What’s been going on!

Busy week trying to take advantage of the amazingly cool weather, 54 degrees here on Wednesday morning!  It is the mid-summer reset with all of the spring crops mowed and turned under and summer cover crops being seeded today before the next possible rains.  New this year we will be trying out a seed drill to exactly place the seeds at the right depth and in good contact with the soil for best germination.

We used to be able to just spin the seeds out and lightly, but erratically, cover the bigger seeds and hope that a good rain would do the rest and cover them a bit more.  Increasingly we have had poor stands, especially of summer cover crops because we would not get our usual thunderstorms, instead they would not get a good start with sometimes thin plant densities which allows the weeds to get a foothold underneath them.

We have known that if we could just use a precision drill to seed them it should be much better and more consistent, problem is a good seed drill is $7000 or more.  This spring we joined a new Farmer Tool Sharing group that was still buying tools with a grant they received.  We suggested that they get a small quality seed drill and they did!  So today is the first test run for us and hopefully it will be the ticket!

Picture of the Week

Fancy new seed drill ready to go

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