Drilling crops into a permanent living mulch is the holy grail for organic growers and a system developed in the south-west of France now gaining ground in the UK.Andy Cato created an innovative cropping system with the aim of repairing his soils, which had been degraded from years of continuous maize growing. The organic matter content of the clay soils was only 0.5 when he bought the 1 lOha farm, in Gascony, 13years ago after a successful music career.In the early years, the non-plough organic arable operation was not working as the soil was so degraded, he recalls. The state of the soils meant a constant battle with aggressive weeds vulpin des champs (French blackgrass), creeping thistle, and datura, a highly toxic weed common in irrigated monocultures.
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