Plow in the ground

On May 12, 2014 we put a plow into the ground here at East Durham Farms.  While I had plowed two weeks earlier to plant potatoes, it was a much smaller area.  Here I am plowing under a Fall planting of winter wheat.  It grew about 6 inches this Spring and I think anything is better than nothing.  I have only used winter wheat as a cover crop but am going to try a few different ones this year.  I am trying clover during the summer between my garden rows and we are preparing for a future expansion of our blueberry patch and I am going to try buckwheat in that area.

I am aware and support the no till philosophy but my fields are still young and need to be broken up in my opinion so we continue to plow and then disc before we plant.  The area in the photo is about a half an acre and is our main planting area.  We usually use half for pumpkins and the remainder for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, beets, etc.  It is not fenced so we plant deer sensistive crops in a fenced in garden.  These include peas, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc.

I will disc, fertilize with a chicken manure fertilizer and add Azomite hopefully in the next week to ten days.  I am adding Azomite, which contains trace minerals at a rate of 200 pounds per acre after an iniital application of 400 pounds to an acre.  This combined with rock phosphate, lime, manure and  cover crops shold slowly bring the soil back to a happy place.