We are in Malawi and promote no till farming (using the basics of Foundations for Farming). One of the challenges is the scarcity of mulching materials (usually crop residues are used) but they are also used for several different purposes (fuel and fodder etc) and by the end of our 8 month dry season there is little left. The average famer has well below 1/2 ha of land and therefore to set aside land to just grow a GMCC is not viable. Does anyone have experience with intercropping an edible GMCC with maize?
Has anyone tried this using the Foundations for Farming (Farming God’s Way) maize spacing approach (60 cm in row by 75cm between rows? What spacing would you recommend? What has been your experience?
1 Like
Roland Bunch’s “Restoring the Soil” on green manures/cover crops. First edition, free pdf:
Second edition kindle version;
https://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Soil-fertilize-overcome-droughts-ebook/dp/B0BWFJS7MF
paper version:
1 Like
in
see also:
“Pulse crops for sustainable farms
in sub-Saharan Africa”
Thank you Robert for the helpful resources.
Chapter: Improving cultivation of cowpea in West Africa
Chapter section: Plant configuration in intercropping systems in West Africa
A staggered maize–legume intercrop arrangement robustly increases crop yields and economic returns in the highlands of Central Kenya
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378429009002809
We’re in Central Tanzania and try the same thing. We planted maize and then mucuna, but we planted too late and it didn’t turn out well. Next time we’ll plant mucuna about 1 month after maize and see how that goes.
Other options are cowpea and lablab. Peanuts didn’t work too well, they need more sunlight it seems.
We’ll try all of them and report back.
