Let me get this straight. No dogma. No inflexible prescriptions. Instead, you're encouraging me to continuously learn more and then apply the relevant data where it makes sense in the context of my market garden to support soil health? What is this madness? 😉 As always, thank you for sharing your experiences with us. I'm going into my second year with my market garden and am grateful for the ways in which you've shaped my thinking. All the best to you.
I farm in South Carolina. My family has 170 acres of land that is mostly just a forest of pine trees. Our approach to agriculture is a bit different than anything I've seen on any UA-cam channel. When we are setting up a new plot we chop all the smaller pine trees down (we leave the large ones), burn the entire field, till the entire field, plant cover crops for three years in said area, let the wild deer eat the cover crop, burn the area again, till it again, and then form beds. After that I throw up some electric deer fencing and it's off to the races. The land is so fertile by this point I barely have to use any fertilizer, of which I prefer 10-10-10. When I mean the land is fertile, I mean it. My soil looks like peat moss, it has so much organic matter. Hydrophobia is a major problem, as so much organic matter has broken down, which creates a waxy like substance. It's a spongey amazing reddish color. This is a major benefit of converting forest to farm. The topsoil is freakin insane. I grew an acre of field corn for 50 dollars this summer. I got 250 bags of deer feed that I sold. Thank you deer for your free poop. Once the yields start looking crappy and I have to use more fertilizer we replant baby pine trees in that spot and repeat the process somewhere else. We're essentially sweeping a big circle on a piece of the 170 acres in this manner. I've found the perfect small scale farming model, but nobody wants to hear it because you need about 50 acres minimum to really pull it off. When we made the road through our land we used a wood chipper and piled the wood chips on either side of the road. My uncle went through and planted around 100 blueberry plants, 100 raspberry plants, and 100 blackberry plants into the wood chips. It's like a mile of berries now. Never had to fertilize once. We make around $10,000 off of just this part of the farm every year. Slash and burn followed by cover cropping and letting the local fauna eat the cover crops and poop all over the soon to be plot is peak regenerative agriculture. Prove me wrong.
Mind if I ask did the deer have any strong preference for certain cover crops over others, or were there any you felt weren't efficient for feed with the time and space they took up?
@@jackiej6233 So my buddy owns a farm supply store. Whatever he can't sell I take for a discount. So, we mainly use peas, radishes, and mustard. The deer do not seem to like the mustard too much. They prefer peas.
Nice may I ask does this create that terra nova charcoal stuff ..biochar in the soil? Thats how the forest farmers do it slash and burn and then let it regrow forest ...and they have amazing soil. At least you have some carbon involved. I think the main reason people don't use it is they don't have a machine to spread mulch and leave it for ages to form soil. They just keep using fertiliser again and again and again. The soil on farms here is mostly clay and muddy looking and they spread a lot of slurry on it. Where there are smaller farms around with trees around them the soil is reddish brown peaty looking I would guess because. The trees shed theur leaves and the leaves add some carbon. Also they are small so the leaves get trapped in there. And they aren't using big machines cos the feilts are so small I mean really small. Like one minute walk across it small.
If "how to" is not supported by a "why", you are not learning much. Love this channel. Context is so important and you are doing great job discussing many whys.
Our goal is to get to no till, but our ground is soooo rocky, that we have to literally have to start at square one and create soil. We have lived here 4 years. Our first year we trucked in compost to put in the raised beds since we couldn’t even get a tiller through the soil (it literally bounced off the surface). The second year, we got another load in and a caterpillar tunnel. Each year we have set aside a section of land where we will build soil. We have chickens/turkeys/ pigs for some parts of the year so we take all the soiled shavings and pile them in the new area and till them twice-once in spring as soon as the ground is thawed and again in the fall. This year was the first year we observed worms in the section we tilled our second year so we planted in it and got good yields! We will keep doing this until the area we want for gardens is “big enough” and has enough “earth” that we don’t have to build it any more, just add a bit more compost. It’s a long term project for sure! But we will get there!
Check out Neversink Farm's rock pile. He has a big youtube presence. He showed a pile that came from just one greenhouse that blew my mind. It is surely worth doing.
I know of one farmer who went against the norm... his wife left him and everyone said he was crazy... that year he had a bumper crop and all the other farmers in that area failed. He acquired another farm that year. He continued to grow and now is the most successful in his area
WHEN EVERYBODY IS GOING LEFT, TURN YOUR HEAD TO THE RIGHT. THE MASSES ARE SHEEP. AND, IF THAT ONE FARMER SUCCEEDS, YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO FOLLOW HIS METHOD, OR DIE TRYING, EVERYBODY CHILL, THE SEEDS KNOW WHAT TO DO, STOP SORAYING.
Sounds like what happened with Greg Judy. He farmed cattle the old way and almost went bankrupt. Returning to old methods (plus utilizing "new" technology like electric fencing) not only saved his farm but he appears to be extremely profitable now.
I know a farmer that does air seeding. Compressed air drills the seeds into unploughed fields with the crop residue still there. He contracts out his services and does quite well. It’s no dig, saves fuel, saves multiple trips over the field, ie time and prevents soil erosion.
My dad is a 4th generation traditional farmer. The restrictive culture is REAL with older farming generations in our area. Why doesn't everyone eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly? Human nature, which defies logic more than we admit. Change is scary to many people. GD stubbornness is another element.
I'm a market gardener in SW France, midway across the Pyrenees. It's a 'micro' production - little more than 1 acre, using 5-6 300m sq rectangles for rotation. All under organic cert rules. I use hi grade black plastic to prep new ground, and afterwards the tractor with a 2-blade plough and a 5ft rotovator. I'm fully aware of no-dig and apply some principles, however the reason I won't go any further is VOLES, which are prolific in surrounding valley. Voles will chew the roots of any plant but are especially content to scoff carrots and potatoes. They are rarely seen above ground, staying hidden in the upper foot deep layer (or even 8"). If you put any object or mulch down, voles will take full advantage of the security it offers to not tunnel, but pass at the surface interface. The ground must be turned to disturb them. Before planting out I plough then pass at least 3x with the rotovator. I keep a barrier perimeter strip around each rectangle - and turn this over many times more. I've tried trapping the beggars - not v practical on this scale. Cats & dogs are helpful, as are presence of predators, but there's only so much they can do.
to distrub them would it not be possible to use sheep f.ex? LIke after harvest season you sow a cover crop where you let ur local shepeard graze after it has established a bit? I know that they do this with no till in rowcrops to compat mice.
@@johnransom1146 Like most places, France will have killed most of its wolves. If they're lucky, foxes and coyotes might come back. But yeah, I'd like to know the full story on what predators they killed if there are too many rodents.
I live in Nova Scotia Canada. Oodles of predators. They only get voles in towns and they dig tunnels and you see mounds. I’ve got so many out here in the bush you don’t see voles, mice, nothing like that. There are ermine, coyotes, my dogs, bald eagles and hawks, owls, snakes, and others. Bears too @@DrDavidThor
I did not know how seriously some people take this stuff till or no till until I started videoing my garden. I try a little of everything to see what works. You have been an inspiration and helped my garden be more successful last summer and I'm sure in the next growing season. I have gardened for years and never heard of no till so I'll end it by saying: "You don't know what you DON'T know" haha
sorry, please excuse my bad English. My observation here in Europe is that the no-till movement has gained massively in importance. Here in Germany, around 1300 micro farms were set up to grow vegetables last year. The most with no-till
Up here in Latvia the state is funding many test zones to research regenAg type set ups and I know some farmers are already doing more minimal tillage.
ONLY BECAUSE ITS A NEW IDEA BASED ON AN OLD IDEA. YOU NEED A SIMPLE MULCH. SUPER SEDD SPREADERS DON'T LET YOU MULCH. THAT'S WHY A 3 ACRE ORGANIC FARM WILL OUT PRODUCE 30 ACRES OF CO,,ERCIAL FARMING.
That's the key. Small farms, and commercial. People growing twenty hectares cannot put that much attention into the lifecycle of the soil, people who are not making their living selling produce don't have the time and money to no till outside of pots.
oh so EU is actually putting regulations and programs in place to actually help with something good? we are so used to governments being abusive that once something good is made is quite the shock 🤣
about the "20 Hectares" argument there, I don't know... my grandfather's property was a 20 Ha rice farm (I think space for the house and entrance yard was also included in this 20 Ha not sure) 20 Ha is not that big amount of land to become "unmanageable"... it's a fairly quick walk from one corner to the other corner... there was plenty of down time in the winter, there's plenty of time to care about the land in a size like that (rice is more complicated because it turns into mud)
What would be more important than growing extremely healthy crops without petroleum toxins that are always neurotoxic & carcinogenic. All of my Regenerative Organic crops have been extremely delicious, vibrant fragrant smells are so clean & pure, energy derived from these foods are immense. Thank You Jesse, for All you do.
Hey Jesse, I just want to say this is hands down my favourite UA-cam channel exactly for videos like this. I see your video, my brain does an Irish jig and I click instantly. I love that you can take a skeptical question from the comments about your farming philosophy and answer it respectfully and informatively with nuance and humility, without being defensive or falling into the trap of dogma. Since the comments section on UA-cam can sometimes be a cesspool and you probably don’t hear it enough, from a farmer going on 13 years of constant experimentation (8 years running my own farm, and 5 of those years transitioning and operating it no till *because of YOU*), thank you for everything you do. You’re awesome. See you in the next video. Okay. Bye. Edit: And say hello to kitty cat for me. She’s awesome too. Meow meow meow. Purr. (She’ll understand what that means.) Good kitty cat.
NO NEED TO EXPERIMENT, ALTHOUGH ITS FUN, USE NATURE, FOLLOW WHAT GOD CREATED AND YOULL HAVE GREAT SUCCESS. MULCH, BUT THE NATURAL KIND, DON'T FORCE NATURE. EVERY GENERSATION IS TRYING TOO HARD TO IMPROVE DADS FARM, IT GETS RIDICULOUS.
I’m just a retired guy with a backyard garden in raised beds with no particular expertise, but I love gardening and have been doing it for many decades, and as a young man, worked on a 80 acre farm growing vegetables. We always disced and plowed in the spring, then planted. I had no reason to question the methods. They worked and we raised and sold lots of vegetables. In the ‘80s I started a family and began backyard gardening, and also began moving toward more organic methods. I was a faithful reader of Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine, and since then have always incorporated organic pest control, fertilization and composting into my garden, although I believe there’s a place for synthetic fertilizer. I say all that to say that I’ve mulled these questions around in my head for the better part of 50 years, and a question that has occurred to me, is that all composting methods encourage some degree of turning (aka tilling) to incorporate air for aerobic bacteria. Why is it beneficial to till compost but not the soil? I’m not sure I buy into the no till rationale, if I understand it correctly. Even in my raised beds, with soil as soft as a baby’s behind, some degree of aeration is needed after a long growing season, where the soil has become relatively compacted due to rain and watering, and re-amending the soil requires working the amendments into the top layers of soil. Doesn’t all this sort of making tilling or not tilling a moot point?
@@mwmingram I think it depends. You can till compost into the soil, you're actually not breaking up the lower layer for the soil when you do that. And you are mixing the soil and compost together so that there is more surface area for the compost to break down and microbes implement into the soil. (I hope that makes sense). I mean, you can put a layer of compost down and then a layer of soil on top. The plant roots will eventually get to the compost as they get bigger. But there is no grantee that the compost won't burn the plant. I guess you can do this method 2 or 3 months before actually planting. Giving the compost time to break down. And you don't wanna till the soil cuz you'll be breaking down the structure of the soil. Which would inhibit water retention, microbe retention,. If it's too porse and aerated all the fertilizer and water you pour into the soil will just drain deeper into the soil outside the roots reach. So you'd end up fertilizing and watering more frequently. Besides, nitrogenase enzymes of nitrogen-fixing bacteria are extremely sensitive to oxygen...so you'll be killing of nitrogen fixating bacteria. :) I dunno if it helps. Just my opinion due to surface area and micro 101. I've actually done no-till method for years cuz I'm lazy, lol. I would put a layer of compost on top and mix it into the top soil a bit cover it with straw then a tarp for a month or so. I put the tarp on top cuz we get lots of rain and I don't want my compost washed off or the sun to sterilize my good microbes. Then when I'm ready to plant, I'll remove the tarp and the straw. I toss the straw into my compost bin for next year because it's been aged and is already breaking down.
