Submission Date

7-19-2024

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Biology

Faculty Mentor

Denise Finney

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

Project Description

Maintaining soil health is essential for productive, sustainable agriculture, this is characterized by efficient nutrient cycling and high organic matter. Establishing soil health is a target for contemporary agriculture. Tillage has been used in agriculture to loosen and aerate the soil with signs of increasing crop yield. Although it carries effects of soil destruction with long term use. Living mulches are cover crops planted simultaneously with the main crop to increase soil health. To manage competition between living mulch and the main crop, living mulch systems often use tillage. The objective of the experiment is to determine what management strategy will have the most significant influence on soil health. We established a grass-clover living mulch field with three tillage treatments (wide, narrow, no till) and peppers as the main crop. The three tillage systems are compared to identify effects on nitrogen, microbial properties and crop yield. I hypothesize that the no till treatment will have reduced pepper yield due to competition from the living mulches. Furthermore, short term soil health will initially be favored by the tillage treatments due to aeration and nutrient cycling in the soil.

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