No-till organic

[ado089]

Is anyone making no till organic work?

[hobbyfrmr]

I am loosely following the Rodsle Institiute. They have designed a crimper roller for weed control and they direct seed into that residue. It's really interesting. They work on different rotations that would be most beneficial. I am quite agreeable to the idea,
I am getting a little older and remain stuck in the old ways of tillage and lack the courage to make any substantial changes on my farm.

[sumdumguy]

Thia year was definitely a sow thistle year. How do you deal with thistles?

[bucket]

24d. It can't be detected anyway. Lol.

[ado089]

My understanding is that cover crop/no-till is more of a segment of a rotation vs an actual whole rotation. Occasional intensive tillage is still needed to control perennials.

[Hopperbin]

Hoe works not too bad in the garden. Somewhat minimal.

[fjlip]

Nothing works on the organic neighbors fields. One weed infested crop, of every weed you can name goes too seed and the rest of your life in SMF will never kill them all.
Sorry not viable at all. No fert and a poor crop that does NOT compete. We used to fallow every third year. I saw that as a wasted year you never get back. A farmer might have 40-50 crops in a lifetime, losing one third of that makes only 26-33 crops. I quit that idea. Tillage kills ZERO, even chemicals in my 40 years still have NOT eliminate any weeds. Mother nature rules!

[hobbyfrmr]

I use a rod weeder to minimize thistles. I cannot control my neighbour's headlands or pastures, the RMs ditches, or the solid line of thistles from the abandoned railway that runs from Denholm to Meadow Lake.
Drive around, take a good look at your surroundings. Organic farmers are the least of your worries.
You are very fortunate, you have the option to just go and spray. Some guys did not spray fungicide, lost half the wheat crop to fusarium and half the canola to sclerotinia. Wow. A farmer owns his pride and joy high clearance sprayer and still loses half the yeild? How, then, does he make the payment for the sprayer?

[hobbyfrmr]

I chose a business model in which may work put well. I agree a year without crop (fallow) is counter intuitive. A year in legume plowdown, or four years in alfalfa sets up clean fields with good fertility. Good enough to grow half a crop for twice the price. Net result is same as conventional, just a different way of getting there.
This year, due to nature, how does a conventional guy cash flow 80% of a crop at half the price? THAT is the big question. Can you go to the elevator agent, look at the CBOT futures and "talk" the prices up?
The best thing that could happen is canola goes back to 14.00 . Conventional guys stay happy and make fun of the organic farmers' fields. I would be satisfied with that.

[ado089]

Hobby, have you tried a noble plow?

[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.