IMHO, The problem with your question is that you're equating compost with soil. Soil is not the hot stinking pile that the compost is. There are many natural living and breathing "tillers"in there like the earthworm that survive and thrive in undisturbed soil in the vicinity of living plant root system and slowly composting organic matter, unlike in the compost.
One thing that I've experienced is the reluctance of institutions to entertain new ideas. When I was first getting started with a little plot in my back yard, LOTS of people gave me the advice to contact my local cooperative extension office for information and advice. On one hand, they were great with recommendations for which varieties grew best and for basic soil tests. On the other hand, the Master Gardeners were very limited in what they could (or would) talk about outside of "traditional" gardening practices. Asking about no-till practices frequently got me looks like I was a crazy person and recommendations for the best rototilling services in my area. Trying to get advice on permaculture practices like hugelkultur or dynamic accumulators was impossible. It has gotten a bit better in recent years, but I can only wonder how many gardeners get introduced to the "old" practices by local extension offices and never go beyond those methods.
My experience as well, in the Master Gardening programs in two states. Back then colleges got their funding from chemical commercial agriculture, and they didn't want to compromise that by offering non chemical based advice and recommendations. Not supposition, fact, explained to me when I asked why organic methods were not allowed to be advised when working in the program. We were told that if we offered suggestions not endorsed by Extension, we would be kicked out of the program. I've seen this change from when I started as a Master Gardener in the 80's, at last.
Many interesting comments and thoughts here. I am a horticulturalist and landscaper by trade. I did my education at an agricultural school in Ontario, Canada in the 90s. My education and the education of the people taking "farming" courses, did not include any information about no till/no dig gardening. While the fundamentals of our program were taught, it was definitely geared towards a career involving tilling, chemicals and products commercially available. I did do a soil course but it really focused on nutrients for plants and nothing else. Today, we know so much more about the world of soil and it's connection and the overall health connections. Science is catching up and helping everyone who wants to know about these connections. It is channels like this that help educate and spread the word that no dig/regenerative gardening is an option for some. I myself have some no dig beds, a larger garden that we use the rototiller on and a couple Hugelkultur mounds that are no dig. I didn't start off with no dig but as the years go by, I have understood my land and do what works in the different areas. Once I build up the soils in those areas and get them to where I think they are really healthy, then I transition them into no dig if I feel like they are ready and will thrive. There are several factors that affect an area and sometimes you just have to deal with them first and that's ok. I do agree that many farmers are learning and with each generation change will come. As long as there are people out there sharing what they are doing so that everyone knows what the options are, eventually the industries will follow suit. Simply because that is how they will make their money. When the consumers are educated many will make the choice to buy produce from small local market gardens or even start growing themselves. For those of us who are passionate about these methods, it is really important to develop a community around you and create a small movement that gains notice in your area, so that more and more people can learn and join. It takes a village as they say. ☺ We have 10 acres here but most of it is forest. Permaculture is my jam. I incorporate many species around the property that are perennial or self seeding so that my food forest provides without a lot of interference. So you see, I give everything a try. In the end a combination might be what works for you. Just start. Make the change. Move forward. There will be a community out there to help you along. Be brave. Best of luck. ☺
Yes, transitioning is something most ignore. It applies to married life, spiritual life, and soil life.A good example is what is called the adolescent period, the transitioning to adulthood
While you had a lot of important observation - I think the point about how "no-till" is defined is an important one. With some of the more stringent definitions I've heard regarding "no-till" I doubt even nature would be considered "no-till." Given all the burrowing and rooting animals in nature (ants, worms, gophers, rabbits, etc) the soil can be disturbed quite a bit - even without considering animals like wild pigs that may make an area look like a rototiller was taken through it. I think between regional differences and even different farm practices/crops there are a lot of different ways to get to a same (or similar end point). Having moved from Minnesota to Alabama years ago really opened my eyes to just how extremely different the needs and practices for successful farming/gardening can be from place to place. Some places may require tillage just to get the soil warm enough for early or long growing crops, and others may need it just to bury and slow the decomposition process - or to pin crop reside down so it doesn't wash or blow away. Personally I think the single best thought I've heard/read when it comes to farming/gardening would boil down to "Have a purpose for what you do, but observe and be prepared to change course/practices as needed."
I was digging through your old videos and stumbled across the no till carrots yesterday. What I found interesting is during a transition to a new method (you were transitioning to no till) a farmer will have to spend extra time and energy figuring out whether it works, and whether it "just needs a few seasons to get right". Considering No-Till has a big push to build an ecosystem, it can be hard to take what feels like a gamble on it for multiple years while the biome figures itself out. You'll likely face new pest pressures (though hopefully less) and different nutrient challenges. I really appreciate the nuanced take you bring. FYI if you ever want to go down a rabbit hole, there is a British book series called "the conservation handbook" which goes into GREAT detail about many different traditional practices. I learned a lot about hedges as they take them very very seriously
I think you nailed why conventional farmers do what they do, they do care. Unfortunately I don’t see any kind of certification working though, it will just end up being captured like every other one.
I love your videos, and learn a lot from every one. I think part of the problem with scaling also is that no-till tends to be more labor intensive. There seems to be a sweet spot where a farmer with family members, maybe a few teenage helpers, or maybe a few interns who will work in exchange for room and board, can find a place where they can be profitable and self sustaining. If you wanted to scale up by 10X labor becomes a big issues. Few people are willing to do the hard work, so even labor availability becomes a challenge. Even if you can find someone willing to take the job, if you hire ten full time workers to scale your operation up, then all the sudden you have a full time job managing your personnel, which takes away the time you used to spend managing the crops. Also, with full time employees, then you need a book keeper and someone to take care of all the paperwork requirements. It just seems hard to make it to a point that is 10X bigger than a small family operated business. It is what needs to be done, but it is just hard to get there.
That’s capitalism for ya. Everyone wants to scale up as much as possible, and sustainability be damned if one can turn a quick profit doing it. In almost all cases, “scaling up” beyond a certain, modest point is just a euphemism for “figuring out better ways to exploit the working class more cheaply.” Very few people give a shit about the science or what’s good for the long term (present channel excluded, of course).
@@wmpx34 the problem is not capitalism, the problem is consumer choice. Costco sells a full cooked delicious broasted chicken for $5. I would claim that the real cost of a sustainably and humanely and chemical free chicken would need to be around $50 if the business was to genuinely be sustainable. The consumer is not willing to pay $50 and would rather buy a chemical laced fully cooked chicken at $5 and put the balance towards Netflix, an 82 inch TV, and the latest iPhone. So unfortunately the consumer does not value healthy and sustainable food products. I guess we are lucky the business can be sustained by individual family based farms.
@@wmpx34no that's survival at its root. If it weren't for mechanized farming the majority of the world would be starving right now and population would be a small fraction. Everything has a cost. Farmers are the only ones getting shafted at this point because people want cheap food, few want good food, and fewer yet are willing to grow it
I have a few areas where I do minimum tillage, my tomatoes I plant into rows that are constantly mulched and do not require any tillage year after year, we just rip out the old plants and put new ones in, often even leave the stakes at the same place( as long as they are still good), but most of our two acres I do tillage on because I just have too much fun doing it with my team of draft horses and it goes faster than replacing the mulch constantly. I do use cover-crops, though, but try to have marketable ones, like mustard, daikon radishes and peas, of which we do not harvest all, but only a portion. By the way, the daikon replant themselves this way and can be used in a two-fold manner: the radishes themselves and if you let them stand one can later harvest the pods to be added to salads. Daikon planted earlier can supply natural trellis for peas, when the weather is not too dry.
Not a farmer here, but I have been working our home garden areas into the no-till/no-dig/Back To Eden style, and it's been so awesome to see the difference in our plant health and harvests. It is so worth the effort in diving deep into the rabbit hole that is the soil food web. I've had the occasional crazy thought of starting our own no-till market garden somewhere, but it would be really hard to break away from my current career, considering how much it provides for our family. But kudos to all the larger scale gardeners and farmers who are giving this a go to provide us with quality food with such a reduced impact to our ecology.
Jesse, you are one of the best on youtube. Keep the information coming. Having grown up in a traditional farming family I have a perspective that allows me to think on both sides. First, it depends on what you call scaling up. Thirty acres is whole different game then 300 or 1,000. Time is gold in true commercial level farming. My family farmed from 300 to 1,000 in different generations. In every scenario it was limited to 2-4 family members. We as hobbyist and small produce farmers need to guard against trying to think of large scale grain farming on the same plain as small operations. No till farming came on the scene probably 30 years ago and is indeed the most used method today. It's just not what we think of as gardeners and small farms. Modern farms call in huge agri-business vendors who soil test and modify soil nutrients chemically, quickly and economically. A couple days with big machinery and the crop ground is ready to go. Most never plow soil anymore, they have no till planters. Proof is in the yields. When my dad farmed and planted cover crops and tilled them under then amended with standard fertilizers an acre of corn yielded 100 bushels. That same ground when my brother-in-law farmed it with modern techniques yielded 225 bushels per care. That's going to make anything else a hard sell. So our perspective needs to stay on garden market and small specialized farms. For that the no-till/minimum till, high soil organic management is wonderful. For large scale farming it's not economic, in my opinion. So keep the information coming us gardeners love it and it works for us.
Thanks for these great videos. I've asked that same question, why isn't everyone doing this? I found Gabe Brown this summer, and then your videos. I am a long time back yard gardener doing no till for 3 years now (gardening for 45) with only broadforking in Montana clay. I have put in my first cover crop this year. My magic juice is vermicompost. Now I will work on reducing commercial fertilizers. This year I had no pests or disease, big yields and tons of bees with intercroppiing flowers. Thanks for all the good advice and tips. I love your book and I'm pushing all my fellow gardeners to go regenerative-no till and to buy your book! Keep up the good work!
There are far more farmers out there that are using no-till/low-till methods as part of their tool box and just not advertising it. They may not be completely no-till all the time on all their land and for all their crops but they are applying it where and when it works for them. Particularly where they see it can save them on machine time in the field and save on some amount of inputs. Local large scale chicken farmer near me that farms about 1000 acres for feed (corn, soy, wheat) uses a no-till seed drill to plant soy into the shrapnel of corn, not tilling or even disking first. Then part way through soy bean season that field is broadcast seeded with winter wheat. Wheat germinates under the soy and at end of season when the soy is harvested the wheat gets released, grows enough more for overwintering. Next spring the wheat takes off again and is harvested at end of season. Then the following season they're back to corn again. This time they disk the field before sowing corn. The disking only goes a few inches and it's mainly to incorporate the chicken manure they had just spread over the field. 2 years no-till. One year of tillage. That's the typical cycle. In some fields they sometimes skip the wheat cycle. Other fields they may do soy beans two years in a row. Essentially they are managing nitrogen as corn is such a heavy feeder. Soy puts nitrogen into the soil through their root nodules and wheat is basically nitrogen neutral. Plus the added nitrogen from the chicken manure, only applied before corn planting. And a chemical application of nitrogen gets added mid season during the corn rotation. With their modified no-till system they get increased organic matter in the soil, typically need to apply less chemical nitrogen and save on labor, machine time, and fuel by making less passes in the fields. I know this because one of their fields is right beside my 1/4 acre no-till market garden. Each time they're in that field I'm asking what they're doing and why. Soy and wheat years I barely ever see them. Corn years I see them a few times.
I only when I make a new bed. I am in swamp land and there are water tunnel's in the land amd is very uneven. I pick my spot the in the summer and cover with wood chips n straw to try to fill in the water trails. Than I cover to kill the weeds. In the spring like now, I uncover and till n do some more fillthan recover and plant. Been a lot of work but have great plants that thrive with out burning nettle, wild mustard n such taking over. Thanks love the show
I used to farm 150 acres in Alfred Ontario, oats, barley, wheat, alfalfa. No Till on that scale would have been generally impossible in the 1970-90 but no-plow corn farming was developing. I am retired and I have a small no-till garden which I think is the way to go for small to medium gardens.
