This wiki is meant to document and share some of the results from a SARE farmer grower project titled: Mechanical approaches to perennial weed suppression in organically established no-till cover crops
This information is also meant to serve as a prototype wiki for relating agronomic and field observations to tool wikis and furthering discussions and dialogs Comments should be directed to the tool wiki forums under the primary tool?
The following album shows the yeoman's plow being tested in three different applications. The first is for undercutting mixed hay sod for the purpose of stressing or killing the deep rooted species in order to establish alternative crops with minimal soil disturbance - and as an alternative or variation to organic strip cropping. The second trial was to test the potential for undercutting perennial grasses and legumes in roller crimped no-till row crop situations. This was tested in both winter rye and hairy vetch crimped cover crop situations. (more annotations will be added to the gallery) More text will also be added to this write up.
The primary recommendation from these trials is that the undercut/weeder bar approach has some potential but that the deep yeoman's shank is detrimental to the physical nature of the practice and that a variation of a sweep plow would likely accomplish the task better.
The following is a design comparison between a sweep plow and a 22" yeoman's shank with weeder wings. Both are fixed shanks for mounting on the tool bar.
The following google earth map provides images and data of the replicated field trials that used the yeoman's plow with weeder bars in an organic strip till application to plant field cord into an alfalfa field. Treatment type and data collected from each plot is available by clicking on each individual plot.