Tillage Impact On Soil Quality Within An Organic, Sod-Based Vegetable Rotation.

Major challenges in organic farming include limited fertilizer application, reduced insect, disease, and weed control with increased production costs compared to conventional farming. Improving soil quality through cover crops and conservation tillage is a long term way of alleviating some of these issues. Sod-based rotations have been proven to increase soil quality and so may also provide a management practice to improve organic vegetable production.  This study compared two tillage treatments, conventional and conservation, in a bahiagrass rotation of 0 to 3 years before vegetable production in order to determine if organic production would benefit from a proven conventional, sod-based rotation system.   Soil quality factors were measured, including available soil nutrients, labile carbon, soil moisture, and nematodes.