garden:cultivate:tasks:grnmanure:oat-radish
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garden:cultivate:tasks:grnmanure:oat-radish [2015/08/29 18:16] – created davidbac | garden:cultivate:tasks:grnmanure:oat-radish [2020/03/28 17:32] (current) – davidbac | ||
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+ | ===== Oats and radish ===== | ||
+ | For a cover crop for the 2015-2016 winter season I chose a mix of oats and tillage radish. These aren't table radishes, rather they' | ||
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+ | Tillage radish, //raphanus sativus//, also called forage radish, creates lots of leaves along with a root that goes deep into the subsoil. I planted beginning is mid-August and ending when the tomatoes and peppers were done. | ||
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+ | ==== Germination ==== | ||
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+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | ==== Winter kill ==== | ||
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+ | Both oats and tillage radish die with freezing temperatures, | ||
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+ | ==== Intention ==== | ||
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+ | The aim of using this mix is to get a lot of biomass into the soil and to drill down as deeply as possible. | ||
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+ | ==== Progress ==== | ||
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+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | ==== Timing ==== | ||
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+ | Because I sowed this cover crop as soon as I had completely harvested a section, hoping to accelerate the growing, sections sowed at different times had different germination patterns. | ||
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+ | It appears that germination was most uneven in the earliest seeded sections - oats lagging greatly behind the radish. The section seeded latest had the most even germination but it failed to take hold before weeds and was not subject to winter kill (oats that survive the winter temperatures grow a tough root system that is difficult to till in the spring). | ||
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+ | However, my early strategy of seeding soon allowed the a strong growth of radish which smothered many of the weeds. Germination of the oats was poorest in the early planting, which was among the newly mown buckwheat. Perhaps, the buckwheat shielded the seeds from sunlight and kept the soil cooler. | ||
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+ | These results were different from those of [[garden: |