Management Strategies for Incorporating a Rye Cover Crop into Small Scale Organic Vegetable Systems

• Rinat Dubrawsky, Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Delaware

• Abby Reeves, PLSC, University of Delaware

As organic food production has become increasingly popular in recent decades, the need for suitable weed control methods have likewise risen in demand. Due to the restrictions inherent in organic operations, conventional weed control tactics that heavily rely on regular herbicide application are not viable options to address weed pressure. Consequently, alternative management methods are necessary for organic production. To understand the efficacy of various weed management efforts, our experiment included four different bed preparation treatments in our test beds: plastic cover, roller-crimped rye, flail mowed rye, and conventional tillage as our control. Each bed preparation treatment was then further divided into two plots. One plot was covered with a thick plastic silage tarp for three weeks following bed preparation, while the other was left untarped and planted with bush beans directly following bed preparation. Throughout the research period, we conducted weekly weed assessments and timed weeding within standardized areas of the beds, with the goal of identifying the most time- and resource-efficient strategies for suppressing weeds without sacrificing bush bean yield. Although data analysis is still ongoing, preliminary observations indicate differences in the most prevalent weed species between tarped and untarped plots– lambsquarters and smartweed were most common in the untarped plots, while redroot pigweed was most prevalent in the tarped plots. Overall, the untarped plots experienced greater weed pressure than their tarped counterparts. These initial findings suggest that tarping may provide organic growers with a practical, herbicide-free strategy for reducing weed pressure while influencing weed species composition. Once yield and labor data are fully analyzed, the results may help producers select bed preparation strategies that support efficient weed control while maintaining crop productivity.