Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003262207
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OTTER HILL LENGTH: Medium
The Turners sit tight.
They have felt the 85-degree days. The bridges of their noses are reddened by the sun. Their winter rye, just weeks ago little more than inch-high slender shoots combed across a hillside, has roused from winter's dormancy. The rye is deeper green, and reaching toward shin height.
Nature has, in recent weeks, mounted a powerful campaign to lure gardeners and farmers to the soil.
Ray Turner and his sons aren't falling for it.
Air temperature is one thing. Soil temperature is quite another, and planting corn seed into cold, damp soil is asking for trouble. Seeds won't germinate, and could lie dormant where they are easy prey for disease.
Ray, Jimmy and Billy Turner will wait until the second week of April - when soil temperature should rise into the 50s - before starting to plant this season's corn. Some of the corn will mature in 90 days, another variety will take as long as 120 days.
Some they will grow for the corn ears and kernels; other plants will never produce and ear but the leaves and stalks will be shredded for silage.
Once the Turners start planting, the task will last for weeks. They will be planting without plowing, using a no-till planter.
Instead of passing over a field five times to plow, harrow, disk and plant, the Turners will drive each field only once and the job will be completed.
"Plowing is slow and expensive," says Billy. "It takes a lot of tractor, and that means a lot of fuel."
Every few years, the Turners will plow fields to keep soil from being compacted by tractors and harvesters, he said. Hard as rock, compacted soil sharply curtails plant growth.
Nearly all of the plowing at the Turner farm is done in autumn, and it is done to eliminate stubborn weeds - pokeweed, briars, milkweed and Johnson grass, perhaps the most troublesome of all.
Johnson grass is a tough, tall weed that resembles corn. Last fall, the Turners tried to eradicate Johnson grass growing in a grassy waterway in a barley field.
They plowed the sod and the weed and planted new grass. But rain washed out the seeding and the gullies have since grown in the place of neat waterways.
The waterways are gentle ditches, designed to carry runoff water from sloping fields without soil erosion. In early summer after the barley is harvested from the field, the Turners will slowly work the field again with a plow, trying to reshape the grade and re-establish the grass in the waterway.
Most chores at their dairy farm now are preparing for spring planting, clearing the miscellaneous tasks of winter.
Together, the men poured a concrete slab near the milkhouse. It will eliminate a persistently muddy bog and drain water into a lagoon.
Ray Turner spent a recent day picking debris from a field - stones, stumps and brush cleared last year - to make way for planting.
Ray was planting hay for a neighbor, while Jimmy Turner was plowing neighbors' garden plots.
Billy Turner was peering into the heart of an old Ford tractor engine.
"Last week was alternator and battery week," he said, wiping his hands clean. "I put two in."
"I still haven't figured out what's wrong with that one," he said, nodding toward a new tractor sitting inside a cavernous shed.
He will, and soon.
Planting is coming, and once it starts, the Turners will have time for little else.
by CNB