. They die off once it gets cold, leaving enough debris in the field to protect our soil from erosion. Because they have been slowly decomposing all winter, they are really easy to work into the soil the next spring when we begin plowing. After mid-September, though, it's too cold for oats and peas, so we shift to hardier cover crops. Traditionally, we've just seeded winter rye after September 15th. While this is not a legume and therefore does not fix nitrogen in the soil, it does help prevent erosion over the winter, and if it's tilled in at the right moment in the spring it can provide organic matter to the soil. This year we've added Austrian Winter Peas to the cover crop mix. These are a slightly hardier legume, and like the rye, they should pop back up in the warmer spring weather. Hopefully they'll help improve our soil quality by fixing nitrogen as well.
This week in the share we're introducing a new potato variety to the CSA: Peter Wilcox. It's got a purple skin and white flesh, so it will add some unique coloring to your meals. We only planted a few beds of these this year to try it out, so let us know what you think of the variety and if we should plant more next year!
What's in the share: Lettuce, Greens, Kale, Escarole, Celery, Carrots, Beets, Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes (slicing, heirloom and plum), Spaghetti Squash, Acorn Squash, Garlic, PYO Cherry Tomatoes, PYO Husk Cherries, PYO Hot Peppers, PYO Green Beans, PYO Herbs.
New this week: Yellow Storage Onions, Purple Potatoes, Green Cabbage, Hakurei Turnips, PYO Corn Stalks.
