No-till organic

[Mjolnir]

I can't provide links but one version of no-till organic I have seen involves growing a fall rye cover crop and then using a roller/crimper to kill it and then seeding into that with a disc drill.
Another I read about was an Australian farmer that will pit his cattle on a pasture and then graze it right down and then plant an annual crop on it, the heavy grazing reduces the competition for the annual crop. He rotates through his pastures with 5 years between annual crops.
This guy in North Dakota does some of this also but he isn't strictly organic:
http://www.brownsranch.us/?id=1

[ado089]

In a climate where getting one crop per year is a challenge I'm trying to wrap my head around a continuous not-till organic system. Even further complicating things is the fact that some of the most profitable crops for organic production in these parts are small seeded.

[Mjolnir]

I'm not sure how you get there, the "pasture" one I mentioned has the best likelihood of working as far as weed control goes, although then you need livestock of some sort. There is a guy who organic farms near Plato, not sure if I should blurt his name out in public but he has the best organic crops I've ever seen, not sure if he no-tills or not. He has been organic for a long time though which indicates success as far as I am concerned, several others in this area have tried it and failed.

[hobbyfrmr]

Ado, I have not tried a noble plow. Is that a big, flat winged cultivator?
Where can it work? Plowdown?
I don't really use shovels too often, I use spikes during plowdown tillage mode. Then rod weeder. I think it helps with the sow thistle and Canada thistle.
I also face east and swing a dead chicken over my head exactly 47 times before the start of each field of tillage.

[pourfarmer]

hobby farmer what kind of rod weeder do you use? I have a old morris 36ft that is the biggest piece of shit i've ever seen!!!! went back to cultivator after the disk on plow down, worked well, nice and black but have to work it deep to get a good 'even' kill, hard on fuel and slow going. Fear its stirring up a bunch of dormant weed seeds from down below. I like the idea of noble plow but hard to find one.

[farmaholic]

Pourfarmer; when we still summerfallowed( long time ago now), we used a chisel plow the first couple of times then a "dead rod" that bolted onto the last row of shanks of the cultivator/chisel plow. The cultivator basically got everything loosened and worked and the deadrod would work like a rodweeder and lift everything up and lay it on the surface, old crop residue and live weeds. It worked pretty darn good at killing the weeds and leaving residue on top to prevent wind and water erosion.
If there was way to much trash there could be a problem. Kinda made the land hard too but good at killing weeds.

[hobbyfrmr]

Pour farmer,
Yes I had a Morris 36 ft too. I changed to a Leon R-79 model. It's a totally different machine, far better. 1-1/8 diameter rod, heavier everything and more common sense in the drives and chains.

Farmaholic, yes a dead rod works well. I bought one so I could abandon the 36 ft Morris that pour farmer is talking about. Then I stumbled upon the Leon.

[Hopperbin]

Holy shit. You still using that leon. We also used to run a morris. Then a leon. Used to plant with a morris seedrite then rodweed. In cereals we rod weeded a few days later but before crop came up. Nothing left of it. Took all the rod weeder mechanical stuff off. Put rotary harrows on the frame it was 36feet. We pulled it behind 36 feet of air seeder behind cart. In 1997 abandonned it for air drill. Still have it.

[farmaholic]

We still have the dead rod in the back of the machine shed. But for the life of me cant remem er if we had it on the old 700 series Morris chisel plow or the 9000 series 42 foot Bourgault. Wouldn't be hard to figure out.....

We had that damn B3-36 Morris piece of crap too. Light duty=heavy maintenance!!!! The dead rod on cultivator had it beat hands down.

[hobbyfrmr]

We just finished a round of tillage. Spikes about 4 inches deep to loosen soil. Then pass the rdweeder, and I swear, the action of the live rod pulls out the thistles an extra 1.5-2 inches. This is where the prostrate roots are, and so, that root network gets interrupted.
I find less "patches" of thistle, but, of course, the random single plants are still around.