Technology Keys
In Farming God's Way we encourage farmers to practise biodiversity through rotations, relay cropping or growing green manure cover crops.
Rotations
• Rotations should occur every 3rd year.
• Divide lands into 3 equal proportions and allocate the 1st two to the staple crop, example maize and the 3rd portion to the rotation crop, example beans.
• Rotations break disease and pest cycles, improve soil structure and fertility, provide for protein and vitamins in family diets and help spread financial risk.
• Rotate from monocotyledonous to dicotyledonous species.
• Preferably include a legume such as beans, soyabeans, pigeon peas, cowpeas, sugar beans or groundnuts but can include sunflower, sweet potato and vegetables.
• The 3rd rotation portion can be subdivided further to include a variety of vegetables for a family’s nutritional supplement
Relay Cropping
Relay cropping is planting a second crop when the first one is dying back and is encouraged in areas where the climate allows for this or there is enough residual moisture towards the end of the season. Be careful not to plant the relay crop too early, as this will cause your first crop yield to suffer drastically when the grain fill stage is happening.
Pigeon peas and cowpeas planted at maize die back are good examples of Relay Cropping.
Note: Relay cropping is different to inter-cropping (e.g. planting beans between maize rows). We do not encourage inter-cropping practices as neither crops achieve their full potential. Instead allow the rotations plan to accomplish the full benefit of biodiversity to break disease cycles and get optimal yields amongst many other benefits.
Cover Crops
Cover crops have been used successfully for many years to build up the percentage cover of God’s Blanket, fix nitrogen, improve soil fertility, control weeds, prevent erosion and provide high protein animal fodder. Cover Crops can be grown in most climatic regions but are best suited to areas with an extended rainy season.
For example in Central Africa, grow cover crops in the short rain periods in order to recondition the soil for the main cropping season. In Southern African regions grow cover crops in relays with maize to make use of residual moisture to get good germination before the winter.
Cover crop examples:
• Legumes: dolichos lablab, mucuna/velvet bean, cowpeas, alfa alfa, peas and hairy vetch
• Monocots: Wheat, rye, oats, triticale, fodder sorghum
• Mixtures: 70% black oats : 30% Vetch and many others
Alternative Crop Guidelines:
