Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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out there. I spent $1,800 on mine and I will use it year after year. We can
go look at it. It is a six-row cultivator, and you take all of the shovels off
and put the burners on.” That's right, organic farmers use a flame weeder
a few weeks after planting their crop. The weeds are burned off, and the
crop plant comes back strong. Joel explains, “You flame right over the top of
the bean. And it will kill everything in that little band, and then the rest of
them - when you start cultivating you want to roll the soil up to the bean so
you cover everything else. Yes, the bean itself gets flamed, it does. It singes
the cotyledon a little bit, but they keep growing. You really should have the
burners in so they were directed straight over the row. It's like a first flush.
The little grass was just two leaves. You flame it and kill it. I am convinced
that if you can burn off all of the weeds that come up with the beans, I can
control everything else with a rotary hoe and cultivating.”
As is typical in organic farming, information must be sought from across
the country. When Joel initially bought his flame weeder, he “consulted
with a man in Minnesota, and he says they've been doing it up until the
first trifoliate. He's been off of chemicals since 1972 and organic since 1985.
He said he'll even flame his corn when it is clean, because he has always
gotten at least a four-bushel increase in yield. He says it is generally a four-
to eleven-bushel increase. So he said even when his corn is clean, he will
flame it anyway, just for the yield increase. Just having the flame on the
corn causes a yield increase. And these are side-by-side trials, and he doesn't
know why. No one has been able to explain it. Maybe it is the shot of carbon
dioxide from the flame or maybe the stress changes something in the plant. I
don't know. But he says every year he takes side-by-side tests.”Many organic
farmers conduct their own experiments and disseminate these true research
results among their peers.
Although Joel has a background in agricultural sciences, reads extensively,
and conducts his own on-farm research, he still jokes about some organic
techniques that he has learned. “Everything that they say about conventional
farming doesn't apply to organics. They always tell you the earlier you get
your stuff in, the better, and I shot myself in the foot this year. I got out
there too early with the planter after two years of wet weather and being
delayed. I wish I would have waited until about the third week inMay. I told
Adela, 'Next year, tie me up, lock the shed, cover my eyes, plug my ears so I
can't hear or see the neighbors, or maybe just go on vacation and come back
the first week of May.' The old saying is that if you can sit bare-assed in the
field comfortably, then you can plant. It's the truth. This is scientific organic
here! If you can sit there comfortably for five minutes, then go ahead and
plant. But when the ground is cold, you want that seed, as soon as it starts
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