- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
Strip-till cover crop tomato crop trialed in Huron, CA, February 2, 2022
A unique - dare we say - "never before attempted in the region," effort to precede strip-tilled tomatoes with a mowed vigorous winter cover crop was conducted in one of the fieldsofWoolf Enterprises, a major tomato and other row crop farm just south of the small San Joaquin Valley town of Huron, CA in the spring of 2022. Several Woolf agronomists including Rick Blankenship and Shane Bickner, along with agronomy consultant,Cary Crum,of Agrotechnovation, oversaw the effort. The cover crop was a short-season mix that ended up being largely dominated by triticale, was mowed by a flail mower that had been fitted with a horizontally mounted circular chopper to fill in a 'skip' area in the flails behind the center of the unit. Then,an Orthman three-row 60" spacing strip-tiller followed the mowing ahead of tomato transplanting. Two short video files are linked here that show the mower and the strip-tiller in action. After this first year of trying the cover crop strip-till system, one agronomy manager at Woolf put it this way,
"There are a lot of extra management required, but worth the effort. The learning curve is steep and ridden with holes to fall into, but the soil changes behind the multispecies cover crops is impressive. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't tolerate some failure along the way. Less passes to get beautiful tomato beds behind it.
I'm not sure I've bought into the strip till on the flat tomato beds yet because of the necessary harvester adaptations or the strip till beds because of residue but I think with some more adaption we could make it work.
I really like the multi species cover crop as a rotation partner when it's green chopped early."
More to come from this exciting, innovative work soon!
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- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Strip-tillage under optimal soil moisture conditions is critical, - meaning not too dry, but hopefully not too wet. Using GPS to align planter units with strip-till rows is necessary, as is the timely (usually within one week of corn seeding) application of herbicide. Finally, anticipating and applying irrigations earlier and perhaps more frequently than with standard till systems.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Gordon Foster (pictured at right), a Barcellos Farms employee, has done the bulk of the farm’s no-till and strip-till corn seeding since Barcellos started with CT in 1993.
“The bulk of our corn is now strip-tilled,” he said, “due to the overall advantages we’ve seen with this system.”
Time and costs between crops are reduced. One of the primary lessons that Barcellos has learned through his years of using CT is the absolute need to be on top of water management.
“You may end up putting on less water with CT than conventional tillage systems, but you’ve really got to be prepared for earlier and perhaps more frequent irrigations," has been a learning-curve consideration that he reinforces to folks who are interested in getting into CT.