I think one of the huge differences is, commercial -commodity- market (and scale) is completely different than market gardening. One seeks to feed the pocketbook (though it is stated as "feed the world") and the other wants to feed actual people.. directly.
Love this channel so much. Growing for many years but in my forth year of no till and focusing on soil microbes. I've seen so many positives but my favorite is LESS WEEDS. Thank you Farmer Jesse for all you do to promote healthy soil.
Thank you Jessie! I for sure try to leave root structure in the ground and nurture the mycelium but I would have to say I am an "agnostic" farmer. we use all kinds of methods from hügelkultur to living soil, to no till......If I got the stuff on hand Ill try it. Some people have told me what I was doing is in the "living soil" category but Im not sure. Composting in place has been very kind to me and the mycelium seem to absolutely love it.
Thank you Jessie for your humor and wit. You knowledge is great. I thunk it is something that has been passed down through government and other agencies. Instead of properly managing their land either crops or livestock. These agencies offer quick and convenient options to having to think. Subsidies are another thing. I feel that a food producer should get the Subsidies and the row crop farmer that produces products that are not directly used by the end consumer should not get the Subsidies. Just a note I love the no till aspect of farming. I had a small farm that just about had the fertilizer loop closed but life happened and now I am not on the farm so now it's balcony farming😅
I just wanted to add, to see huge fields of corn cut, bailed for fodder and then just left until planting, versus my neighbor spending days on his tractor plowing and burning fuel, makes so much sense!!
Excellent answer. I think you nailed it. We grow 4+ acres of veggies in a mixed 30 acre system using no-till, minimum till, and tillage depending on context and crop--on the same farm. So yes, there is nuance. Scale is the biggest hurtle for us as well as labor and clean mulching material in the amounts needed to do everything no-till. No-till is the best choice for the soil and should be a no-brainer for backyard growers. Balancing and maintaining profitability, sustainability, and soil health on the larger scale is where the work needs to be done. Keep up the great videos. Just saw your channel this year-- a fellow KY grower after my own heart!
It's because, most people still follow the traditional way of thinking about gardening. But what most people don't realise is that in the forests and nature that seem to do great all by themselves, nobody tills the ground in the forests and it's perfect just like mother nature intended. Happy gardening, Green love from Australia 💚🌲🙏
The main issue for me was getting enough compost/mulch. Fortunately I found a place I can get free municipal compost year round and it seems to work well. I use a mixture of that and my own compost and try to minimise tilling unless the ground is compacted or I am starting a totally new area.
I am a small garden farmer. I bought the book and learned so much. I had mostly success when some of the other home gardeners didn’t in our 4. Year drought situation. I owe at least some of the success to the book and what I learn. Keep up the good work Jesse. Havagudun and all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving.
following charles dowding for a while, you need to keep in mind that he is currently on a posture or previous market garden plot. he can pretty much implement no dig on the plot with confidence - and i’m sure it works in that context. however it could run into unforeseen hiccups. i was cutting turf off the top of new rows in a paddock used for grazing horse. i uncovered piles of cow bones. and they are spread out all over shallow. to grow carrots, they simply need to be dug out. had a memorable experience starting a garden in the bush. but it was solid rock on 4/5th of the site. i utilised compost from the stables in another suburb, sieved dug out forest soil etc. it went on for few months. after nearly 1yr and a half, the place is excellent. we have a wet winter so this assists greatly. i’ve settled on a single dig approach. on a horse graze paddock i have leased now i go for a rotary hoe for rows leaving the original grass as paths. lots and lots of life in the rows remains. and the grass really assists from drying out.
I have done minimal till for 18 years Notice I said minimal till There are times we have to cover the trash.Helping organic material get into the ground.Soil tests are absolutely mandatory. We have seeded close to 150000 acres.We are Constantly learning
Thank you for this! I’m not a farm.. yet. But do garden on a half acre, and understand all the best practises of covering soil but with such a big plot to care for it truly is easier to buy a case of beer for a farmer to come till my plot at the beginning of the season than it is to sources mounds of mulch and compost 🤷♀️.
I live in Australia and our large farms here are probably a bit unique in that most of them (>80%) actually don't till. The problem with no-till here on a large scale though is that the tillage would usually be controlling weeds, so without it they turn to herbicides, so no-till has increased herbicide usage. Again this is on really large farms, I think it's great on smaller scales but does come with its issues when you try to scale up
Thanks Jessie, especially for keeping an open mind to what constitutes ecological farming. It is a real challenge balancing between making a living whilst doing the best you can for the environment that sustains us all…. Including kitty cat. My farm cat says meow meow meow to conscientious, mindful, innovative food products, especially yummy organic field mice 😊
My biggest issue as a home gardener with no till is the inputs it needs. I don't have the money to buy all the mulch inputs I need and it takes a lot of time and effort to collect free stuff. I spent 10+ hours picking up leaves from my neighborhood to make a 12in layer that my soil needed and IT WAS A LOT 😂
How big is your garden? You could for example grow tree lines in between your garden crops. Every 3-4 meters / 10-13 feet. Some of them are even nitrogen fixers. You should choose those which grow faster in your area. Most would be called invasive or agressive species. Then, once or twice a year, you just prune them hard and use that material as mulch. I'd say it'd be easier than hunting leaves around. :)
I just cover the soil the way mother nature does and she reciprocates by giving me food when I need it most, when Im hungry. What I do, anyone can do- old or young, healthy or inferm. Anyone can build a Back To Eden style farm.. great content. Love to hear more of your take on why tilling on the regular should be avoided. Plenty of folks have yet to wake up to the fact that theres been more days on earth without commercial fertilizer than there has been with it. And for good reason too. Great content indeed..
Love your channel. Back yard gardener for 50 years.Ive experimented with no til for 4 seasons in one raised and one ground bed. Both were well established (30 plus years) deep rich beds that have been used primarily for vegetables. In my opinion, after 4 seasons of no til, I'm not impressed. Even with the amount of existing composted soil the compaction factor in those beds seems to have hindered the overall productivity. Ive topped both beds with several inches of compost and covered over the winter. Instead of tilling the same amount in the regular beds in the fall. Im gonna give it one more season of no til but likely abandon if little change.
Another fun and informative video Thank You. Another point I thought of is a lot of farmers here are on rented/leased land. Thus they are not going to make the investment or take the time and wait for the land to naturally heal itself. As mentioned money money money! As an investment by the farmer and what the farmer renting the land wishes for his pocket. This Winter/Spring the mega hassle of broadforking our heavy clay soil. Then the weed and grass pressure. We will win ............................................. eventually!
+1 that growing at scale problem is the key issue for many farmers converting. Also in there is that seeds people buy have been adapted to the seed grower's methods that are often full-on chemicals and tillage where those seeds get quite a 'culture' shock when put in not-till/compost/organic systems (you need to keep your own seed to replant) and that includes many heirloom varieties since the modern bare dirt and chemical system has been out there for ninety years migrating ninety generations of seeds to the latest methods; it's work to unwind that seed evolution. That's why when people try no-till they struggle more and give up, it's hard. (Jesse, do an interview with Joseph Lofthouse if you can, there is also a woman in Lofthouse's circle that studied nutrient density from soils vs genetics and found seed genetics were the key practice to the highest nutrients).
I have a small farm with my wife, although field growing isn't our main focus. We've previously worked somewhere with a similar setup. That place and the previous owners of our place all did conventional growing with tillage. I'm trying to learn more and figure out what will work for us without spending a lot of money. We also don't know anyone in this area doing this so we just are slowly collecting information before starting.
I find that the "sales" part of the job is more nerve-wracking for me.... okay let me think, I have to drive the goods to the farmer's market, I can only carry about 30 lettuce and 30 kale at one time, I will Net Profit 1 dollar out of each, okay that's not much left after the Fuel (driving distance is a key element) "That's not much, can I live out of this?" You have to diversify I get it, my anxiety comes from the fact there's no GUARANTEED sales, every new week you have to grind sales once again... I am probably missing something very obvious 🤣
quoting my brain "I left the city jobs because stupid bosses gave me anxiety attacks, but now I have anxiety over sales before trying to sleep because I have to wake up tomorrow at 4 AM to drive to the farmer's market and I don't know how much net profit I will make" 🤣
You nailed the topic perfectly. I live in Lombardy (Italy) on the hills at 300 meters above sea level. I have a 5000 sqm. field that I barely need to mulch a 400 square meter vegetable garden..... The problem is what you highlighted: No till would be the best method but the only major obstacle is the enormous quantity of organic substance that is needed. Thank you for sharing your experience.
thank you.. another great video, yet more food for thought, been binge watching having found you, found Eliot Colemans books years ago. I'm in the UK growing my own veg on clay. The last thing I want is a mulch that cools my soil other than at the peak of a heatwave. Whilst from a temperature point of view, we're "zone 8.5" in winter.. from a LIGHT point of view, we're roughly zone 2, so winter cropping is an issue. I have to use reflectors on early seedlings otherwise they get very leggy (searching for sunlight... double the sunlight with reflectors and things start working). our limited light is caused by latitude (51N) plus 65% cloud in winter (not 65% of days with some cloud, but 65% of the time it's 100% cloudy, 35% of the time, there's some breaks in the cloud.. today it's "sunny", that is we've seen the sun!, but right now, 100% cloud)
I am not a specialist but i read somewhere recently, Weeds are grown by Nature to mitigate the deficiencies in the soil. Whatever soil lacks in, it will grow that weed which will nourish the soil with the lacking nutrient. So Mother Earth tries to keep the balance.
As a rancher and organic farmer.. i am seeing a relationship between profit and zero impact on the land.. that said, at the end of the day market price is still king.. unless you don't care about profit. as always.. appreciate your channel.. always learn something.. thank you.
Have found in my 50x50’ garden, if I don’t at least deeply dig the perimeter every 2 years, the tree roots from trees 20 to 100’ away take over the beds. They know a great thing! If I don’t put a barrier on the bottom of my leaf compost piles, by the next spring, the tree roots will have filled the bins to the level of compost, even if 3-4 ft above normal!
For gardeners, home & market, no-till/low-till can be relatively "easy" compared to farming at scale. One only needs to price new & used no-tll, min-till & hybrid equipment to understand that there is a barrier to entry.
Hello from Ukraine. I am an American organic market grower surrounded by thousands of acres of massive farms growing conventional grains. BUT we are doing our version of low till organics. Spreading the knowledge.
A big reason for lack of commercial large scale farming going no till is (massively so in America) influence of big companies and their lobbying abilities. The agrochemical industry world over doesn't want no till, they dont want organic. Tractor and tillage equipment manufacturers dont want no till. So these companies that have massive pull within governments will not want no till to succeed and are actively lobbying against it, one think here in the UK was the European Union telling us we could not grow more than X amouts and PAID farmers to not grow! They also said that fruits and vegetables have to be a certain size and uniformity so anything that was out of those parameters couldn't be sold to supermarkets etc. now we're are out from their thumb and if the hoysing developers leave grade A farm land alone farmers can go back to being farmers and see the benefits of practices such as no till and make more money
I've been fighting off no-till evangelists for years, who wanted me to write off this perfectly good soil that has been worked in this garden for at least two centuries. My half acre plot has 16 long beds across a slope, with swales between for drainage and irrigation. Right now there are three under plastic sheets, one is no till potatoes, one is untilled this year, with bi-annuals like kale flowering for seed this year. One is fallow, one is tree cuttings and one is wildflowers. The rest are tilled and planted with mainly salad, garlic and onions. Two of those were double dug with horse manure last year. I've spent seven years working on this plot, and to give an idea of the journey, I've built a path down the middle and around the edges just by throwing all the stones out of the beds. I have six compost heaps on the go, and three worm farms, and must have worked two feet of compost and manure into the beds over seven years, raising the level by a few inches. There are lots of reasons why strictly no-till practices wouldn't make sense here. I hardly had the money for manure, let alone mulch for half an acre, and both of those are hard to come by in this remote spot, but it would have washed into the swales or blown away in our extreme weather anyway. The soil I have is healthy, in a very bio-diverse and high yeilding garden, but the growing season is short, and plastic sheets held down with bricks make a lot more sense here. Weeds and wildflowers are my cover crops, but I don't really mind the weeds, or the ground being washed out. I gather it at the bottom of the slope and work it back up hill one wheelbarrow at a time. The way things are going, the soil will eventually look like no-till anyway, because it will probably be stone free and a foot deeper by the time I've laid down my spade.
I till with draft animals. Specifically, donkeys. I guess that would be a form of "minimum tillage"? It also supplies me with a steady supply of compost material. There's many people in this country that use draft animals (horses, mules, oxen), and it's very scalable to somewhat larger acres, too.
The ramial wood research found the compaction to be unavoidable and detrimental so the mulch had to be mixed in a little as they were applied and the beds had to be turned, even the no-till beds, every 4-5 years. We teach it in the agronomy courses in Canadian universities.
Just bought your book from the evil big retailer. I got 5 acres. Probably about 2.5 acres non wooded. Never grown a garden before. Hopefully I can be successful.
@gypsygem9395 no ma'am. No livestock. Looks like a spring planting is not gonna be able to happen this year. Too much house repairs and etc going on. Might get some fruit trees in the ground though. They don't require as much maintenance time.
As I am getting older, I have found gardening more than just making food from the earth. Not that I get much production v.s. cost, but I try to have fun with it. Because, for me, it is a hobby, & living in a mobile home, I do not have a lot of space. I have had some success with lemon trees. For a few years, I tried to grow some from seed, at least a type I liked... the lady before me planted some tasteless lemons, they are like water. My wife finally said, lets just buy one, so we went to Home Depot & got a small tree. Later, I got some seeds to germinate, and after a few years, some are larger, growing in pots that the one we bought... I thought I should put them in front, so it would look & smell nice. That is the other thing I have found about gardening. The plants smell so nice, especially the tomatoes. & I think I have found a great place for tomatoes & peppers to grow, but I need to turn clay into something they will like. So, I don't think that will be no till, but making amendments to the side of the house should be fine. I had first thought of raised beds, but they are not free, nor is the soil to fill them... With all the UA-cam vids, I know I will find something that will be fine. - Sacramento, CA - Thank you for your videos, & I know we are on much different levels of farm/ garden, you are a :-) in my day, thank you...
Love the video like all the other ones. Really appreciate the new ones and respect That You Don't See for a lot of other places. But that is what I expect from Jessie and I'm never let down kudos brother thank you
I do love watching your videos as they don't ram just one process down your throat. We have tried no till on our small farm and it failed spectacularly. There was nothing wrong with the method but we have a couple of weeds that are particularly aggressive and thrive under the mulches. A creeping thistle is particularly bothersome and probably until we can eradicate that and another weed it will never work. We are definitely going to persist with trying to get to no till as in a limited area where it worked (until it didn't!) the results spoke for themselves. Keep up making this great content.
I understand your challenge. After years of gardening with mulches on a small scale I have almost eradicated weeds but the first year or so the stubborn ones need work. Options are very thick mulch or compost (think several inches), cardboard or tarp to suppress and/or to add extra mulch wherever you see weeds. The focus is to never let the weed see daylight until it depletes to nutrition stores in it’s root system. I’m not mentioning hand weeding as I assume that’s not scalable for you, but that goes a long way as well. Getting those stubborn roots systems out will totally kill them. I think a little bit of weeding is needed in all systems especially if you had a lot to begin with. After a year or two a deeply mulched system will be far less weeder easily by a factor of 10x or more in my experience. I started gardening on bare soil like my parents and I was out there in the heat and mosquitoes every few days weeding. It was like they were on steroids and my previous weeding a few days ago hadn’t happened. Now with deep mulching and no till, I can leave the garden alone for weeks with barely a weed when I visit.
In my area, mulch on the ground in late winter/early-mid spring tends to result in seedlings being eaten by slugs. Sometimes to the point I've had an entire set of spinach transplants completely nuked in two days flat. After that, I removed the mulch and settled on a 'no mulch anywhere near seedlings ever' rule. I'm just a home gardener, not a farmer, but having everything you planted destroyed in a couple of days is quite motivating to change your ways in a hurry. Fortunately I still had some I hadn't planted out yet, so I still managed to get some spinach. It was an awful year for slugs, even once I'd removed the mulch from all my veggie beds, but not mulching made the difference between some surviving and none.
I farm with donkeys. In the areas (small gardens) that they don't fit into, no-till with hand tools fits. But turning the soil with draft power minimizes the impact/compaction rates compared to even a rototiller. Turning the soil slowly allows for things such as earthworms to survive. I'm trying to combine the two - draft tillage and no-till - systems to fit as needed. The donkeys (or horses, mules, or oxen) supply a large supply of nitrogen- and carbon- rich compost ingredients.
I come from a family of "sod busters" who homesteaded Montana in the early 1900s. My ancestors were chained to two things... the plow and the bank. Every year was a struggle to produce as much grain as possible to pay back the loans. This is still true for many US farms today. The "no till" gang and other up and coming "small holdings" farmers have an entirely different business plan. My great grandfather would have loved these "new" types of farming. Because he truly loved his land... and he hated banks. I mean he really hated banks!
First time deer plot, I did a no till clover plot. I prepped the 1/3acre site, raked to bare dirt, tested soil, sowed seeds and 2 weeks later after watering/rain I have fresh growth, seeds sprouted within the 1st week. I'd say no till can work if regardless of region if done/prepped properly. But that also depends what's being sowed and at what rate.
I grow a few things around my yard. Because my time is limited, I find fruiting shrubs to give the most return for the effort. The shrubs I just mulch, and they don't need water as much once they get going. Vegetables need soil preparations, weeding, and watching out for bugs.
I asked a soil scientist about tilling. He told me that tilling does disturb the soil microbiome but it returns to normal after a few weeks. I should not over till and not make the soil into a fine powder. If I till, I should till leaves and/or compost into the soil. I should also have the soil tested every three years. Tp keep down weeds I put down landscape fabric and plant though holes in the fabric. In the fall I take up the landscape fabric up and till in leaves.
No till was synonymous with using chemicals herbicides and fertilizers, which was expensive. It’s an interesting idea to couple no till farming with growing organic foods. You seem to be able to make it work.
Apart from all the reasons given in the video, in my country machines for agriculture are all centered around tilling, which is why almost no farmers use a no-till method. You are "supposed" to till, then harrow, then sow and so on, that's just how it's done and there are hardly any machines available for any other way of growing things on a large scale. I have asked a bunch of old timers here how to improve my soil and they all say I must till, that's the only way they know how to do it. Luckily, thanks to channels like yours, I know that's not true, there are loads of ways to improve the soil without tilling. But every time I mention that to farmers they kind of laugh at me and stop taking me seriously.
@@cecilchristopher5092 That's because until then, existing machines have been designed to be sold to tillers. There are many stories of mid- and large scale farmers who resort to invent their own notill-compatible machines. Tilling is detrimental to the soil, regardless of the size of your farm.
This is great advice. I have been struggling to follow a lot of the advice given by other gardeners. Not that they aren't good, but they may not be best for my situation, and they are sometimes too expensive for my pocket.
Great video, like they all are. I think scale is one reason that holds big farmers back. As Jesse said, at these scales, compost becomes really expensive. Plus, for a long time there was no proper equipment available. Some early big farm pioneers made their own equipment such as planters and drillers. It is also about attitudes. Farmers are stubborn people and it's hard to convince them to change their practices. "I have been farming this way all my life, as did my dad and my granddad, and now you're telling me we were all wrong?!". That sort of thing. I think it is important to stress that what they were doing back then under the socio-economic circumstances of these times was the right thing to do. Society and the economy back then (crisis years, WWII, post WWII) demanded cheap and plenty available produce. The "agricultural revolution" with its mechanization of agriculture and with the use of agrichemicals provided for that. Remember, back then farming was much harder. Now, technology has improved and no-till practices at a larger scale are possible and they do are applied at larger scales. Check guys such as Gabe Brown and the late David Brandt that have been applying no-till and cover crops and who have managed to get off the government tit and the dependence on inputs and chemicals.
i Use no till for my vegetables and minimal till for commercial watermelon and butternut farming. In my experience No till works if the seedlings are not to small and Spring temperatures isn't above 86F but at 90 to 105 deg the compost dries out fast and everything dies. With minimal tilling the soil with mulch (peanut shells) stay wetter and cooler but weeds could be a problem. We had a heatwave of 107F for 10 days and caused massive damage to the vegetables so i started over. Temperatures and irrigation types is also factors to consider.
great stuff! You touched on it with "money," but I'd say there's more to it: regenerative farming practices are not really economic practices -- they provide value to society beyond just meeting people's material needs. But we tend to think the market should somehow support them, when that's not the market's job -- which is to get material things to the people who need them as efficiently as possible. Instead, no-till-like practices should be supported in other ways: sure, the government. But better is the free support (instead of forced support, through taxation) by people who recognize the societal benefit of regenerative practices. Support for no-till shouldn't be in the market price (nor, really, in the state-sponsored farm bill); by trying to include it we mix up societal functions that should be left separated, confusing farmers and consumers alike.
5:41 How true... Or as the Swiss RegenAg advocate Wolfang Sturny says : until then, the agricultural methods have been developped around the machines, rather than the other way round.
What you explain in this video is part of the reason I don't like the no till label. Disturbing the soil effects different soil types differently and is sometimes highly beneficial. Most effective compost systems for example depend on high levels of disturbance of the compost component of the soil. Sandy soils can often tolerate different types of cultivation than other types of soils...
i live in a large scale cereal grain production area (southern Alberta, Canada). A lot of farmers around me use 60ft disc air drills to plant 1000's of acres no-till . of course they weed control with round up and use GM seed to do it...
My training is in conservation and rejuvenation. Tilling is an important part of rejuvenation especially when you want to remove contamination and invasive species or soil that has been stopped bare by human or invasive animals (specifically horses in Australia, as we have never had large land animals and they compact the soil.) Obviously this isn't about farming, but depending what and where you are growing, especially if growing natives in home grows, it's really important.
Hi Jesse, good video. Virtually all cotton production in North Carolina uses no till. As you well know no till does present some issues that can be difficult to work around on a large scale operation. The biggist problem is weeds. Certain weeds are hard to deal without some sort of tillage like nutsedge. Also in eastern North Carolina it is very easy to form a hardpan in the soil with the clay, silt, and sand raitios. You have to rip the soil with an implement that will break the soil's hardpan layer to get the crops roots to reach deeper in the soil for moisture. The biggest issue though I see is the lack of eductation on the tremendous benefits of cover crops used for nutrition on a piece of soil. I have followed winter nutrition cover crops with vegetable crops with some very good results and some surprising results. Last year I planted a red clover and vetch crop that I followed with sweet corn.. I used very little fertilizer on the corn and got a very good looking sweet corn crop. The surprise was when it warmed up both the clover and vetch died leaving an almost bare spot of soil before I planted my corn. The density of the cover crop was so great that the usual spring weeds were suppressed to the point that I could have planted the corn no till. I didn't because I did not have a no till planter. I think the government could play a larger role in this by offering tax incentives to farmers who implement no till or reduced till.
Just before this one I saw the "danger of no dig" by Huw Richards. It seems to be the right time to broaden the picture and step away form ideology versus pragmatic approaches. Nice one !
I spent some time in Wisconsin, smack in the middle of farm land , I did see some large operations doing no till, I asked my neighbor about it and I believe he said it would take 3 years to convert and too risky, they seem to get continually kicked in the butt, every time you get a bumper crop, the price drops, the weather kills you, etc. just my experience, great point about not trying to fit one system to any land!!
