Tag Archives: cultivator

Roundup bred mutant pigweed

With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds. This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants. We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying, using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.

Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading →

Deep-Till: Back to the Future of Plowing

Roy Roberson writes in Farm Press about http://southeastfarmpress.com/cotton/herbicide-resistance-0525/:
Deep tilling of crop land pocked and rutted by heavy equipment used on rain and snow soaked, often frozen farm land may not only clean up the land, but may have a significant positive effect on managing herbicide resistant weeds, especially Palmer pigweed.
Back to the future! “Deep tilling” is the current buzzword for plowing. That’s how my father farmed, with a bottom plow, a subsoiler, a harrow, and a cultivator.

The same article continues to defend no-till:

There is no doubt about the many benefits of minimum or no-till cropping systems. Reduced-tillage saves farmers money in equipment, improves soil quality, improves the environment by making the soil more porous and produces better drainage. The list of benefits goes on and on.
Promotes more erosion, is my observation. And how does no-till save farmers money if they have to pay for increasing amounts of pesticides to try to deal with mutant weeds like pigweed? Continue reading →

Cultivating Organic Peanuts

Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath found this YouTube version of a Georgia Farm Monitor report on an Organic Peanut Field Day:

Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it several times so people would understand it. Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt on peanuts.” The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.

Gretchen remarks:

Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.
Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides have produced the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill. Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either. The only way is physical removal of the pigweed. And a cultivator can do that without manual labor (the report mentions that). Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with a cultivator.

So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people and move away from petrochemical pesticides. Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.

-jsq