Strip cultivation is a ground management tactic available to perennial fruit growers that provides a non-chemical means of weed control. I compared strip cultivation to herbicide application in an apple orchard and a vineyard over two years, measuring impacts on weed cover, soil nitrogen, leaf nitrogen, soil organic matter, ground predator communities, and two pest insects: the plum curculio and codling moth. Weed cover decreased more quickly after cultivation events than herbicide events, and was less spatially variable in cultivated plots. Soil and crop nitrogen conditions were similar between the treatments, except for N mineralization occurring in the soil 2-4 weeks after each cultivation event. No differences in soil organic matter content were observed. Differences in ground predator community varied between taxa, and prey removal experiments indicated very similar predator activity between the two treatments. The cultivator buried fifty percent or more of sentinel pest insect larvae on the soil surface. A greater proportion of plum curculio larvae buried under laboratory conditions survived to adulthood compared to unburied larvae. Buried codling moth adults were unable to emerge from burial. Buried codling moth larvae had drastically reduced survival to adulthood compared to unburied larvae.
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