No Till Gardening

[oxbowfarm]

Jul 11, 2011 18:03:31 GMT -5 johno said:

I've observed that annual rye is an incredible root producer, depositing tons of organics on its own, but it lasts rather a long time before dying in early summer.

Rye is actually not that hard to kill if your roll it or mow it when its is right around boot stage. Mowing works better but a crimp roller works pretty well. There is a not till vegetable farmer in PA that does that on a massive scale with tomatoes and peppers. He plants a rye/hairy vetch cover crop and then rolls it down in the spring with a rolling stalk chopper and then no-till transplants his seedlings into it a week or so later.

[turtleheart]

i grow without tilling successfully. the biggest problem i have is starving deer getting pushed on me from development of the wetlands around me.

i can try to answer your questions if you have any. i want people to know that its not very difficult to build soils and grow food simultaneously.

i started out thinking that i needed to develop the gene pools and methods to farm in a sustainable way, without the ability to move around to replenish rotational grounds, without the importation of resources such as soils, fertilizers, and most importantly, water. when i have more area set aside for wildlife restoration and native plant reintroduction, and i am keeping the area free of most woody species, then i get alot of tall grasses, weeds, invasives and whatnot to use as mulch. the same soil the crops are grown in is what the weeds compete in so the weeds that are designed to accumulate what the soil in my crops' hills lack decompose releasing those minerals and nutrients. this reduces the need for rotation. also a perennial polyculture is maintained around the circumference of every hill, making soil retention and microbe/insect habitat ideal for fertility and disease/pest suppression. the mulch assists with the issue of no irrigation as the increase of biomass holds more water, the light cellulose barrier at the top, instead of a dense soil exposed, traps water and deflects heat. the mulch also breaks down slowly to feed the soil at the rate at which is can be fed, rather than force feeding, or starving. as a soil learns to take more, it is capable of giving more, and vice versa. it is important to have thick mulch, but not so thick as to create compost like conditions as this would be the wrong kinds of decomposer cultures for healthy root systems. without tilling, the soil needs to be free of compaction forever more, so walking on the hills is a sin. as the years progress and biomass accumulates the hill grows, and the soil loosens deeper and deeper. the plume of microscopic and macroscopic biological activity from the mulch sinks into the earth creating passageways for the water, air and roots, even in hard clay soils. the dark skin of the top is highly active eating away the mulch. as the mulch is broken down, the proteins release their nitrogen as ammonias and feed the plants. when the hard clay is tilled it destroys this cycle, and the digestive system of the soil. in order to fit the most planting space together with consideration of walkways, i instantly think back to traditional hill patterns of my ancestors. the same as the beehive, or the seal of solomon. with seven hills as close together as possible you get a hexagon. i put my feet apart to see how far i can spread them to be able to reach the center, and i have my standard measurement for how big i make them. i have 3 main methods of preparing soil for planting, mulching heavily and coming back to a weed free, insect loosened soil to plant the following year is the easiest way to plant and i do that for most things, but for my hills i do that too, only starting out with a shovel only the one time to turn the sod and shape the hill. i turn the soil once to get the sod flat and even upside down, then i rake the soil into a mound and then i mulch heavily. i try to do this early in the year right as its being planted so the broken soil that is releasing a nitrogen bomb will feed the first generation, and they will trap some of that fertility for the next year. at this point there is little that will grow back and you will be effectively weed free. just keep up with the mulching. at the end of the crops lives, the mulch is the thinnest from age, and i cut the plants at the base, lay them flat, and then lay a thick layer of the mulch of grasses and weeds on top. becuase i grow a high diversity of crops (when the animal deterrents work) this also reduces the need for rotation. becuase the diversity is planned it is even more effective still. the ideal thing would be for the pioneer crops you grow to produce more biomass than the pioneer weeds that would replace them if your hill was abandoned, as to continue increasing the fertility for next year. the growth of plants does not deplete soils as 2% of the plant is produced from the soil, the rest is from air, water and alchemy. its when we break the soil that the carbon breaks from the nitrogen, causing erosion on a chemical level, called mineralization of the humus.

im to tired to continue this time but i want to write more on this and post it. i look forward to discussing this further with all of you.

