Source:
Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques [DVD]. V. Grubinger. 2006. University of Vermont Extension. Available for purchase from: http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/Videos/covercropvideo.html(Verified 31 Dec 2008).
This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques video clip.
Watch video clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6vQp-_NYto
Featuring
Lockwood 'Pooh' Sprague, Edgewater Farm. Plainfield, NH.
Audio Text
What we have here is a crop of Japanese millet on a piece of fairly heavy ground, that we’re not using this year, so we’re using a longer season cover crop here to build organic matter in the soil. The ground was well prepared when we got on to this, we broadcast about 3 bushels to the acre which is very heavy as you can see, but we figure if you’re going to grow a crop and the fertility is there you might as well put it on heavy especially with cover crops.
I like the Japanese millet over the Sudan because it’s a little easier to incorporate. If the Sudan and Sudex get ahead of you, which they some times can when you’re picking vegetable late in the summer, it can get quite woody and it’s very hard to incorporate in the fall.
It’s now about the 15th of August, hopefully another week we’ll get someone down here with a heavy set of harrows and we’ll harrow this up, probably once over we’ll chop it up and expose a little of the dirt and we’ll come in and broadcast either peas and oats on top of that or hairy vetch and winter rye and disc it in lightly and that’ll give us a winter cover crop.
This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).
