Interrow Tillage

Introduction

Tillage exposes the soil to the air so that it breaks down and enables CO2 to be released back into the atmosphere. Deeper tillage leads to more carbon lost to the atmosphere. It also damages the microbes in the soil and breaks up the mycorrhizal relationships between the plant roots and the beneficial fungi in the soil. This reduces the vines’ potential to access nutrients in the soil.

Minimizing tillage is fundamental to maximizing soil carbon stocks, reducing soil compaction, preserving the microbiome in the soil, increasing water and nutrient retention, and facilitating the establishment of a rich biodiverse ground cover and the subsequent ecological benefits that bring.

If you ever invert the soil in the inter row, as a method of weed control, or to aerate the soil, you are likely to be damaging your soil biology and reducing your soil organic matter.

Occasionally cultivating the top few centimeters of topsoil to help establish cover crops may be beneficial, especially to get a healthy system up and running. Once the desired sward is established, it should be possible to manage it with mowing and mulching.

In detail

Tilled soil has:

  • Less carbon sequestered
  • Less water holding capacity, which means there is less available water for the vines and also increased risk of soil erosion and nutrient run off
  • Reduced ability to deliver nutrients to the vine’s roots in plant available form
  • Reduced ability to fight off pathogens
  • Soil that is unsuitable for passage of machinery when it has been raining
  • Higher temperatures as the soil is exposed to the sun, with very high temperatures causing further damage to soil life
  • Increased evaporation resulting in even lower water availability

The rationale for bare earth in vineyards has now been discredited in most vineyard contexts. Therefore, tillage in the interrow is not considered as necessary, and is not as common, as it once was. 

Vineyard ground cover in the interrow area is increasingly common, either in the form of native species such as grasses, clovers and wildflowers, which are allowed to regenerate naturally, or the sowing of specific cover crops, ideally direct drilled into the existing ground cover. Once established, there should be less need for tillage of the interrow areas.

Concerns regarding competition for nutrients and water in drought conditions are being balanced by findings that ground cover both reduces soil temperatures and evaporation and that the roots improve the soil structure so that the soil has a higher water holding capacity.  They also reduce soil erosion and nutrient run off in high rainfall events.

Management of the interrow is often done by mowing or crimping and rolling. Both can be done on an alternate row basis to provide continual habitat for pollinators and invertebrates.

Increasingly, grazing animals are being incorporated into the vineyard to control ground cover growth. This brings the added benefit of fertiliser addition.

Further information on cover crops in the Cover Crops section

Further information

Viticulturist Mimi Casteel on Her “No-Till” Farming Approach to Combat Climate Change | Wine Enthusiast Magazine

Organic No-Till – Rodale Institute

Toolkit

Monitoring soil health

Introduction A fundamental principle of RV is good soil health, therefore it is essential to monitor: Soil samples should be taken for all the blocks which have different conditions or are subject to different management operations. They should be sent to specialist soil sampling labs for analysis. Regular testing should be undertaken of samples taken […]

Soil organic matter

Introduction An important biological property is the soil organic matter (SOM) content. SOM is the foodstuff for a large variety of soil organisms ranging upwards in size from bacteria, archaea, and fungi (the microorganisms) to earthworms, ants, termites, and wood lice. This hierarchy of organisms constitutes a soil food web. As SOM is consumed by […]

Undervine Tillage

Introduction Many tools now exist to manage the undervine strip mechanically, and without resorting to herbicides, and these all have their advantages and disadvantages. An intervine plough that turns the soil may be the most effective in removing weed roots, but will cause the most damage to soil biology. Tools that cut weed roots without […]

Decompaction

Introduction Compaction in vineyards is a common problem, frequently caused by the regular passage of heavy machinery. Compacted soils perform poorly, waterlog easily, and do not support healthy microbial populations. The best way to avoid compacted soils is to develop a healthy soil biology, and use plants with deep root systems, and encourage earthworms. In […]

Soil/ground cover

Introduction One of the key principles of regenerative viticulture is to avoid bare soil – keeping the ground covered (see cover crops) also reduces soil temperature during hot periods. Living ground cover also provides habitat and biodiversity within a vineyard. Furthermore, photosynthesis captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A higher percentage of the ground covered […]

Cover crops

Introduction Some of the key principles of regenerative agriculture are: Cover crops / ground cover can help achieve these objectives. Plants in the vineyard (which can be naturally generated and/or sown cover crops) can be grown within vine row alleys, in the under-vine strip, in headlands, and surrounding the vineyard. They can offer multiple ‘ecosystem […]

Vine fertility/nutrition and composting

Introduction The annual removal of crop and prunings also removes nutrients from the vineyard, depleting their availability within the ecosystem. Some vineyards rely on synthetic fertilisers to ‘fix’ issues related to nutrition. However, reliance solely on these applications creates a short-term feedback loop that can: In such cases, it becomes necessary to provide increasingly further […]

Animal Integration

Introduction There is great potential with animals to accelerate soil health and regeneration through planned, strategic grazing management. Livestock also have the potential to reduce machinery movements throughout the vineyard at certain times of the season. This can reduce costs and time spent doing tasks, but it also limits the damage to soil from machinery […]

Water use

Introduction Irrigation of vineyards is a common practice in almost all wine-producing countries worldwide, although it is (currently) forbidden by law in many traditional European wine regions. It is particularly common at the commercial end of the wine sector, with irrigation necessary to produce the larger crop loads required. At the fine wine end of […]