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Testing Row Covers
Can they speed tomatoes to early-market premiums with no-till and covers?


4/22/97 -- One drawback of no-till transplanting into cover crops is that the soil doesn't warm up as quickly compared with conventional practices. That makes it tough to cash in on the early-market premiums that the first fruits of the season can bring.

I've been thinking of ways to get vegetables no-tilled into cover crops off to a quicker start. No one that I know of has developed a way to lay plastic or put down row covers without first tilling the soil. So I'm going to experiment this season to see if we can at least use a row cover with no-till tomatoes.

Our rye/vetch mix is about 18" high now. I'm going to kill it with Roundup because it's not yet mature enough to kill with the rolling stalk chopper. Without rolling the killed cover, I'm going to transplant tomatoes right into it. Hopefully there will be enough rye standing to support the row cover without the time and effort needed to insert hoops.

I plan to hold down the row cover with old tires. It would be impossible to shovel soil to cover the edges because of all the cover crop residue. Besides, I don't want to disturb the microorganisms busy working for me in the soil.

We'll leave some tomatoes uncovered as a check to see if the row covers produce mature fruits earlier. I'll keep you posted. Meantime, if you have any experience with this, drop me a note at: sgroff@epix.net

-- Steve Groff,
Cedar Meadow Farm

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