Source:
Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2: Reduced tillage strategies for vegetable cropping systems [DVD]. A. Stone. 2006. Oregon State University Dept. of Horticulture. Corvallis, Oregon. Available at: http://www.weedemandreap.org (verified 17 Dec 2008).
This is a Weed 'Em and Reap Part 2 video clip.
Featuring
Mark Schonbeck. Virginia Association for Biological Farming. Floyd, VA.
Audio Text
Compatibility
Another important thing that we’re looking at is what I call compatibility. And that is that any cover crop and its residues are going to affect the next vegetable in a number of different ways. One is how cool do they keep the soil and how moist do they keep the soil? Is this favorable or unfavorable. Another one is allelopathy. Any crop residue has a specific set of chemicals that it gives off, that it will favor some plants and it will suppress others. And finally, there’s a microbiological effect that’s becoming more and more well known. Every plant species puts somewhere between 10-30% of its photosynthate, its solar energy converted to biomass, goes out into the soil as soluble food. And that’s feeding a range of organisms and different species of plants favor different ranges of organisms. That is partially responsible for the rotation effect.
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