Page 26 - MNLGA Free State Winter 2024_WEB
P. 26
IT'S TIME FOR SHARING (Continued)
we got 1.97 inches of rain between seed was maturing well as seen in
th
September 9 and 15 . The clover the photo (page 27 top left).
th
never emerged but the radish started
From the maturing seed I did a
to show up late in September; it was
germination test and determined
off to a slow start. I believe the clover
that 71% of the seed was viable.
may have been planted too deep.
The next step was to see if we could
Slowly, the radish filled in. In a normal
get two crops for the price of one. We
year, the radish would be killed by
don’t have a 4’ wide combine. The
winter frost. Last winter was too mild
only thing we could come up with
and as seen in the photo below taken
was a narrow flail mower to dislodge
on April 22, 2024, it survived well.
the seeds from the pods. We carried
My intent was to plant radish again the flail mower right at the soil
this spring to determine if it could surface and a decent percentage of
survive the summer heat and provide the seed became dislodged.
weed control of summer annuals as This final photo (bottom page
a competitor, providing shade, and/ 27) shows the new crop emerging
or dead plants acting as a mulch. amongst weeds, a lot of dandelions.
Seeing that the fall planting was The density and uniformity of the
flourishing, my spring planting plan new crop is not as good as the
was abandoned. As seen in the original planting.
photo(page 27 top left), the plants
will not survive through the summer. New crop emerging from the
Cover crop planting machine At the end of May 2024, the radish original 2023 planting, seen on
October 7, 2024. A
For many years, I have tried to
determine how to plant a cover
crop in narrow spaces. One fairly
expensive machine did not work
(it was lost in the fire of 2017, so
we got our money back). Last
year we were able to purchase a
narrow cultivating device (photo
above) from Damcon in The
Netherlands and installed a box
seeder from Gandy to distribute
the seed. I chose to initially plant
a couple acres last fall to see
if we would be successful with
daikon radish, red and white
clover, and the new machine.
Seeding occurred in late August
2023. If you recall, we were in an
extended drought starting here
in May. Initially, it was too dry for
germination, then it became too
cold for a couple weeks, then Daikon radish flourishing May 2024
26 WINTER 2024 • Free State News
