Hey all,
I've got a little over half an acre of pasture that has a cover crop of Buckwheat, Cowpea, and sorgum/sundan hybird located in the South East. It's ready to be mowed down.
The question I have is how to get a second cover crop in. The pasture soil was poor enough that to start I had a local guy come by with a tractor and break things up a bit. I then seeded it all with a hand broadcast seeded and dragged a piece of chain link fence behind my riding lawn mower to cover up the seeds. It worked pretty well.
That isn't a practical option anymore. It don't want to pay the guy to till again and I don't want to till at all.
When reading about Cover Cropping and No-till, there seems to be a gap between the 'Farm' that has really equipment (tractors, seed drills, etc) and the gardener who can do it all by hand. The middle 'Hobby Farm' is a challenge.
So, my question is two fold.
1) What's the best way to put in a 2nd cover crop for what I have? I was thinking just mow down what's there, wait a couple of weeks and then broadcast the same mix again but this time using a tow broadcaster.
2) What equipment, techniques, and tricks are folks doing when expensive farm equipment (e.g seed drills) isn't available and doing it by hand on 2-3 acres isn't practical?
----- Ed
