Recently we've been considering the purchase of a fancy, brand new tiller to work the soils in our gardens. This seemed like a natural purchase considering we are in the process of starting a produce and egg business. Upon further consideration, however, we may be able to save ourselves a good deal of labor and the cost of that fancy new tiller by implementing a no-till system. Others have had success with similar systems, such as a successful no-till garden that is kept at the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Selfridge, ND. They use Round Up, which isn't something we're interested in, but we will find other ways of controlling weeds. Also, the Dakota Lakes Research Farm is just down the road from our place. They have been experimenting with no-till agriculture and cover crops in soils like ours for many years with favorable results. The manager there, Dwayne Beck, recently gave a colorful and insightful talk on soil health and implementing a no-till system for large scale agriculture that we think can be scaled down to what we're doing.
If you take a look at nature, you will see that all of the myriad variety of plants that grow of their own accord are grown in a no-till system. Grasslands are covered with grass without the aid of a gas powered tiller, trees fill lush forests without a single turning of the soil, and beautiful flowers bloom every year without a helping hand from anyone. Modern methods of growing things tend to ignore the powerful examples of nature, but we try very hard to work with nature whenever possible instead of fighting her. She usually wins. The reason all these plants grow so well without the aid of tillage is simple: plants don't need the soil to be tilled in order to grow.
In fact, turning the soil leads to all sorts of problems. One problem with tilling is that seeds are brought to the surface. Weed infestation can be greatly reduced by simply leaving the seeds buried where they won't sprout up and cause issues. Another problem is that the organic matter component of the soil is lost when the old dead plants from last year are removed and the soil is turned. Unless a healthy dose of organic matter is added, eventually the soils will either become clumpy clay, or a fine dusty powder. Neither are examples of a healthy soil. Also, the more organic matter you have, the more water your soils will absorb and hold. This means a lot in places that don't get enough rain, like where we live in South Dakota. Precipitation often comes all at once, and instead of running off, the rain will be absorbed and held by a soil with lots of organic material for plant use through the hot days of summer.
One enormous benefit of not tilling your soil is that it preserves the network of micorrhizal fungi. These networks of fungi run throughout your soil and help deliver nutrients to the roots of your plants. When you till, this network is destroyed and roots are only able to get nutrients from the soil directly contacting it. If you leave that network of fungi in place, nutrients can be delivered to those roots from a wider area.
The most obvious benefit is the savings in time and money by eliminating a fairly large chore from the list of many that we must accomplish to successfully produce and harvest a crop. This alone compels us to try a no-till method. Another benefit is the long term sustainability of such a system. Instead of scraping off the dead plants and piling them with chicken manure to compost and eventually be added back to the soil, we can simply knock the plants over onto the soil and let them compost right there. And instead of adding composted chicken manure all over the garden, which is wasteful and fertilizes the weeds as much as our plants, we can applying it more precisely to the areas where only our plants draw their nutrition. The entire system results in a more sustainable system with healthier soils for less work. Sounds good to me.
We will keep you posted on how things are going in our no-till gardens throughout the summer. We plant to grow melons, tomatoes, and peppers with this system, and if successful we will do the same thing with our other crops.
No comments:
Post a Comment