Another great video. Wow a laser robot weeder - kewl (I want one!) No Till / No dig is great but everywhere you look (Charles Dowding, Jesse Frost, Richard Perkins, Ruth Stout, Paul Gautschi.....) ALL use large amounts of compost or mulch. OFTEN not readily available (or affordable) to backyard gardeners, let alone large scale production (not to mention concerns now over persistent herbicide contamination in mulches and manures!!!). I think the solution (or one solution) just may be cover crops and in many cases mowing and shallow tillage to terminate, disturbing the soil biology as little as possible. I reason that shallow tillage of say 2-3"~ offers little disturbance to the soil food web and may even stimulate it. I also think that more aggressive leaf recovery is in order as in may areas leaves in fall are treated as waste and end up in landfills. 🙂
Yes, here in the East Coast we have so many leaves that everyone works hard to bag up and throw away. Then they pay for bags and bags of wood chips in the spring for their ornamental gardens. It makes no sense as they could use the leaves as mulch for free. I find leaves suppress weeds better than a comparable amount of wood chips…-plus I believe they have beneficial minerals etc. I think the laser weeders are an amazing advancement. I’d rather that than loads of chemicals. Most systems have some weeds and keeping them under control can lessen the seed bank over the years allowing more regenerative methods to be more feasible. I’m all for it…
A few years ago, in the spirit of Ruth Stout, I tried no-till with hay mulch. I felt it was mostly a fail as it brought with it a LOT of weed seeds....that even after tillage, was/is an on-goning problem in my 3000 sq. ft. garden. And so it goes. I'm still working towards no or low till methods. 🙂
Charles Dowding makes a lot of his own compost, which anyone with a garden or some acreage should also attempt to do, since it's free. He also gets manure from a local stableyard. Anyone can ask farmers or stables for manure to add to their compost. Also Charles doesn't put a great deal on his established beds, about 2-3cm (approx 1 inch) once a year in winter. His garden was originally about a quarter acre, it's a bit more now.
@@gypsygem9395 The potential problem these days with outsourced materials is persistent herbicides. I'm not sure that the average homeowner can make enough compost for a moderate sized garden. But along with cover crops, I'm going to try.
@@MikeV607 yes I agree regarding the herbicides, Charles Dowding does mention those. Good luck with the green manure crops and compost making! You could also ask your neighbours for their veg waste and grass clippings
So this is a list of my reasons why I till: -I don't want to use tarp, I hate plastic, I worked in conventional horticulture enough and I know you lose control of this trash pretty fast when you are overwhelmed with work. For example, mice love to tear this material spreading small pieces of plastic and then it's almost impossible to gather this later. After some years sun destroys this further making a lot of microplastic. Also, sometimes it's really hard to gather everything, and yeah, I'm really lazy. For this reason, I also don't want to have greenhouse production, maybe only for transplants. If I got money I will use glass tho. -If I don't use a tarp, mulching with straw, hay and so on for a few years creates an ideal condition for perennial grasses, and I respect my back so I won't pull out weeds by hand. -I don't use irrigation, mulching with compost creates a lot of erosion then. -Harrowing, lightly tilling or tilling with push hoe a "black fallow" for a few weeks or even months is a great way to preserve moisture in soil from winter and greatly reduces weed seed bank and kills all perennial weeds. I don't have much rain in spring, using cover crops for plants seeded or planted in late spring (after last night frosts) will deplete most of the moisture, making seeding or planting impossible. -Using a lot of compost or mulching material is back breaking. -Bare soil warms faster in spring. -Hopi lightly till without cover crops for 2000 years and created permanent fields in extremely harsh conditions. But, I try to till as shallow as possible, I mostly use push hoe, so I don't go deeper than 2 cm, I also try to plow as little as possible, especially on sandy soils, I only do that when weeds grew too big and I just want to bury them as fast as possible before they go into seed.
Seems to me that farming large acreage holds the farmer hostage to the "gotta have more stuff" syndrome not to mention the BANK!!!!!!!!!!!. Don''t know what the answer is but I'd stick to small scale. Love your channel.
I farm around 10,000 acres, over the past 5 years we have moved over to minimal tillage, fields will just see a coulter run over it in the spring, we still opt for deep tillage when preparing potato land, we don’t add any composts or mulches, aside from the potato dirt that gets collected from harvest where will pile it and let it compost down for 1-2 years before we add it to poor areas, we feel like the minimal tillage has helped us
This is a great point. You also mentioned one of my favorite "alternate" no-till systems, which is regenerative agriculture. Especially when you start getting into the really deep end with the folks doing what might be considered almost a form of dedicated research farming and it sometimes it begins to feel like you're starting to blend the concepts of agriculture and foraging. I've always felt in agriculture, there's a big spectrum between growing plants in a completely artificial environment (think hydroponics), all the way through to people trying to "reseed" a natural environment and figuring out ways to encourage virtuous cycles to speed through less desirable states of nature (like turning into a bramble thicket, which then has to wait for animal life to come in and "correct" it.) It's all super fascinating stuff.
Another name that could be used for no till is IPM- Integrated Pest Management. In New Mexico the definition of a pest is, and I quote, "Anything that competes for food and water" with nutrients belonging to the food category.
Like you say, terminology. Every large-scale farmer here in Saskatchewan (20,000acres+) will claim they are no-till. It's just the new (renewed) tech of air-seeding and of course all the other ag chemical inputs. But still, they don't till. ps. i'm not defending that style, I'm highlighting what the term is up against.
Here's an idea for cover crop termination at scale: Cut at the front, laser zap in the middle, drop the cut residue back as mulch in the back. All in one device, probably mounted to the side of a tractor or completely robotic as the laser zapper already is. This shouldn't be too difficult to implement for the robozapper folks... maybe I'll pitch the idea to them, see what they say.
Let me get this straight. No dogma. No inflexible prescriptions. Instead, you're encouraging me to continuously learn more and then apply the relevant data where it makes sense in the context of my market garden to support soil health? What is this madness? 😉 As always, thank you for sharing your experiences with us. I'm going into my second year with my market garden and am grateful for the ways in which you've shaped my thinking. All the best to you.
Nooice! 😎 STOC
I farm in South Carolina. My family has 170 acres of land that is mostly just a forest of pine trees. Our approach to agriculture is a bit different than anything I've seen on any UA-cam channel. When we are setting up a new plot we chop all the smaller pine trees down (we leave the large ones), burn the entire field, till the entire field, plant cover crops for three years in said area, let the wild deer eat the cover crop, burn the area again, till it again, and then form beds. After that I throw up some electric deer fencing and it's off to the races. The land is so fertile by this point I barely have to use any fertilizer, of which I prefer 10-10-10. When I mean the land is fertile, I mean it. My soil looks like peat moss, it has so much organic matter. Hydrophobia is a major problem, as so much organic matter has broken down, which creates a waxy like substance. It's a spongey amazing reddish color. This is a major benefit of converting forest to farm. The topsoil is freakin insane.
I grew an acre of field corn for 50 dollars this summer. I got 250 bags of deer feed that I sold. Thank you deer for your free poop. Once the yields start looking crappy and I have to use more fertilizer we replant baby pine trees in that spot and repeat the process somewhere else. We're essentially sweeping a big circle on a piece of the 170 acres in this manner. I've found the perfect small scale farming model, but nobody wants to hear it because you need about 50 acres minimum to really pull it off.
When we made the road through our land we used a wood chipper and piled the wood chips on either side of the road. My uncle went through and planted around 100 blueberry plants, 100 raspberry plants, and 100 blackberry plants into the wood chips. It's like a mile of berries now. Never had to fertilize once. We make around $10,000 off of just this part of the farm every year.
Slash and burn followed by cover cropping and letting the local fauna eat the cover crops and poop all over the soon to be plot is peak regenerative agriculture. Prove me wrong.
Mind if I ask did the deer have any strong preference for certain cover crops over others, or were there any you felt weren't efficient for feed with the time and space they took up?
@@jackiej6233 So my buddy owns a farm supply store. Whatever he can't sell I take for a discount. So, we mainly use peas, radishes, and mustard. The deer do not seem to like the mustard too much. They prefer peas.
Videos from you would be cool.
Nice may I ask does this create that terra nova charcoal stuff ..biochar in the soil? Thats how the forest farmers do it slash and burn and then let it regrow forest ...and they have amazing soil. At least you have some carbon involved. I think the main reason people don't use it is they don't have a machine to spread mulch and leave it for ages to form soil. They just keep using fertiliser again and again and again. The soil on farms here is mostly clay and muddy looking and they spread a lot of slurry on it. Where there are smaller farms around with trees around them the soil is reddish brown peaty looking I would guess because. The trees shed theur leaves and the leaves add some carbon. Also they are small so the leaves get trapped in there. And they aren't using big machines cos the feilts are so small I mean really small. Like one minute walk across it small.
This is great
If "how to" is not supported by a "why", you are not learning much. Love this channel. Context is so important and you are doing great job discussing many whys.
Our goal is to get to no till, but our ground is soooo rocky, that we have to literally have to start at square one and create soil. We have lived here 4 years. Our first year we trucked in compost to put in the raised beds since we couldn’t even get a tiller through the soil (it literally bounced off the surface). The second year, we got another load in and a caterpillar tunnel. Each year we have set aside a section of land where we will build soil. We have chickens/turkeys/ pigs for some parts of the year so we take all the soiled shavings and pile them in the new area and till them twice-once in spring as soon as the ground is thawed and again in the fall. This year was the first year we observed worms in the section we tilled our second year so we planted in it and got good yields! We will keep doing this until the area we want for gardens is “big enough” and has enough “earth” that we don’t have to build it any more, just add a bit more compost. It’s a long term project for sure! But we will get there!
Check out Neversink Farm's rock pile. He has a big youtube presence. He showed a pile that came from just one greenhouse that blew my mind. It is surely worth doing.
I don't know how much land you are intending to cultivate but under an acre try to get wood chips from tree trimmers.
I know of one farmer who went against the norm... his wife left him and everyone said he was crazy... that year he had a bumper crop and all the other farmers in that area failed. He acquired another farm that year. He continued to grow and now is the most successful in his area
did he acquire a new wife?
@@BlaBla-pf8mf lmao 🤣 probably a new harem ...
WHEN EVERYBODY IS GOING LEFT, TURN YOUR HEAD TO THE RIGHT. THE MASSES ARE SHEEP. AND, IF THAT ONE FARMER SUCCEEDS, YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO FOLLOW HIS METHOD, OR DIE TRYING, EVERYBODY CHILL, THE SEEDS KNOW WHAT TO DO, STOP SORAYING.
Sounds like what happened with Greg Judy. He farmed cattle the old way and almost went bankrupt. Returning to old methods (plus utilizing "new" technology like electric fencing) not only saved his farm but he appears to be extremely profitable now.
I guess if the farmers wife left him because he adopted a different growing method, he's probably better off. Hope she took all her shoes with her!
I know a farmer that does air seeding. Compressed air drills the seeds into unploughed fields with the crop residue still there. He contracts out his services and does quite well. It’s no dig, saves fuel, saves multiple trips over the field, ie time and prevents soil erosion.
My dad is a 4th generation traditional farmer. The restrictive culture is REAL with older farming generations in our area. Why doesn't everyone eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly? Human nature, which defies logic more than we admit. Change is scary to many people. GD stubbornness is another element.
I'm a market gardener in SW France, midway across the Pyrenees. It's a 'micro' production - little more than 1 acre, using 5-6 300m sq rectangles for rotation. All under organic cert rules. I use hi grade black plastic to prep new ground, and afterwards the tractor with a 2-blade plough and a 5ft rotovator. I'm fully aware of no-dig and apply some principles, however the reason I won't go any further is VOLES, which are prolific in surrounding valley. Voles will chew the roots of any plant but are especially content to scoff carrots and potatoes. They are rarely seen above ground, staying hidden in the upper foot deep layer (or even 8"). If you put any object or mulch down, voles will take full advantage of the security it offers to not tunnel, but pass at the surface interface. The ground must be turned to disturb them. Before planting out I plough then pass at least 3x with the rotovator. I keep a barrier perimeter strip around each rectangle - and turn this over many times more. I've tried trapping the beggars - not v practical on this scale. Cats & dogs are helpful, as are presence of predators, but there's only so much they can do.
to distrub them would it not be possible to use sheep f.ex? LIke after harvest season you sow a cover crop where you let ur local shepeard graze after it has established a bit? I know that they do this with no till in rowcrops to compat mice.
Voles! The bane of my orchard. I feel your frustration.
Better predator?
@@johnransom1146 Like most places, France will have killed most of its wolves. If they're lucky, foxes and coyotes might come back. But yeah, I'd like to know the full story on what predators they killed if there are too many rodents.
