How to Plant MILPA: Drilling, Broadcasting, and No-Till Options

0:00 One of the challenges with these really diverse mixes and milpa is one of the diverse most diverse mixes that we have is how do I get these seeds into the ground, how do I not get them too deep, how do I get them deep enough, what if I

0:12 Don't have equipment. Lots of questions around how do I plant this melba garden mix. Again, a lot of this is going to be dependent upon your situation, the equipment that you have if you're a

0:24 Larger scale farmer and you've got a no-till drill. Well great, you can put this in your drill. You can kind of run some simple calibrations. You can go out there, drill it in the ground at about three quarters of an inch deep and let.

0:35 It come up. So that's pretty easy if you have that equipment. Now not everybody has a nice no-till drill to get this in the ground and get it going, so then you're left with kind of being creative.

0:47 And figuring out creative ways to do this. If you're doing this on a very small scale, a very small plot, all you can do is really broadcast it. Then if you, the key is getting.

0:58 Seed to soil contact and so you've got to get that seed touching the soil in order for it to really germinate well. So if you till your ground up, you can get the milk of planted and get seed to soil contact if you're trying to.

1:11 Do this in more of a no-till fashion, which I applaud you if you're doing that. That's a great way to improve the healthier soil. If it's a small enough plot, try broadcasting your seeds and then mulching it down with straw or.

1:35 Rate the milpa is designed for about 35 pounds per acre at a drill grate. However, if you're broadcasting and especially if you don't have a good way of getting that seed to soil contact, you're going to want to increase your.

1:48 Seeding rate by 50 or even double it if your seed is going on kind of a thatch and not really down into the soil. So again anything you can do to get the seed to soil contact one thing that we

2:00 Found successful and you can do this on a relatively small scale. You need to scratch the soil up somehow, so if you have an old section of like a tying harrow or anything that will cut grooves or slots in the soil, you know.

2:12 Get that behind your ATV, get that behind your lawnmower, put some weight in it and go back and forth across your plot and it just gets a lot of scratches, lots of areas where you're roughing that up. Then go broadcast your seed and then find like an old bed spring or some boards or something and drag that back and forth across to smooth it back out again. That's just helping get seed to soil contact.

2:36 If you can mulch it, great. And then just keep it wet. You're going to need to keep it wet for seven to ten days to really get maximum germination from that broadcast situation.