Date: April 03, 2009 @ 8:38 AM

Tractor Jam

There was a tractor jam at Dragonfly Vineyard this week.  There aren’t any traffic lights and Aaron didn’t have a traffic copter in the area but it might have been needed. Four tractors on a four-acre vineyard seem like a lot, but each had its purpose to fully integrate our cover crops.

It is the time of year when we have to knock down the cover crops to help the soils and aid in frost protection if we get some cold nights.

All those tractors had to follow a choreographed plan (think of them as the Fred Astaire of the John Deere/ Kubota world).  Aaron just needs to set them to music when he does the You Tube video. (It may not be as good as asking Aaron about line dancing in the Nickel & Nickel courtyard.)

The first tractor just mowed the cover crop and mulched the pruning canes. It is the fastest.

The second tractor has an implement called a sunflower. Its spinning head made some marketing guy think of a sunflower but it actually rips out every weed that is under the vines. Think of a spinning wire brush that is scraping the weeds off the soil surface.

The third tractor drags a disc along to incorporate the cover crop and turn the soil so we end up conserving soil moisture.

The newest and slowest of the group is the spader that is used on every other row to fully incorporate the cover crop to a deeper level in the soil. It should give the soil even more of the benefits of the nutrients and organic matter as it decomposes.

In a day, Dragonfly went from having cover crop as high as an elephant’s eye (short elephant) to a manicured vineyard with its organic cover crop worked into the soil…thanks to our tractor jam.