I had posted earlier this year about our over planting of brassicas for years and our horrible decline into almost no growth the last couple years. This year we decided on a whole new approach. Leave everything alone for the year then brush hog, spray, wait, till plant, drag, do rain dance. Our changes were not disturbing soil as much (used to disc multiple times). Roto till instead of disc. Drag with chain harrow instead of roll. Planting was a whole new game geared towards soil building. We went with cowpeas, buckwheat, clovers, lentils, spring oats, black oats, winter wheat, cereal rye, collards, hybrid radish, triticale, sun hemp, turnips even tossed out some pumpkins and watermelons. Tilling the soil and avoiding compaction by spreading everything by hand and dragging vs rolling will hopefully lead to more moisture retention as well as easier and better root establishment. So far the results have been very good.
Those pics were from planting day July 26……..took these today after 12 days with only some mild rain (0.3”).
So many changes this year that it’s hard to pinpoint what the major factor in our turn around was but our plots haven’t looked this good in years.
How many years did you plant barassica? Im in my second year of planting barassica blends. I spray then disc and just use a fence drag. Hd great results last year and they are looking good this year. Planted roughly 2 weeks ago.
From what I understand 2 years of brassicas is about it…..root fungus is possible and I honestly don’t know what macro or micro nutrient they deplete but trust me, we planted for 6-8 years in a row and I figured that a nice blend plus triple 19 would allow us to avoid that but I was very wrong. We will now start spring planting and incorporating MUCH more heavy plantings and rotations of winter rye, crimson clover, buckwheat, cowpeas and other easy growing soil building, N restoring crops.
