In Europe there seem to be three machines very popular:

The Celli tillers, Treffler TG cultivators and Väderstad crosscut discs and all of their respective copies 😉 It also seems to require moderate subsoiling, at least in the beginning.

In the time period I learned a couple of new things, more or less stumbled upon them mostly but they didn’t really help to get rid of the headache yet…

• basically all above ground biomass is not compatible to the soil. If we work it in and happen to get anaerobic conditions it will rot and thus decrease organic matter instead of building up. So a roller after a disc or cultivator, plowing it in deep or a heavy rain are all bad options.
• to get the surface composting going the biomass should be quite young (not too much C content), otherwise the soil has no chance to digest it in a short time period. So fresh and max knee height as a rule of thumb. Otherwise rolling it and direct seeding might be a better option.
• surface composting seems to only get going if your soil is already active, so you either have to activate your soil beforehand somehow, or hope that spraying ferments will get it going right there and then. Being cold or wet doesn’t help of course…
• cutting the cover in small pieces makes the whole process easier afterwards, a good flail mower seems to be important, but there should not pass any time between cutting and skimming, otherwise the biomass just dries out and doesn’t become biologically active.
• controlling cutting depth is important as well. For fast removal of a previous crop we want as little root on the plant, but clover will grow again from it’s root if cut shallow. Cut deep (>5cm) clover will grow again from the cut of root/soil lump. So it seems we need to cut twice, once 2-3cm and once deeper at around 5-8cm. There are not many machines that are that precise, especially not without a roller that carries the machine. Or we would have to have something like a rotary hoe after the cultivation to air it up again?
• seed needs to land on the untouched horizon so it gets enough contact to the soil and gets access to the soil water. Pressing the mix of soil and biomass together while seeding might cause everything including the seed to rot and give our crop a bad start, especially in wet conditions. Even closing wheels could be an issue, but it definitely rules out all the seeders that run on rubber wheel rollers, like the Väderstads and Horschs…

I really don’t know how to get a solution to this yet, but there seems to be a lot of movement, especially since the looming glyfosate ban. So far we always judged our tillage and seeding tools by physical, chemical and economic outcomes. But we should judge all our actions by looking at biology since biology has the power to change all the other properties. So maybe all my struggles come more from not understanding biology than lack of technical gadgets…