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| Hi Dan,
some answers to your Qs are interspersed below:
#1 how many times were the sunflowers cultivated for weeds -they look very "clean" - or for that matter I guess for weed controll you rotary hoe and cultivate the organic crops? -- I saw your plant into rolled cereal rye -- (I think it was your post) I guess no cultivation?
Sunflowers were rotary hoed once and then cultivated twice. First cultivation was with a IH 153 modified to allow more residue flow. Second cultivation was with a Buffalo high residue cultivator with a single wide sweep.
We've been no-till drilling most of our small grains and some of our soybeans for almost 10 years. Weed control in soybeans drilled into standing cereal rye has been good most years but was not acceptable this year. We ended up tilling under 1 out of 3 fields of NT beans. We planted some NT beans on 30" rows for the first time this season and then cultivated with a high residue cultivator... will definitely do more of this.
#2 for fertility --is manure from animals not fed organic produced crops considered allowable to be used on organic crops? Is there any limit on allowable tonnage of manure and still considered organic?
Manure from conventional livestock production systems is generally allowed on organic farms but there are some prohibited manure additives.
We have limited access to manure and thus do not use high rates. This year most of our corn received 3000 lbs of a pelletized chicken litter product.
Analysis indicated ~ 55 lbs of available N per ton. We also applied a little over 3 tons/a of raw turkey litter to one corn field.
Some organic farmers use significantly higher rates of manures but manures are supposed to be applied at agronomic rates.
#3 since banvel drift has been discussed so much on NAT -- if banvel has been drifted on a organic field does that result in field being knocked out of organic production?-- if so how many years?
Documented drift can result in a field losing organic certification for 3 years.
Joel
WIU Agriculture
Edited by jbgruver 9/4/2017 03:04
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Sunflowers and more (lots of pics)