I live in Nova Scotia Canada. Oodles of predators. They only get voles in towns and they dig tunnels and you see mounds. I’ve got so many out here in the bush you don’t see voles, mice, nothing like that. There are ermine, coyotes, my dogs, bald eagles and hawks, owls, snakes, and others. Bears too @@DrDavidThor
I did not know how seriously some people take this stuff till or no till until I started videoing my garden. I try a little of everything to see what works. You have been an inspiration and helped my garden be more successful last summer and I'm sure in the next growing season. I have gardened for years and never heard of no till so I'll end it by saying: "You don't know what you DON'T know" haha
sorry, please excuse my bad English. My observation here in Europe is that the no-till movement has gained massively in importance. Here in Germany, around 1300 micro farms were set up to grow vegetables last year. The most with no-till
Up here in Latvia the state is funding many test zones to research regenAg type set ups and I know some farmers are already doing more minimal tillage.
ONLY BECAUSE ITS A NEW IDEA BASED ON AN OLD IDEA. YOU NEED A SIMPLE MULCH. SUPER SEDD SPREADERS DON'T LET YOU MULCH. THAT'S WHY A 3 ACRE ORGANIC FARM WILL OUT PRODUCE 30 ACRES OF CO,,ERCIAL FARMING.
That's the key. Small farms, and commercial. People growing twenty hectares cannot put that much attention into the lifecycle of the soil, people who are not making their living selling produce don't have the time and money to no till outside of pots.
oh so EU is actually putting regulations and programs in place to actually help with something good? we are so used to governments being abusive that once something good is made is quite the shock 🤣
about the "20 Hectares" argument there, I don't know... my grandfather's property was a 20 Ha rice farm (I think space for the house and entrance yard was also included in this 20 Ha not sure) 20 Ha is not that big amount of land to become "unmanageable"... it's a fairly quick walk from one corner to the other corner... there was plenty of down time in the winter, there's plenty of time to care about the land in a size like that (rice is more complicated because it turns into mud)
What would be more important than growing extremely healthy crops without petroleum toxins that are always neurotoxic & carcinogenic. All of my Regenerative Organic crops have been extremely delicious, vibrant fragrant smells are so clean & pure, energy derived from these foods are immense. Thank You Jesse, for All you do.
Hey Jesse, I just want to say this is hands down my favourite UA-cam channel exactly for videos like this. I see your video, my brain does an Irish jig and I click instantly. I love that you can take a skeptical question from the comments about your farming philosophy and answer it respectfully and informatively with nuance and humility, without being defensive or falling into the trap of dogma. Since the comments section on UA-cam can sometimes be a cesspool and you probably don’t hear it enough, from a farmer going on 13 years of constant experimentation (8 years running my own farm, and 5 of those years transitioning and operating it no till *because of YOU*), thank you for everything you do. You’re awesome. See you in the next video. Okay. Bye.
Edit: And say hello to kitty cat for me. She’s awesome too. Meow meow meow. Purr. (She’ll understand what that means.) Good kitty cat.
Awe thank you 🙌🏻
@goodboysongs correction, since you are a subscriber, you are awesome!
NO NEED TO EXPERIMENT, ALTHOUGH ITS FUN, USE NATURE, FOLLOW WHAT GOD CREATED AND YOULL HAVE GREAT SUCCESS. MULCH, BUT THE NATURAL KIND, DON'T FORCE NATURE. EVERY GENERSATION IS TRYING TOO HARD TO IMPROVE DADS FARM, IT GETS RIDICULOUS.
@@notillgrowers l love agricalcher how to start
Meow, meow she will know. Lol
You are correct what works some place may not work at the other side of the road.
I’m just a retired guy with a backyard garden in raised beds with no particular expertise, but I love gardening and have been doing it for many decades, and as a young man, worked on a 80 acre farm growing vegetables. We always disced and plowed in the spring, then planted. I had no reason to question the methods. They worked and we raised and sold lots of vegetables. In the ‘80s I started a family and began backyard gardening, and also began moving toward more organic methods. I was a faithful reader of Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine, and since then have always incorporated organic pest control, fertilization and composting into my garden, although I believe there’s a place for synthetic fertilizer. I say all that to say that I’ve mulled these questions around in my head for the better part of 50 years, and a question that has occurred to me, is that all composting methods encourage some degree of turning (aka tilling) to incorporate air for aerobic bacteria. Why is it beneficial to till compost but not the soil? I’m not sure I buy into the no till rationale, if I understand it correctly. Even in my raised beds, with soil as soft as a baby’s behind, some degree of aeration is needed after a long growing season, where the soil has become relatively compacted due to rain and watering, and re-amending the soil requires working the amendments into the top layers of soil. Doesn’t all this sort of making tilling or not tilling a moot point?
"Why is it beneficial to till compost but not the soil?" Excellent question.
@@mwmingram I think it depends. You can till compost into the soil, you're actually not breaking up the lower layer for the soil when you do that. And you are mixing the soil and compost together so that there is more surface area for the compost to break down and microbes implement into the soil. (I hope that makes sense). I mean, you can put a layer of compost down and then a layer of soil on top. The plant roots will eventually get to the compost as they get bigger. But there is no grantee that the compost won't burn the plant. I guess you can do this method 2 or 3 months before actually planting. Giving the compost time to break down.
And you don't wanna till the soil cuz you'll be breaking down the structure of the soil. Which would inhibit water retention, microbe retention,. If it's too porse and aerated all the fertilizer and water you pour into the soil will just drain deeper into the soil outside the roots reach. So you'd end up fertilizing and watering more frequently. Besides, nitrogenase enzymes of nitrogen-fixing bacteria are extremely sensitive to oxygen...so you'll be killing of nitrogen fixating bacteria. :)
I dunno if it helps. Just my opinion due to surface area and micro 101.
I've actually done no-till method for years cuz I'm lazy, lol. I would put a layer of compost on top and mix it into the top soil a bit cover it with straw then a tarp for a month or so. I put the tarp on top cuz we get lots of rain and I don't want my compost washed off or the sun to sterilize my good microbes. Then when I'm ready to plant, I'll remove the tarp and the straw. I toss the straw into my compost bin for next year because it's been aged and is already breaking down.
IMHO, The problem with your question is that you're equating compost with soil. Soil is not the hot stinking pile that the compost is. There are many natural living and breathing "tillers"in there like the earthworm that survive and thrive in undisturbed soil in the vicinity of living plant root system and slowly composting organic matter, unlike in the compost.
One thing that I've experienced is the reluctance of institutions to entertain new ideas. When I was first getting started with a little plot in my back yard, LOTS of people gave me the advice to contact my local cooperative extension office for information and advice. On one hand, they were great with recommendations for which varieties grew best and for basic soil tests. On the other hand, the Master Gardeners were very limited in what they could (or would) talk about outside of "traditional" gardening practices. Asking about no-till practices frequently got me looks like I was a crazy person and recommendations for the best rototilling services in my area. Trying to get advice on permaculture practices like hugelkultur or dynamic accumulators was impossible. It has gotten a bit better in recent years, but I can only wonder how many gardeners get introduced to the "old" practices by local extension offices and never go beyond those methods.
non-traditional gardening practices are usually unproven and subjected to hype cycles
My experience as well, in the Master Gardening programs in two states. Back then colleges got their funding from chemical commercial agriculture, and they didn't want to compromise that by offering non chemical based advice and recommendations. Not supposition, fact, explained to me when I asked why organic methods were not allowed to be advised when working in the program. We were told that if we offered suggestions not endorsed by Extension, we would be kicked out of the program. I've seen this change from when I started as a Master Gardener in the 80's, at last.
Yeah, Ruth Stout has comic stories about master gardeners and university farming types grumpily admitting that her no-till way was better.
Many interesting comments and thoughts here. I am a horticulturalist and landscaper by trade. I did my education at an agricultural school in Ontario, Canada in the 90s. My education and the education of the people taking "farming" courses, did not include any information about no till/no dig gardening. While the fundamentals of our program were taught, it was definitely geared towards a career involving tilling, chemicals and products commercially available. I did do a soil course but it really focused on nutrients for plants and nothing else.
Today, we know so much more about the world of soil and it's connection and the overall health connections. Science is catching up and helping everyone who wants to know about these connections. It is channels like this that help educate and spread the word that no dig/regenerative gardening is an option for some.
I myself have some no dig beds, a larger garden that we use the rototiller on and a couple Hugelkultur mounds that are no dig. I didn't start off with no dig but as the years go by, I have understood my land and do what works in the different areas. Once I build up the soils in those areas and get them to where I think they are really healthy, then I transition them into no dig if I feel like they are ready and will thrive. There are several factors that affect an area and sometimes you just have to deal with them first and that's ok.
I do agree that many farmers are learning and with each generation change will come. As long as there are people out there sharing what they are doing so that everyone knows what the options are, eventually the industries will follow suit. Simply because that is how they will make their money. When the consumers are educated many will make the choice to buy produce from small local market gardens or even start growing themselves.
For those of us who are passionate about these methods, it is really important to develop a community around you and create a small movement that gains notice in your area, so that more and more people can learn and join. It takes a village as they say. ☺
We have 10 acres here but most of it is forest. Permaculture is my jam. I incorporate many species around the property that are perennial or self seeding so that my food forest provides without a lot of interference. So you see, I give everything a try. In the end a combination might be what works for you. Just start. Make the change. Move forward. There will be a community out there to help you along. Be brave. Best of luck. ☺
sounds like psych phd training
Yes, transitioning is something most ignore. It applies to married life, spiritual life, and soil life.A good example is what is called the adolescent period, the transitioning to adulthood
While you had a lot of important observation - I think the point about how "no-till" is defined is an important one. With some of the more stringent definitions I've heard regarding "no-till" I doubt even nature would be considered "no-till." Given all the burrowing and rooting animals in nature (ants, worms, gophers, rabbits, etc) the soil can be disturbed quite a bit - even without considering animals like wild pigs that may make an area look like a rototiller was taken through it.
I think between regional differences and even different farm practices/crops there are a lot of different ways to get to a same (or similar end point). Having moved from Minnesota to Alabama years ago really opened my eyes to just how extremely different the needs and practices for successful farming/gardening can be from place to place. Some places may require tillage just to get the soil warm enough for early or long growing crops, and others may need it just to bury and slow the decomposition process - or to pin crop reside down so it doesn't wash or blow away.
Personally I think the single best thought I've heard/read when it comes to farming/gardening would boil down to "Have a purpose for what you do, but observe and be prepared to change course/practices as needed."
I was digging through your old videos and stumbled across the no till carrots yesterday.
What I found interesting is during a transition to a new method (you were transitioning to no till) a farmer will have to spend extra time and energy figuring out whether it works, and whether it "just needs a few seasons to get right".
Considering No-Till has a big push to build an ecosystem, it can be hard to take what feels like a gamble on it for multiple years while the biome figures itself out. You'll likely face new pest pressures (though hopefully less) and different nutrient challenges.
I really appreciate the nuanced take you bring.
FYI if you ever want to go down a rabbit hole, there is a British book series called "the conservation handbook" which goes into GREAT detail about many different traditional practices. I learned a lot about hedges as they take them very very seriously
I think you nailed why conventional farmers do what they do, they do care. Unfortunately I don’t see any kind of certification working though, it will just end up being captured like every other one.
I love your videos, and learn a lot from every one. I think part of the problem with scaling also is that no-till tends to be more labor intensive. There seems to be a sweet spot where a farmer with family members, maybe a few teenage helpers, or maybe a few interns who will work in exchange for room and board, can find a place where they can be profitable and self sustaining. If you wanted to scale up by 10X labor becomes a big issues. Few people are willing to do the hard work, so even labor availability becomes a challenge. Even if you can find someone willing to take the job, if you hire ten full time workers to scale your operation up, then all the sudden you have a full time job managing your personnel, which takes away the time you used to spend managing the crops. Also, with full time employees, then you need a book keeper and someone to take care of all the paperwork requirements. It just seems hard to make it to a point that is 10X bigger than a small family operated business. It is what needs to be done, but it is just hard to get there.
That’s capitalism for ya. Everyone wants to scale up as much as possible, and sustainability be damned if one can turn a quick profit doing it. In almost all cases, “scaling up” beyond a certain, modest point is just a euphemism for “figuring out better ways to exploit the working class more cheaply.” Very few people give a shit about the science or what’s good for the long term (present channel excluded, of course).
