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Horticultural Crops: The Farmers
"Ancient" Tooling Runs Fast and Close to Yield
Greens Without Weeds
Gary Gemme
South Deerfield, Massachusetts
 100
acres
soils:
coarse sand to silt loam
wholesale
fresh vegetables
conventional
tillage with cover crops
limited
herbicide use
greens
(beets, chard, collard, kale, mustard, turnip), tomatoes, peppers,
eggplant
Weed management highlights
Strategies: winter, summer cover crops (grains, legumes, grasses,
mixes)... early precision cultivation of direct-seeded crops... on-farm greenhouse
produces transplants to allow aggressive early cultivating... crop rotation...
plastic mulch... preemergent herbicide on direct-seeded crops
Tools: basket weeder... belly-mount sweeps... rolling cultivator
gangs... spring teeth
In 20 years of producing vegetables, Gary Gemme has invested much in weed control—much
time and attention, that is, in building his management skills.
He’s still perfecting the precision use of implements he bought or inherited
with the farm. He minimizes hand labor through modest herbicide applications
and timely use of old steel that works as well as anything else he’s seen on
the market.
Even paying himself $20 per hour for driving tractor, Gemme figures his mechanical
weed control approach saves money compared with a heavier herbicide routine.
In mostly pre-emergent applications, he applies labeled herbicides for collards,
kale and peppers to give crops a jump on weeds. In all other growing situations,
he depends on steel or occasional hand weeding.
Winter cover crops of rye, wheat or hairy vetch suppress weeds and protect
his soil when they are green. They begin to build up soil organic
matter when they are incorporated in spring. After subsoiling about
24 inches deep diagonally across the field, Gemme plows as carefully
as possible to create an even, loose layer of topsoil. A soil rake
(a single bar holding rigid tines) on the plow helps break up the
soil, and he uses a light tandem disk as needed.
Whenever possible, he waits several weeks for the cover crop biomass to begin
decomposing. He then forms 54-inch beds with sides about 4 inches tall. Furrows
between them are 18 inches wide. Everything but the solanaceous crops (tomatoes,
eggplant and peppers) is transplanted into the beds in three rows, 18 inches
apart, centered on the bed. Tomatoes go in single rows, peppers and eggplant
in double rows (staggered offset planting), all on 72-inch centers and usually
with black plastic mulch.
His crop rotation for most fields is Year 1—brassicas (collards or kale); Year
2—solanaceous crops, beets or chard; Year 3—a summer soil-building crop such
as sorghum-Sudangrass, a fast-growing and heat-loving annual. To create a five-year
rotation between solanaceous plantings, he often sublets a field to another
farmer to raise a suitable crop for a year, then returns to brassicas.
“No other cultivator I’ve used comes close to the Buddingh Basket
Weeder when you’ve got a small flush of weeds in seedlings,”
says Gemme. Belly mounted on his Farmall Cub, he uses the tool in
two ways. At the normal speed of 3 to 5 mph, he sets the wire baskets
to within 3 inches of one another to cultivate young direct-seeded
crops, such as onions. Gearing doubles the speed of the second set
of baskets, giving them what he calls a sweeping motion that nicely
mulches loose soil.
When he has taller transplants that may have a few small weeds in the row,
he moves the baskets 4 inches apart and pulls back the tractor throttle. Cruising
at up to 8 mph, he says the baskets do throw soil into the row—a use of the
tool not intended by the manufacturer but cherished by this Massachusetts vegetable
grower.
Because precision tools such as the baskets put steel quite close to crops,
exact adjustment is a continuing part of tool management. “Things are set right
when the baskets clip just a couple of leaves per row. If there’s no contact,
you can probably get a little closer,” says Gemme. He sets the tractor’s front
wheels so their inside edges run against the outside edges of the bed, using
the elevated soil as a no-cost guidance system. This combination works well
on his flat, river bottom fields free of stones.
Gemme adds heavy wire tines ahead of the baskets to break up heavier soil for
extra weed control. From his experience, he would not recommend the basket weeder
for fields with rocks big enough to bend the basket wires; hard soil; frequently
wet soil; crops with a wide, leafy canopy; or as primary control against grasses
with rhizomes, such as nutsedge and quackgrass.
He’s found the basket weeder can control weeds more than 1 inch tall if they
are growing sparsely. In a thick patch of weeds, a half-inch tall is the safe
maximum height. Except in especially flexible crops such as onions and garlic,
he figures 9 inches is maximum crop height.
