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significantly speed up decomposition and seedbed preparation compared to our horsedrawn minimum-depth tillage techniques. Where hand tools are employed, removing the crop residues from the field for composting may be necessary to facilitate tilling just the top two to three inches of the soil. 3. Research at Cornell and the University of Maine has shown that it is possible to produce as much, or even more, cover crop biomass when growing a cash crop every year as our every-other-year fallow system. The key is using a high percentage of early harvested and late planted vegetables in the rotation to open up large windows for cover cropping. Following early harvested vegetables with late planted crops the next year not only maximizes cover crop CULTIVATING QUESTIONS potential but also helps to reduce weed pressure by preventing different families of weeds from repeatedly going to seed. Concerning the Bio-Extensive Market Garden 4. If land and time constraints rule out cover cropping altogether, consider by Anne and Eric Nordell of Trout Run, PA using the cash crops as cover crops and vice-versa. This suggestion may sound like a case of having your cover crop and eating it, too, but it is based on the experience of three innovative growers who made use of high-value cover Getting Started on Limited Acres with crops for generating income, rebuilding soil structure and reducing weed pressure. HIGH-VALUE For many years Eero Ruutilla has routinely taken land out of production on his Nesenkeag Farm in New Hampshire to reduce weed competition for the following year’s direct seeded vegetables. During this fallow year, he grows COVER CROPPING two oat-and-pea cover crops back-to-back, intentionally letting the spring ur winter workshops seem to generate a lot of interest in bio- planting go to seed before tilling it in so that it will self-seed the second extensive market gardening among young growers. However, we planting late summer. Not only does the first planting of oats and forage peas Osense an undercurrent of frustration because many of the partici- produce free cover crop seed, it also grosses over $30,000 a year in pea tendrils pants do not have access to enough land to fallow half of the market garden. sold to upscale restaurants. We hope that the following list of speculative suggestions will provide some At the 2009 Great Plains Vegetable Conference, Klaus Karbaumer de- encouragement to new vegetable farmers who scribed to us his innovative solution for cannot afford to take land out of production Weed control is often difficult in crops like onion and cover cropping in a land-limited situation. but want to take advantage of the bio- carrot because they are slow growing and cast relatively He broadcasts the seed of high-value extensive principles of rotational cover little shade. Although some weeds establish from the long- vegetables, such as mustard, turnips and cropping, minimum-depth tillage, and bare term seed bank in the soil, many of the weeds encountered cutting lettuce, over portions of the market fallowing. in a given year establish from seeds shed in the previous garden that need soil protection and weed 1. Stale seed bedding before or after each year or two. Consequently, growing a crop in which weed suppression. His marketable cover crops seed production can be prevented before planting a poor cash crop can serve the same purpose as the shade out troublesome grasses, enhance soil competitor can reduce the amount of precision cultivation bare fallow periods we use to reduce the weed and hand weeding required for successful production of tilth, and increase sales for the two-acre seed bank in the soil. If the production the poor competitor. Cropping strategies in which man- Missouri market garden. We asked Klaus to schedule does not allow enough time for agement prevents weed seed production include successive write up the details of this profitable cover regular stale seed bedding with a propane plantings of short-season crops, short-cycle cover crops cropping system for this column. flamer or very light cultivation, consider using alternating with clean fallow periods, crops grown with To the best of our knowledge, Eliot a quick succession of short term cultivated weed-suppressive mulch, and highly competitive crops that Coleman’s New Organic Grower provided are intensively cultivated (for example, potato)…. vegetables to flush weeds out of the soil as the first comprehensive model for maximiz- One expert farmer uses intensively cultivated crops to recommended in Crop Rotation On Organic control bad weed infestations. For example, infestations of ing cover crop potential in an annual Farms, edited by Chuck Mohler and Sue bindweed and Canada thistle are followed by a triple vegetable system. In this organic farming Ellen Johnson. (This comprehensive