@@wmpx34 the problem is not capitalism, the problem is consumer choice. Costco sells a full cooked delicious broasted chicken for $5. I would claim that the real cost of a sustainably and humanely and chemical free chicken would need to be around $50 if the business was to genuinely be sustainable. The consumer is not willing to pay $50 and would rather buy a chemical laced fully cooked chicken at $5 and put the balance towards Netflix, an 82 inch TV, and the latest iPhone. So unfortunately the consumer does not value healthy and sustainable food products. I guess we are lucky the business can be sustained by individual family based farms.
@@wmpx34no that's survival at its root. If it weren't for mechanized farming the majority of the world would be starving right now and population would be a small fraction.
Everything has a cost. Farmers are the only ones getting shafted at this point because people want cheap food, few want good food, and fewer yet are willing to grow it
I think as time goes on we will see these operations scaling up and growing.
I have a few areas where I do minimum tillage, my tomatoes I plant into rows that are constantly mulched and do not require any tillage year after year, we just rip out the old plants and put new ones in, often even leave the stakes at the same place( as long as they are still good), but most of our two acres I do tillage on because I just have too much fun doing it with my team of draft horses and it goes faster than replacing the mulch constantly. I do use cover-crops, though, but try to have marketable ones, like mustard, daikon radishes and peas, of which we do not harvest all, but only a portion. By the way, the daikon replant themselves this way and can be used in a two-fold manner: the radishes themselves and if you let them stand one can later harvest the pods to be added to salads. Daikon planted earlier can supply natural trellis for peas, when the weather is not too dry.
Not a farmer here, but I have been working our home garden areas into the no-till/no-dig/Back To Eden style, and it's been so awesome to see the difference in our plant health and harvests. It is so worth the effort in diving deep into the rabbit hole that is the soil food web. I've had the occasional crazy thought of starting our own no-till market garden somewhere, but it would be really hard to break away from my current career, considering how much it provides for our family. But kudos to all the larger scale gardeners and farmers who are giving this a go to provide us with quality food with such a reduced impact to our ecology.
Jesse, you are one of the best on youtube. Keep the information coming. Having grown up in a traditional farming family I have a perspective that allows me to think on both sides. First, it depends on what you call scaling up. Thirty acres is whole different game then 300 or 1,000. Time is gold in true commercial level farming. My family farmed from 300 to 1,000 in different generations. In every scenario it was limited to 2-4 family members. We as hobbyist and small produce farmers need to guard against trying to think of large scale grain farming on the same plain as small operations. No till farming came on the scene probably 30 years ago and is indeed the most used method today. It's just not what we think of as gardeners and small farms. Modern farms call in huge agri-business vendors who soil test and modify soil nutrients chemically, quickly and economically. A couple days with big machinery and the crop ground is ready to go. Most never plow soil anymore, they have no till planters.
Proof is in the yields. When my dad farmed and planted cover crops and tilled them under then amended with standard fertilizers an acre of corn yielded 100 bushels. That same ground when my brother-in-law farmed it with modern techniques yielded 225 bushels per care. That's going to make anything else a hard sell. So our perspective needs to stay on garden market and small specialized farms. For that the no-till/minimum till, high soil organic management is wonderful. For large scale farming it's not economic, in my opinion. So keep the information coming us gardeners love it and it works for us.
Thanks for these great videos. I've asked that same question, why isn't everyone doing this? I found Gabe Brown this summer, and then your videos. I am a long time back yard gardener doing no till for 3 years now (gardening for 45) with only broadforking in Montana clay. I have put in my first cover crop this year. My magic juice is vermicompost. Now I will work on reducing commercial fertilizers. This year I had no pests or disease, big yields and tons of bees with intercroppiing flowers. Thanks for all the good advice and tips. I love your book and I'm pushing all my fellow gardeners to go regenerative-no till and to buy your book! Keep up the good work!
There are far more farmers out there that are using no-till/low-till methods as part of their tool box and just not advertising it. They may not be completely no-till all the time on all their land and for all their crops but they are applying it where and when it works for them. Particularly where they see it can save them on machine time in the field and save on some amount of inputs.
Local large scale chicken farmer near me that farms about 1000 acres for feed (corn, soy, wheat) uses a no-till seed drill to plant soy into the shrapnel of corn, not tilling or even disking first. Then part way through soy bean season that field is broadcast seeded with winter wheat. Wheat germinates under the soy and at end of season when the soy is harvested the wheat gets released, grows enough more for overwintering. Next spring the wheat takes off again and is harvested at end of season. Then the following season they're back to corn again. This time they disk the field before sowing corn. The disking only goes a few inches and it's mainly to incorporate the chicken manure they had just spread over the field.
2 years no-till. One year of tillage. That's the typical cycle. In some fields they sometimes skip the wheat cycle. Other fields they may do soy beans two years in a row. Essentially they are managing nitrogen as corn is such a heavy feeder. Soy puts nitrogen into the soil through their root nodules and wheat is basically nitrogen neutral. Plus the added nitrogen from the chicken manure, only applied before corn planting. And a chemical application of nitrogen gets added mid season during the corn rotation.
With their modified no-till system they get increased organic matter in the soil, typically need to apply less chemical nitrogen and save on labor, machine time, and fuel by making less passes in the fields.
I know this because one of their fields is right beside my 1/4 acre no-till market garden. Each time they're in that field I'm asking what they're doing and why. Soy and wheat years I barely ever see them. Corn years I see them a few times.
I only when I make a new bed. I am in swamp land and there are water tunnel's in the land amd is very uneven. I pick my spot the in the summer and cover with wood chips n straw to try to fill in the water trails. Than I cover to kill the weeds. In the spring like now, I uncover and till n do some more fillthan recover and plant. Been a lot of work but have great plants that thrive with out burning nettle, wild mustard n such taking over. Thanks love the show
I used to farm 150 acres in Alfred Ontario, oats, barley, wheat, alfalfa. No Till on that scale would have been generally impossible in the 1970-90 but no-plow corn farming was developing. I am retired and I have a small no-till garden which I think is the way to go for small to medium gardens.
Thank you for giving an honest and balanced perspective about how and why our food is grown in various ways.
I think one of the huge differences is, commercial -commodity- market (and scale) is completely different than market gardening. One seeks to feed the pocketbook (though it is stated as "feed the world") and the other wants to feed actual people.. directly.
Love this channel so much. Growing for many years but in my forth year of no till and focusing on soil microbes. I've seen so many positives but my favorite is LESS WEEDS. Thank you Farmer Jesse for all you do to promote healthy soil.
Hello there
Thank you Jessie! I for sure try to leave root structure in the ground and nurture the mycelium but I would have to say I am an "agnostic" farmer. we use all kinds of methods from hügelkultur to living soil, to no till......If I got the stuff on hand Ill try it. Some people have told me what I was doing is in the "living soil" category but Im not sure. Composting in place has been very kind to me and the mycelium seem to absolutely love it.
Thank you Jessie for your humor and wit. You knowledge is great. I thunk it is something that has been passed down through government and other agencies. Instead of properly managing their land either crops or livestock. These agencies offer quick and convenient options to having to think. Subsidies are another thing. I feel that a food producer should get the Subsidies and the row crop farmer that produces products that are not directly used by the end consumer should not get the Subsidies.
Just a note I love the no till aspect of farming. I had a small farm that just about had the fertilizer loop closed but life happened and now I am not on the farm so now it's balcony farming😅
I just wanted to add, to see huge fields of corn cut, bailed for fodder and then just left until planting, versus my neighbor spending days on his tractor plowing and burning fuel, makes so much sense!!
Hello there
Excellent answer. I think you nailed it. We grow 4+ acres of veggies in a mixed 30 acre system using no-till, minimum till, and tillage depending on context and crop--on the same farm. So yes, there is nuance. Scale is the biggest hurtle for us as well as labor and clean mulching material in the amounts needed to do everything no-till. No-till is the best choice for the soil and should be a no-brainer for backyard growers. Balancing and maintaining profitability, sustainability, and soil health on the larger scale is where the work needs to be done. Keep up the great videos. Just saw your channel this year-- a fellow KY grower after my own heart!
One of the best books I own! Hello from Henderson Nevada and permaculture no dig works for me
It's because, most people still follow the traditional way of thinking about gardening. But what most people don't realise is that in the forests and nature that seem to do great all by themselves, nobody tills the ground in the forests and it's perfect just like mother nature intended. Happy gardening, Green love from Australia 💚🌲🙏
The main issue for me was getting enough compost/mulch. Fortunately I found a place I can get free municipal compost year round and it seems to work well. I use a mixture of that and my own compost and try to minimise tilling unless the ground is compacted or I am starting a totally new area.
I am a small garden farmer. I bought the book and learned so much. I had mostly success when some of the other home gardeners didn’t in our 4. Year drought situation. I owe at least some of the success to the book and what I learn. Keep up the good work Jesse. Havagudun and all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving.
following charles dowding for a while, you need to keep in mind that he is currently on a posture or previous market garden plot. he can pretty much implement no dig on the plot with confidence - and i’m sure it works in that context.
however it could run into unforeseen hiccups. i was cutting turf off the top of new rows in a paddock used for grazing horse. i uncovered piles of cow bones. and they are spread out all over shallow.
to grow carrots, they simply need to be dug out.
had a memorable experience starting a garden in the bush.
but it was solid rock on 4/5th of the site. i utilised compost from the stables in another suburb, sieved dug out forest soil etc.
it went on for few months.
after nearly 1yr and a half, the place is excellent.
we have a wet winter so this assists greatly.
i’ve settled on a single dig approach.
on a horse graze paddock i have leased now i go for a rotary hoe for rows leaving the original grass as paths. lots and lots of life in the rows remains. and the grass really assists from drying out.
I have done minimal till for 18 years
Notice I said minimal till
There are times we have to cover the trash.Helping organic material get into the ground.Soil tests are absolutely mandatory. We have seeded close to 150000 acres.We are Constantly learning
Thank you for this! I’m not a farm.. yet. But do garden on a half acre, and understand all the best practises of covering soil but with such a big plot to care for it truly is easier to buy a case of beer for a farmer to come till my plot at the beginning of the season than it is to sources mounds of mulch and compost 🤷♀️.
Hello 👋
I live in Australia and our large farms here are probably a bit unique in that most of them (>80%) actually don't till. The problem with no-till here on a large scale though is that the tillage would usually be controlling weeds, so without it they turn to herbicides, so no-till has increased herbicide usage. Again this is on really large farms, I think it's great on smaller scales but does come with its issues when you try to scale up
Thanks Jessie, especially for keeping an open mind to what constitutes ecological farming. It is a real challenge balancing between making a living whilst doing the best you can for the environment that sustains us all…. Including kitty cat. My farm cat says meow meow meow to conscientious, mindful, innovative food products, especially yummy organic field mice 😊
My biggest issue as a home gardener with no till is the inputs it needs. I don't have the money to buy all the mulch inputs I need and it takes a lot of time and effort to collect free stuff. I spent 10+ hours picking up leaves from my neighborhood to make a 12in layer that my soil needed and IT WAS A LOT 😂
How big is your garden? You could for example grow tree lines in between your garden crops. Every 3-4 meters / 10-13 feet. Some of them are even nitrogen fixers. You should choose those which grow faster in your area. Most would be called invasive or agressive species. Then, once or twice a year, you just prune them hard and use that material as mulch. I'd say it'd be easier than hunting leaves around. :)
Yep. Got to have a waste product available that they will drive to you. #1 rule.
I've been practicing no till gardening for the last 6 years and have been very happy with it.
I just cover the soil the way mother nature does and she reciprocates by giving me food when I need it most, when Im hungry. What I do, anyone can do- old or young, healthy or inferm. Anyone can build a Back To Eden style farm.. great content. Love to hear more of your take on why tilling on the regular should be avoided. Plenty of folks have yet to wake up to the fact that theres been more days on earth without commercial fertilizer than there has been with it. And for good reason too. Great content indeed..
