I was out in the fields terminating cover crops today.
This is cereal rye that we seeded last fall in the standing corn. It started growing in the fall, lay dormant in the winter, and then started growing with a vengeance this spring. The rye takes up nutrients in the soil that otherwise might be lost into the groundwater. And its roots holds the soil from blowing or washing away.
Alas, all good things must come to end. It’s time to plant the cash crop. The rye has done its job. I’m killing it with herbicides and as it dies it will release the nutrients it contains back into the soil for the corn to take up.
It’s a good system, but it’s just a baby step. We’re trying to figure how to have something growing all the time, a permaculture of many things growing at once in the fields, each taking up and releasing nutrients in turn.
Collaboration, not competition.
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