planning crop of lettuce, which is high value enough to justify the classic, Eliot describes the eight year manual, based on the testimony of twelve costs of frequent cultivation. This is followed by a weed- rotation he used in Vermont to grow a expert farmers sequestered by researchers for suppressing cover crop of rye. vegetable crop and a cover crop every year three days in the winter of 2002, is available -Crop Rotation on Organic Farms by establishing small grain green manures from the publisher, NRAES, PO Box 4557, Chuck Mohler and Sue Ellen Johnson immediately after early harvested vegetables Ithaca, NY 14852-4557, 607-255-7654, or undersowing the long-term, late har- www.nraes.org.) vested crops with different types of clovers. 2. A limited land base also need not interfere with the practice of using Later, when he moved to Maine and began developing his year round produc- shallow tillage to fiberize the seedbed and prevent bringing new weed seeds up tion system, Eliot rotated mobile greenhouses to allow a full year of clover to to the surface. If time is of the essence, shredding the cover crops or crop build up the soil before a twelve month succession of vegetables grown under residues into small pieces with a flail mower before shallow rototilling should protection – perhaps the ultimate combination of bio-extensive and intensive 52 Small Farmer's Journal, Summer, Vol. 34, No. 3 practices. unusual viewpoint of return-on-soil inputs, each ton of compost generates So you can imagine our surprise when reading his new The Winter Harvest over $5,000 in gross sales. Handbook (Chelsea Green 2009) to find out that Eliot Coleman and Barbara Continuous, intensive vegetable production, on the other hand, often Damrosch have dispensed with cover cropping altogether in order to keep up requires higher fertility inputs. At Four Seasons Farm, Eliot applies 15 tons of with growing demand for their superior, “deep organic” produce. This is the compost/acre per crop to insure high yields of quality produce and to main- most attractive and enlightening book on sustainable vegetable production we tain “potting mix quality” planting conditions so essential to managing dense have seen, and page after page of Barbara’s stunning photos of their densely- seedings. Each ton of compost grosses under $1500. planted patchwork of non-stop produce convinced us that they have not given We fear that this economic comparison between two farms at either end of up on cover cropping, but taken it to the next level by practicing almost the intensive-extensive spectrum may be very misleading due to a whole host continuous cover cropping with vegetables. Their rapid succession of inten- of variables, such as markets, prices, soils and climate. These factors may have sively seeded high-value cash crops provides few opportunities for weeds to get a greater influence on the gross return per acre, per person and per ton of established or go to seed and protects the soil with live vegetation and a dense compost than the method of production. Nevertheless, the experience of root system virtually year round. many beginning farmers we know support the comparison and highlight why Eliot and Barbara’s Four Seasons Farm illustrates so well that the time it is so important to design the market garden with the most limiting resources tested practices of rotation, cover cropping, shallow tillage and stale seed of the farm in mind. bedding can be adapted to very intensive, land-limited production. In our We have met new growers who have tried to implement our bio-extensive minds, the choice between growing intensively or extensively is not so much a system and finally had to give up for several, different resource-related reasons: question of which method is most biologically efficient or effective, but a they simply could not generate enough income when taking half of their practical consequence of the farm’s most limited resources. limited land base out of production; they had enough acres available for bio- For example, Eliot concludes the chapter on “Marketing and Economics” extensive management but not all the land was suitable for vegetable produc- by noting that after many years of research and development they now gross tion – when they rotated the produce into the poorer, less well-drained parts an incredible $80,000/acre from the 1 ½ acres they have reclaimed from the of the farm crop yields and quality suffered; they had access to enough prime rocky, impoverished pine woods land. Including the quarter-acre in green- vegetable land for bio-extensive market gardening, but did not possess the houses, producing as many as six cash crops in a twelve month period, they appropriate tools or power source for managing all the acres in a timely and average four crops a year across the 1 ½ acre land base.

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