New Puritan
Member
- Location
- East Sussex
@Wigeon - thanks for starting this thread, and I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple of related questions?
I'm a tenant on a very small farm I run alongside off-farm work, and am stockless organic arable as I don't live on the farm and can't get there every day. It sort of works, the main limitations so far have been my ignorance of what to do, but I am (slowly) learning.
How often would people plough in this system? Just to break the leys, or more often if weeds are a big issue? Something I have learnt is that I don't really like ploughing as it can't be that good for the soil, there is so much info available now on why zero till is better it makes me question the whole basis for the system I am using. In a six year rotation (with various oddball crops, but including a winter cereal, a spring cereal, a legume crop, some other random crop I'll grow once and swear to leave well alone afterwards, and 2 years of grass / red clover ley), would ploughing only 2 or 3 times be any better for the soil than ploughing 5 times? I can see from the mycorrhizal perspective it wouldn't be much (if at all) better, but from a soil organic matter perpective it might be an improvement?
The indices are rather low for both P and K. I'm getting municipal compost in, and rock P - I know that rock P is very slow release (though I'm on heavy clay soil with a low-ish pH which helps). When is best to apply these? I find it slightly odd that I should add the compost (or manure if available) and then plough it in 6 inches below the surface where nothing can get at it. Would this be an opportunity to skip a year of ploughing, or would people disc or something first to mix it up, and then plough? But then that would undo the benefit of burying weed seeds. For the rock P, given its slowness of doing anything, when is best to apply it?
Thanks for any advice on this, and apologies to @Wigeon for the hijack.
I'm a tenant on a very small farm I run alongside off-farm work, and am stockless organic arable as I don't live on the farm and can't get there every day. It sort of works, the main limitations so far have been my ignorance of what to do, but I am (slowly) learning.
How often would people plough in this system? Just to break the leys, or more often if weeds are a big issue? Something I have learnt is that I don't really like ploughing as it can't be that good for the soil, there is so much info available now on why zero till is better it makes me question the whole basis for the system I am using. In a six year rotation (with various oddball crops, but including a winter cereal, a spring cereal, a legume crop, some other random crop I'll grow once and swear to leave well alone afterwards, and 2 years of grass / red clover ley), would ploughing only 2 or 3 times be any better for the soil than ploughing 5 times? I can see from the mycorrhizal perspective it wouldn't be much (if at all) better, but from a soil organic matter perpective it might be an improvement?
The indices are rather low for both P and K. I'm getting municipal compost in, and rock P - I know that rock P is very slow release (though I'm on heavy clay soil with a low-ish pH which helps). When is best to apply these? I find it slightly odd that I should add the compost (or manure if available) and then plough it in 6 inches below the surface where nothing can get at it. Would this be an opportunity to skip a year of ploughing, or would people disc or something first to mix it up, and then plough? But then that would undo the benefit of burying weed seeds. For the rock P, given its slowness of doing anything, when is best to apply it?
Thanks for any advice on this, and apologies to @Wigeon for the hijack.