Because of their quick growth, Gemme’s greens usually only need one more weed-control
pass before the leaves make cultivating impossible. He uses 8-inch sweeps on
a low-residue cultivator a week or two after the baskets. These are the now-standard
“medium-profile” style, which have a moderate difference between the sweep’s
raised center area and its wings. It’s tumbling action mixes surface residue
with soil more than the “low-profile” style used in wider sweeps on the more
rugged single-sweep cultivators.
During this final “lay-by” pass, his main mission is application of 40 to 50
pounds per acre of nitrogen fertilizer next to the rows, dribbled through tubes
from two tractor-mounted hoppers. The late application is the key to top yields
in the nutrient-hungry crop, he’s found. Because some crops also need soil hilled
to prevent lodging, Gemme figures dragging the cultivators is a virtually no-cost
weed-control pass. For the record, his $8 sweeps last him about three years
on a four-sweep set-up that cultivates about 100 acres per year.
He adjusts the sweep tips down (angling the sweeps ends up) and increases tractor
speed in order to hill as much soil as possible at the base of plants. This
avalanche of loose soil retains moisture and suppresses weeds within the rows.
When weed pressure is heavy, he may make two basket passes and two runs with
the sweeps. Some weeds demand follow-through beyond the current crop. For instance,
Gemme mentally notes areas of high galinsoga population during spring crops.
After harvest, he tills then packs the soil to create ideal conditions for the
weed. He subjects the area to a fallow period during summer heat, shallow tilling
it repeatedly with his tandem disk just deep enough to kill the weeds. He believes
a springtooth harrow or field cultivator would do the job even better.
This practice depletes surface weed seeds and readies the area for fall planting.
He can seed a commercial crop of beet greens or Swiss chard before August 15,
or cover crops of hairy vetch from late August through early September or rye
until mid-October. Gemme transplants—rather than direct-seeds—a spring crop
into the area to maximize crop competition if the galinsoga should persist.
“I’m still working on the perfect system for controlling weeds that grow along
side of plastic mulch, but I’m getting closer,” says Gemme. His
tools of choice to work in the difficult area adjacent to the buried
plastic sheet edges are spider gangs, such as those found on a Lilliston
rolling cultivator. He can angle
the soil-chewing, curving spider wheel arms to cover the entire
area between the rows of plastic mulch. Their angled, slicing entry
into the soil takes out weeds close to the plastic. Gemme’s spider
gangs are his only “new” tools, purchased several years ago with
his bed former.
He keeps a close watch on mid-season weeds, looking for signs that will tell
him which tool he needs to use next. “Every tool has its weakness, and changing
the combination each pass keeps weeds on the defensive,” says Gemme. He still
ends up with one hand-weeding per season of the plastic mulch. “Some weeds always
grow in the center holes next to the crop, and there’s some with roots right
in the buried fold of the plastic.”
He rotates “ancient” spring-shanks in his line-up, usually using them next
to the plastic to pick out strips of weeds. “Nothing can get closer, and I can
angle them if I have to,” Gemme says.
Because “We’re forever tearing cultivation tools off and re-installing other
ones,” he’s hoping to add a second small “offset” tractor reserved for weed
control. His current tractors are the Cub and a Farmall 200 (a 1957 version
of the Super C).
As a category, offsets are general-use tractors of 10 to 30 hp.
The engine section is moved to left of center and the seat rests
next to the right fender. This realignment offers the driver an
unobstructed view of the right half of the row area. (See “Specialty
tractors for weed control,”) Used models with gearing that allows
extra-slow travel in small plants are especially valuable. Gemme
is looking for a cultivating tractor with vertical clearance greater
than the 14 inches on his Model 200, a non-offset model.
“Too often, we finish working a patch before we get the adjustment just where
we want it,” he explains. When a tool stays on a given tractor, it’s field ready
at a moment’s notice. When there are crops to harvest, cultivate and plant before
lunch, saving 15 minutes hitching time can be the difference between being in
the field and just knowing you should be.
“In most of my soils, cultivating seems to stimulate plant growth,” Gemme observes.
“When my soils get sealed by rain and heat, plants don’t thrive.” But in fields
with coarser sand, he accepts some extra weed pressure rather than risk additional
moisture loss during dry periods. He cultivates only if he’s sure he can follow
with irrigation once the weeds are dead.
“Weeds are getting tougher,” says Gemme. He’s getting tougher on them, too,
by learning their weak points and sharpening his weed-management strategies.
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