[turtleheart]

every year the soil becomes richer and has less weed seeds at the surface, and the surrounding wild culture becomes more used to what i do. every year the work becomes less and less, as the yields become more and more. the most work is initiating the system, once its working, you can spend an hour a week per acre, and still get a good crop. i often spend more time than nessecary playing. i like to hand cross my fruits and corn.

[steev]

Very interesting and generally reinforcing to my own concept of gardening. I wish you the best of luck in solving your deer predation problem; please let me know how, if you do. The deer on my farm are certainly not starving, thanks to me. In fact, they're so well-fed, they mostly raise twins.

[gabriel]

I'm trying a section of no-till this year. I put the cattle on it and fed half a dozen bales of hay and I'm bringing in all the old hay I can find and piling it 8"-12" deep. My plan is to pull back small sections of the hay and dig to break it up, then put mounds of compost in and put the vining crops there.

[stone]

Down here in GA, the heat and the constant drought work in tandem to create compacted soil.

Anyone that has ever attempted to dig a hole in the desert understands without explanation what I'm talking about. Anybody else would have to experience it to believe it.

In spite of the need to turn the soil, I try... again and again to get no till to work...
I did find.... last winter spreading a fresh layer of manure over the beds (in the sand) during the rainy season alleviated the need to till... I had a beautiful stand of winter crops in the area where I'd previously gardened, in the new area... not so much.

[greltam]

I live in the north, so I can't speak for southern areas. What I found was that my flower beds did superb because they had about 2 inches of wood mulch, while my garden dried to a crisp. The flower beds had just been put in around may, and the mulch kept the clay from drying out, so that it softened immensely. The flower beds remained relatively grass/weed free while the garden was overrun with grass.

Also, the amount of work to till and the requisite mechanical tiller and reliance on petroleum makes no till easier for me to accomplish with my limited resources, and creates a healthier soil. Just my two cents.

[ottawagardener]

I don't dig unless I'm reshaping the land/digging out a particular plant or harvesting. For me, it has worked better than well. My experience with double digging is limited and I have never mechanically tilled though part of my new garden had been tilled for years and it shows: soil is very light (I garden on mostly sand/beach deposits), no clear soil layering, low in organic matter, doesn't hold water and is full of annual weeds. I have also used this technique to establish gardens for clients which have varying soils from clay, infill and sand. My gardens have always been on lightly textured soils though I have some clay surface soils (near the bottom of the lake deposits) in parts of my new place which I'm excited to work with.

I don't use the Hida Manns/etc... technique of leaving sod cover between plant rows however I do think it's an interesting idea.

[templeton]

Unlike many here I garden in a relatively tight space. This means my espalier fruit trees along the back fence are tight up against my vege beds. If I don't dig the beds over in spring the tree roots starve my vege beds of nutrients and water in summer.
The heavy applications of horse manure I do twice a year means the soil which was hydrophobic stony clay is now very easy to turn - a garden fork is sufficient to get a godd tilth at sowing time (but I mostly transplant).
When our decade long drought ended 18 months ago the return of earthworms was phenomenal - prior to that I had barely seen a worm in my garden, now, the soil is honeycombed with wormholes. The change in soil structure has amazed me, and working the soil is now almost effortless.

Oh, for an unshaded acre!
T

[raymondo]

As it's only me and hand tools, I avoid digging as much as possible. The main bout of spade action (actually, I prefer a fork) occurs when I'm setting up a new growing area, or reclaiming one after a year of neglect.
For a while I was using heavy mulching which is excellent for keeping weeds at bay but provides a breeding ground for slugs and snails. I've now tried almost two years without heavy mulch and I've decided to go back to it. Light or no mulching only reduced the slug problem a small amount but increased the weed problem dramatically.
As for double digging, despite my mostly heavy clay, I have tried it but found the benefits versus the effort involved simply not worth it. A light fork over and plenty of mulch appears to achieve the same thing, only over a longer, sometimes considerably so, time frame.

