Only organic farmers use crop rotation?

Could have been when he was stopped to lower the planter if he was planting...

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

I'm not going to assume it's magical fairy dust and because of that, I will not be walking up to this machine, breathing whatever is coming out of it to ask. I had enough of that when I was in 3rd grade, chasing crop dusters through soybean fields in Osceola, AR. Though I'm sure I could ask at the local SS-I'm still not buying what you folks are selling.

Selling? We are stating application rates, do you dispute them? Most things in life, the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is a big difference from dousing with chemicals, and the application rates noted. The truth in this case, is not somewhere in the middle, it is indeed the application rate.

By not asking what is being sprayed, you are assuming a lot, is all...

Take care..

ETA, I must say, you do not have to "buy in", it is just an information sharing idea is all it is. Just something for you to think on. Think of 4 grams on an acre.

That's what I thought. Thanks for yet another informative post.

Well I'm not a big time farmer, just a small time gardener. My rotation goes like this: Plot 1-Green beans, Plot 2-Corn, Plot 3-Potatoes. The next year Plot 1-Corn, Plot 2-Potatoes, Plot 3-Green beans.

Or I might should say Corn follows Green beans, Potatoes follow Corn, and Green beans follow Potatoes.

But none of this has anything to do with insecticides.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

That sounds logical for that situation. And yes, the rows are perfectly straight.

A new twist on the crop rotation scheme on our farm and many others is the use of cover crops over the winter to protect soil and improve productivity. We use Cereal Rye, Tilalge Radishes, Austrian Peas, Annual Rygrass, and Crimson Clover in our cover crops.

This fall all of our corn acreage was planted to annual ryegrass before we harvested. The cover crop is planted to improve soil tilth, water permeability, and scavenge nutrients. Next spring we will plant soybeans into the killed cover crop.

We also use Tillage Radishes and Austrian Peas planted in rows after our wheat. The radishes have a very long tap root and scavenge nutrients while the austrian peas produce nitrogen. Some research estimates that the peas can produce enough nitrogen that the corn crop would not require any supplemental nitrogen.

We are working with other farmers to continue the evaluation of cover crops, with the limited topsoil we have in this regions of forest-derived soils we need to do what we can to protect and improve what we have.

Jim

How do you do that, Jim?

A Hagie hi-boy sprayer equiped with a blower motor and a seed bin. The seed is blown through pipes hanging from the boom which spread the seed below the corn canopy.

I have a video on my phone that I will try to upload for you to view.

Jim

Nice rotation, helps with fertilizer usage, and indeed it can lower the insect pressures you have.

Crop rotation has different meanings to different people.

Some think its a different crop the following year. Some think its multiple species of crops in the same field at the same time.

Some will think its even planting corn on corn on corn, but using different strains of corn that resist diseases differently so you are rotating the the types of disease and insects that are present.

I've said before, my area is so well suited for corn growing, a lot of us are raising 2/3 corn and 1/3 soybeans, with a little bit of oats, wheat, and alfalfa hardly noticeable. A real rotation of 1/2 corn, 1/2 beans is preferred, but there are actually some positives for corn following corn if you manage it right.

Paul

Neat.

Years ago I bought a horse drawn grain drill that fit between the rows of corn. You could get winter wheat started before the corn was ready to harvest.
At last summer's Horse Progress Days, II saw a horse drawn seed sprayer demonstrated. Could have been a Hagie, can't remember. Lots of modern farm equipment adapted for use on smal horse powered farms.

ET1 SS, in the Old Testament the Hebrews were also instructed to let their fields sit idle every 7th year. I am seriously considering dividing my garden into sevenths and each year letting one of the sections sit idle. I actually thought the biggest issue causing a need for rotation was mineral depletion. Here in West Tennessee the biggest crop is cotton. While I have seen fields that were corn or soy rotating, I rarely see any cotton fields grow anything but cotton. Each year these fields look like snow, so it isn't like I can't tell which plant it is. I have been told by my neighbors brother that it was fine before the levies were built. Each spring new silt was brought down the river from northern states and would be deposited by flooding onto the local fields refreshing their minerals, but today the levies prevent the flooding of new minerals. I realize he may be a bit full of it, it wouldn't be the first time, but he makes a fairly good case. If I may be so blunt, it seems cotton is the most demanding crop on the soil, but, if that is the crop farmers manage the least regarding the high amount of minerals withdrawn from the soil. Those growing corn do rotate, though it doesn't seem to be a year of corn and a year of soy. It is more like a few years of one followed by a year of the other.

The annual flooding of the Nile River was known to leave a fresh layer of minerals on Egyptian farm land. During the Roman Empire this was understood, as anywhere else that was intensively farmed would 'play-out' within a century. But Egypt remained fertile even after many centuries. The trade between Rome and Egypt kept the Roman Empire going strong for a long time.

The Aswan Dam was built to stop flooding, provide irrigation, and generate hydroelectricity in the 1960s. As Egypt embraced modern 'industrialization', they also lost their farm fertility, and they are now dependent on petroleum-fertilizers.

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The last Ice Age allowed Canada's topsoil to be deposited in the center of the United States, allowing our farmers to employ plows and repeated cultivations that lost tons of topsoil to erosion each year, yet not run out of topsoil. Thankfully, most have stopped this short sighted approach to crop production.

FYI: That nasty Aswan Dam you speak of provides irrigation to over 8 million acres of crop land, much that is double cropped. Prior to the Dam, the Nile flooded crops on high water years, causing a total loss of crops. On low water years, the crops failed compleely, leading to starvation. Plus it provides 21 gigawatts of polution-free electricity.

Actually Micheal Moore did a documentry about how president Bush stole the Canadian soil and how Obama promised to give it back!

Wasn't that right before he did the documentary how Al Gore developed Time-travel, which allowed him to go back in time and 'create' the internet?

I heard he later went on to invent coal too, from no atoms at all he was able to create matter into existence and he used that matter to make coal?

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

I saw a picture or the seed spreader at HPD, I doubt it was a Hagie. I would like to see a picture of the spreader setup on the hagie.

Dave

Don't knock Al Gore. He may not have invented the internet, but he holds the patient for lying.

My video is too big to download, but I found images for you to view.

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