3 ms·

Found [this] 2 year study in which one year apparently the cover crop was not enough to stop the weeds totally, there may be some fine tuning needed in the begi

Found [this] 2 year study in which one year apparently the cover crop was not enough to stop the weeds totally, there may be some fine tuning needed in the beginning, like which cover crop to sow. [this] http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/agronomists_conf/media/Caroline_Halde_poster.pdf http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/agronomists_conf/media/Car...

kickout 6y ago
Cover crops are a good tool, but there will never be a silver bullet solution for weeds (even autonomous weeding robots). Mother nature is crafty. That said, the 'chemical' era we are currently in is over, even if no one wants to admit it https://thinkingagriculture.io/innovation-efficiency-chemicals-in-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/innovation-efficiency-chemica...
- sudoaza 6y ago
  Could be possible that some weed adapts to grow through the bush or something, what i like specially about this is using legumes as both cover and fertilizer, which is something permaculture uses a lot too. Also it's reminiscent of how corn was traditionally grown, with beans as nitrogen fixing and squash as ground cover. But on the long run, my bet is on diversity instead of monocrops.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Those old "3-sisters" ways of growing corn were done - but it greatly reduces the yields of all 3 crops because they compete with and harm each other.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      The goal is to increase the combined yield without a proportional increase in labor. Mark Shepard likes to brag about how he gets less half a harvest of six+ different species in the same field. He's still getting 2-3x as much food out of the space. Most importantly, I believe (and he agrees), when you monocrop you go for broke. If something goes wrong, you have very little to sell at the end of the year. If it's a bumper crop year, prices will be depressed if it's a good year for everybody. In either scenario, the dealer (bank) always wins. With six crops, the standard deviation between good years and bad years is reduced, which makes farming less of a trip to Vegas. That he gets more out of the same land brings up his average expected income. It's more work, yes, but he points out that many farmers have to take a side job to make ends meet, and he theoretically doesn't (he speaks and consults), so he can invest that time into increasing his farm's productivity.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        You don't have to mono crop or go "3-sisters" midevil farmers in Europe generally had many small fields - Barely on the highland, wheat in the best land... (3-sisters is American Crops and so not an option before Columbus). They achieved the same risk reducing diversity without having crops that directly harm each other next to each other.
        hinkley 6y ago
        There’s a pseudoscience within permaculture called guilds, and a skeptics view of that theory boils it down to “plants beside each other that don’t harm each other”.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I've been researching a lot of plants and weeds lately, and quite frequently I am being reminded that there are many plants that are toxic to cows and horses, and so part of your job is to make sure your pastures are free of these plants. One of the appeals then of broad spectrum herbicides that you scorch the earth and plant what you want in the space. And despite some very loud protestations of horse owners, people who try to garden with horse manure have to contend with herbicides. Mechanical pest/weed management is still a very powerful tool. And maybe some day we can have robots do that for us, but we don't have to wait that long to get much of the benefit. In order to kill a weed, you first have to see the weed. Rather than putting all of this onto a drone, there's plenty of utility to be gained by having a system that looks for these plants and geotags them. Then a centralized identification system (possible, the farmer's eyeballs) can filter down the false positives and they can send someone out to dispatch the weeds by hand, and/or adjust their graze rotation patterns to reduce exposure. And something organic gardeners learn intimately is that every weed has intervals where they are most expensive to deal with. Seedlings may be too labor intensive. Blooming weeds are priority 1. But depending on soil profile, some weeds are easier to kill once their stalks and roots have become more robust - strong enough that you can grab the stalk and pull. So on any given day you may be aware of a hundred weeds, but only twenty of them are on the priority queue.

kickout 6y ago

Cover crops are a good tool, but there will never be a silver bullet solution for weeds (even autonomous weeding robots). Mother nature is crafty. That said, the 'chemical' era we are currently in is over, even if no one wants to admit it https://thinkingagriculture.io/innovation-efficiency-chemicals-in-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/innovation-efficiency-chemica...

sudoaza 6y ago
Could be possible that some weed adapts to grow through the bush or something, what i like specially about this is using legumes as both cover and fertilizer, which is something permaculture uses a lot too. Also it's reminiscent of how corn was traditionally grown, with beans as nitrogen fixing and squash as ground cover. But on the long run, my bet is on diversity instead of monocrops.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Those old "3-sisters" ways of growing corn were done - but it greatly reduces the yields of all 3 crops because they compete with and harm each other.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    The goal is to increase the combined yield without a proportional increase in labor. Mark Shepard likes to brag about how he gets less half a harvest of six+ different species in the same field. He's still getting 2-3x as much food out of the space. Most importantly, I believe (and he agrees), when you monocrop you go for broke. If something goes wrong, you have very little to sell at the end of the year. If it's a bumper crop year, prices will be depressed if it's a good year for everybody. In either scenario, the dealer (bank) always wins. With six crops, the standard deviation between good years and bad years is reduced, which makes farming less of a trip to Vegas. That he gets more out of the same land brings up his average expected income. It's more work, yes, but he points out that many farmers have to take a side job to make ends meet, and he theoretically doesn't (he speaks and consults), so he can invest that time into increasing his farm's productivity.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      You don't have to mono crop or go "3-sisters" midevil farmers in Europe generally had many small fields - Barely on the highland, wheat in the best land... (3-sisters is American Crops and so not an option before Columbus). They achieved the same risk reducing diversity without having crops that directly harm each other next to each other.
      - hinkley 6y ago
        There’s a pseudoscience within permaculture called guilds, and a skeptics view of that theory boils it down to “plants beside each other that don’t harm each other”.
hinkley 6y ago
I've been researching a lot of plants and weeds lately, and quite frequently I am being reminded that there are many plants that are toxic to cows and horses, and so part of your job is to make sure your pastures are free of these plants. One of the appeals then of broad spectrum herbicides that you scorch the earth and plant what you want in the space. And despite some very loud protestations of horse owners, people who try to garden with horse manure have to contend with herbicides. Mechanical pest/weed management is still a very powerful tool. And maybe some day we can have robots do that for us, but we don't have to wait that long to get much of the benefit. In order to kill a weed, you first have to see the weed. Rather than putting all of this onto a drone, there's plenty of utility to be gained by having a system that looks for these plants and geotags them. Then a centralized identification system (possible, the farmer's eyeballs) can filter down the false positives and they can send someone out to dispatch the weeds by hand, and/or adjust their graze rotation patterns to reduce exposure. And something organic gardeners learn intimately is that every weed has intervals where they are most expensive to deal with. Seedlings may be too labor intensive. Blooming weeds are priority 1. But depending on soil profile, some weeds are easier to kill once their stalks and roots have become more robust - strong enough that you can grab the stalk and pull. So on any given day you may be aware of a hundred weeds, but only twenty of them are on the priority queue.