[oxbowfarm]

What they've shown is that the effect of no-till or deep mulch does not actually reduce water loss to the soil, it just enables the soil surface to remain moist through capillary action. Since something like 90% of plant root mass and soil biological activity occurs right at the surface (15 cm or so)this means that plants have access to the full soil profile for an extended period of time even in a low water situation. But a mulched soil and a bare soil of the same soil type will lose water at the same rate.

Double digging is one of those things that sounds really great until you do some. I feel like the bio-intensive technique is really valuable in a lot of ways but they lose a lot of folks with the dogmatic insistence on yearly double digging. Ecology Action has also made claims that you can do so and not affect soil organic matter content which flies in the face of a mountain of agronomic research on the effects of tillage.

As a market gardener, I do a lot of tillage. There just isn't any viable system of producing vegetables for market without some form of tillage. The closest, most soil friendly system I've seen used so far is the reduced tillage bio-extensive system developed by Ann and Eric Nordell in PA. I'd like to transition our farm towards that model, but there is a considerable investment in equipment and infrastructure that we cannot afford all at once. But the benefits of at least a reduced tillage regime are very obvious when you study soil.

[potter]

But a mulched soil and a bare soil of the same soil type will lose water at the same rate.

I'm surprised of that claim. Last summer our area had unusually low rainfall...and beds that was mulched stayed moist considerable longer than those that wasn't. It was evident not only by the plants growth..but when the uncovered soil was turning dusty, underneath the thick mulch all was still moist and didn't need any extra irrigation.

[steev]

While I see the benefit of double-digging initially, the notion of doing it more than maybe once a decade eludes me, if it's valuable to re-do it at all. I think if one is growing a crop that needs very deep broken soil, fine, but I figure what that second shovel-depth accomplishes is just several years of what the worms will do, given lots of organic matter in the upper layer and adequate water. Had I my druthers, I'd sub-soil rip my beds initially and again every 5-10 years, just to keep things a bit looser below the surface layer of really worked-up soil.

For me, maintaining too much capillarity is just letting the daily dry breeze suck the water out of my field, which drains so well that there isn't any excess water very long anyway.

[MikeH]

Feb 7, 2012 6:46:47 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

Ann and Eric Nordell in PA. I'd like to transition our farm towards that model, but there is a considerable investment in equipment and infrastructure that we cannot afford all at once. But the benefits of at least a reduced tillage regime are very obvious when you study soil.

The Nordells are fascinating folk - newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/features/1204/nordell/index.shtml. It's not often that I see the word regenerative used to describe a horticultural effort. It's a far better descriptor than sustainable.

[paquebot]

Feb 7, 2012 12:20:32 GMT -5 steev said:

While I see the benefit of double-digging initially, the notion of doing it more than maybe once a decade eludes me, if it's valuable to re-do it at all. I think if one is growing a crop that needs very deep broken soil, fine, but I figure what that second shovel-depth accomplishes is just several years of what the worms will do, given lots of organic matter in the upper layer and adequate water. Had I my druthers, I'd sub-soil rip my beds initially and again every 5-10 years, just to keep things a bit looser below the surface layer of really worked-up soil.

For me, maintaining too much capillarity is just letting the daily dry breeze suck the water out of my field, which drains so well that there isn't any excess water very long anyway.

Several things about this. Double-digging is to create better drainage in heavy soils. Doesn't have to be a massive physical effort. One can start with thoroughly tilling the top 5 or 6 inches when dry and then use a 16" trenching shovel. Insert the shovel the full length into the soil and pull back to about 45º angle. Move 8 inches and repeat. Much of the fine dry material will filter down into the void behind the shovel. I've yet to find an easier way to do it with a silt over clay situation.

Also, don't expect any earthworms to do that. The only ones which operate below 8" are nightcrawlers and there holes are strictly vertical while leaving all of their castings on top of the ground.

Martin