Love your channel. Back yard gardener for 50 years.Ive experimented with no til for 4 seasons in one raised and one ground bed. Both were well established (30 plus years) deep rich beds that have been used primarily for vegetables. In my opinion, after 4 seasons of no til, I'm not impressed. Even with the amount of existing composted soil the compaction factor in those beds seems to have hindered the overall productivity. Ive topped both beds with several inches of compost and covered over the winter. Instead of tilling the same amount in the regular beds in the fall. Im gonna give it one more season of no til but likely abandon if little change.
Another fun and informative video Thank You. Another point I thought of is a lot of farmers here are on rented/leased land. Thus they are not going to make the investment or take the time and wait for the land to naturally heal itself. As mentioned money money money! As an investment by the farmer and what the farmer renting the land wishes for his pocket. This Winter/Spring the mega hassle of broadforking our heavy clay soil. Then the weed and grass pressure. We will win ............................................. eventually!
+1 that growing at scale problem is the key issue for many farmers converting. Also in there is that seeds people buy have been adapted to the seed grower's methods that are often full-on chemicals and tillage where those seeds get quite a 'culture' shock when put in not-till/compost/organic systems (you need to keep your own seed to replant) and that includes many heirloom varieties since the modern bare dirt and chemical system has been out there for ninety years migrating ninety generations of seeds to the latest methods; it's work to unwind that seed evolution. That's why when people try no-till they struggle more and give up, it's hard. (Jesse, do an interview with Joseph Lofthouse if you can, there is also a woman in Lofthouse's circle that studied nutrient density from soils vs genetics and found seed genetics were the key practice to the highest nutrients).
Jesse, may you please do an interview with this person mentioned? I am super curious.
You are probably referring to Carol Deppe author of Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties and The Resilient Gardener.
I have a small farm with my wife, although field growing isn't our main focus. We've previously worked somewhere with a similar setup. That place and the previous owners of our place all did conventional growing with tillage. I'm trying to learn more and figure out what will work for us without spending a lot of money. We also don't know anyone in this area doing this so we just are slowly collecting information before starting.
I find that the "sales" part of the job is more nerve-wracking for me.... okay let me think, I have to drive the goods to the farmer's market, I can only carry about 30 lettuce and 30 kale at one time, I will Net Profit 1 dollar out of each, okay that's not much left after the Fuel (driving distance is a key element) "That's not much, can I live out of this?" You have to diversify I get it, my anxiety comes from the fact there's no GUARANTEED sales, every new week you have to grind sales once again... I am probably missing something very obvious 🤣
quoting my brain "I left the city jobs because stupid bosses gave me anxiety attacks, but now I have anxiety over sales before trying to sleep because I have to wake up tomorrow at 4 AM to drive to the farmer's market and I don't know how much net profit I will make" 🤣
Excellent explanation sir, and very honest, kind and gentle.
You nailed the topic perfectly. I live in Lombardy (Italy) on the hills at 300 meters above sea level. I have a 5000 sqm. field that I barely need to mulch a 400 square meter vegetable garden..... The problem is what you highlighted: No till would be the best method but the only major obstacle is the enormous quantity of organic substance that is needed. Thank you for sharing your experience.
thank you.. another great video, yet more food for thought, been binge watching having found you, found Eliot Colemans books years ago. I'm in the UK growing my own veg on clay. The last thing I want is a mulch that cools my soil other than at the peak of a heatwave. Whilst from a temperature point of view, we're "zone 8.5" in winter.. from a LIGHT point of view, we're roughly zone 2, so winter cropping is an issue. I have to use reflectors on early seedlings otherwise they get very leggy (searching for sunlight... double the sunlight with reflectors and things start working). our limited light is caused by latitude (51N) plus 65% cloud in winter (not 65% of days with some cloud, but 65% of the time it's 100% cloudy, 35% of the time, there's some breaks in the cloud.. today it's "sunny", that is we've seen the sun!, but right now, 100% cloud)
One plot 1/4 acre started as. Clay. We added one semi of partially rotted leaves. 2 years later the soil turned black and dried out quickly.
I am not a specialist but i read somewhere recently,
Weeds are grown by Nature to mitigate the deficiencies in the soil. Whatever soil lacks in, it will grow that weed which will nourish the soil with the lacking nutrient.
So Mother Earth tries to keep the balance.
Reference?
As a rancher and organic farmer.. i am seeing a relationship between profit and zero impact on the land.. that said, at the end of the day market price is still king.. unless you don't care about profit. as always.. appreciate your channel.. always learn something.. thank you.
Have found in my 50x50’ garden, if I don’t at least deeply dig the perimeter every 2 years, the tree roots from trees 20 to 100’ away take over the beds. They know a great thing! If I don’t put a barrier on the bottom of my leaf compost piles, by the next spring, the tree roots will have filled the bins to the level of compost, even if 3-4 ft above normal!
For gardeners, home & market, no-till/low-till can be relatively "easy" compared to farming at scale. One only needs to price new & used no-tll, min-till & hybrid equipment to understand that there is a barrier to entry.
Hello from Ukraine. I am an American organic market grower surrounded by thousands of acres of massive farms growing conventional grains. BUT we are doing our version of low till organics. Spreading the knowledge.
Hello Danny
A big reason for lack of commercial large scale farming going no till is (massively so in America) influence of big companies and their lobbying abilities. The agrochemical industry world over doesn't want no till, they dont want organic. Tractor and tillage equipment manufacturers dont want no till.
So these companies that have massive pull within governments will not want no till to succeed and are actively lobbying against it, one think here in the UK was the European Union telling us we could not grow more than X amouts and PAID farmers to not grow! They also said that fruits and vegetables have to be a certain size and uniformity so anything that was out of those parameters couldn't be sold to supermarkets etc. now we're are out from their thumb and if the hoysing developers leave grade A farm land alone farmers can go back to being farmers and see the benefits of practices such as no till and make more money
I've been fighting off no-till evangelists for years, who wanted me to write off this perfectly good soil that has been worked in this garden for at least two centuries. My half acre plot has 16 long beds across a slope, with swales between for drainage and irrigation. Right now there are three under plastic sheets, one is no till potatoes, one is untilled this year, with bi-annuals like kale flowering for seed this year. One is fallow, one is tree cuttings and one is wildflowers. The rest are tilled and planted with mainly salad, garlic and onions. Two of those were double dug with horse manure last year. I've spent seven years working on this plot, and to give an idea of the journey, I've built a path down the middle and around the edges just by throwing all the stones out of the beds. I have six compost heaps on the go, and three worm farms, and must have worked two feet of compost and manure into the beds over seven years, raising the level by a few inches. There are lots of reasons why strictly no-till practices wouldn't make sense here. I hardly had the money for manure, let alone mulch for half an acre, and both of those are hard to come by in this remote spot, but it would have washed into the swales or blown away in our extreme weather anyway. The soil I have is healthy, in a very bio-diverse and high yeilding garden, but the growing season is short, and plastic sheets held down with bricks make a lot more sense here. Weeds and wildflowers are my cover crops, but I don't really mind the weeds, or the ground being washed out. I gather it at the bottom of the slope and work it back up hill one wheelbarrow at a time. The way things are going, the soil will eventually look like no-till anyway, because it will probably be stone free and a foot deeper by the time I've laid down my spade.
I till with draft animals. Specifically, donkeys. I guess that would be a form of "minimum tillage"? It also supplies me with a steady supply of compost material. There's many people in this country that use draft animals (horses, mules, oxen), and it's very scalable to somewhat larger acres, too.
The ramial wood research found the compaction to be unavoidable and detrimental so the mulch had to be mixed in a little as they were applied and the beds had to be turned, even the no-till beds, every 4-5 years. We teach it in the agronomy courses in Canadian universities.
Success within Earth's forests and great plains is enough to convince me that no-till IS the way. Love your videos and expressions!
Just bought your book from the evil big retailer.
I got 5 acres. Probably about 2.5 acres non wooded. Never grown a garden before.
Hopefully I can be successful.
Make that 1.5 acres available.
Start small, then you won't get disheartened. Are you keeping livestock too?
@gypsygem9395 no ma'am. No livestock. Looks like a spring planting is not gonna be able to happen this year. Too much house repairs and etc going on. Might get some fruit trees in the ground though. They don't require as much maintenance time.
@@stevewinwood3674 That's the idea, start wth what's manageable for you. Good luck!
As I am getting older, I have found gardening more than just making food from the earth. Not that I get much production v.s. cost, but I try to have fun with it. Because, for me, it is a hobby, & living in a mobile home, I do not have a lot of space. I have had some success with lemon trees. For a few years, I tried to grow some from seed, at least a type I liked... the lady before me planted some tasteless lemons, they are like water. My wife finally said, lets just buy one, so we went to Home Depot & got a small tree. Later, I got some seeds to germinate, and after a few years, some are larger, growing in pots that the one we bought... I thought I should put them in front, so it would look & smell nice. That is the other thing I have found about gardening. The plants smell so nice, especially the tomatoes. & I think I have found a great place for tomatoes & peppers to grow, but I need to turn clay into something they will like. So, I don't think that will be no till, but making amendments to the side of the house should be fine. I had first thought of raised beds, but they are not free, nor is the soil to fill them... With all the UA-cam vids, I know I will find something that will be fine. - Sacramento, CA - Thank you for your videos, & I know we are on much different levels of farm/ garden, you are a :-) in my day, thank you...
Love the video like all the other ones.
Really appreciate the new ones and respect That You Don't See for a lot of other places.
But that is what I expect from Jessie and I'm never let down kudos brother thank you
I do love watching your videos as they don't ram just one process down your throat. We have tried no till on our small farm and it failed spectacularly. There was nothing wrong with the method but we have a couple of weeds that are particularly aggressive and thrive under the mulches. A creeping thistle is particularly bothersome and probably until we can eradicate that and another weed it will never work. We are definitely going to persist with trying to get to no till as in a limited area where it worked (until it didn't!) the results spoke for themselves. Keep up making this great content.
Isn't creeping thistle edible and nutritional?
I understand your challenge. After years of gardening with mulches on a small scale I have almost eradicated weeds but the first year or so the stubborn ones need work.
Options are very thick mulch or compost (think several inches), cardboard or tarp to suppress and/or to add extra mulch wherever you see weeds. The focus is to never let the weed see daylight until it depletes to nutrition stores in it’s root system.
I’m not mentioning hand weeding as I assume that’s not scalable for you, but that goes a long way as well. Getting those stubborn roots systems out will totally kill them. I think a little bit of weeding is needed in all systems especially if you had a lot to begin with. After a year or two a deeply mulched system will be far less weeder easily by a factor of 10x or more in my experience.
I started gardening on bare soil like my parents and I was out there in the heat and mosquitoes every few days weeding. It was like they were on steroids and my previous weeding a few days ago hadn’t happened. Now with deep mulching and no till, I can leave the garden alone for weeks with barely a weed when I visit.
In my area, mulch on the ground in late winter/early-mid spring tends to result in seedlings being eaten by slugs. Sometimes to the point I've had an entire set of spinach transplants completely nuked in two days flat. After that, I removed the mulch and settled on a 'no mulch anywhere near seedlings ever' rule. I'm just a home gardener, not a farmer, but having everything you planted destroyed in a couple of days is quite motivating to change your ways in a hurry.
Fortunately I still had some I hadn't planted out yet, so I still managed to get some spinach. It was an awful year for slugs, even once I'd removed the mulch from all my veggie beds, but not mulching made the difference between some surviving and none.
Dari Indonesia menyapa kawan . Sukses terus
I farm with donkeys. In the areas (small gardens) that they don't fit into, no-till with hand tools fits. But turning the soil with draft power minimizes the impact/compaction rates compared to even a rototiller. Turning the soil slowly allows for things such as earthworms to survive. I'm trying to combine the two - draft tillage and no-till - systems to fit as needed. The donkeys (or horses, mules, or oxen) supply a large supply of nitrogen- and carbon- rich compost ingredients.
I come from a family of "sod busters" who homesteaded Montana in the early 1900s. My ancestors were chained to two things... the plow and the bank. Every year was a struggle to produce as much grain as possible to pay back the loans. This is still true for many US farms today.
The "no till" gang and other up and coming "small holdings" farmers have an entirely different business plan. My great grandfather would have loved these "new" types of farming. Because he truly loved his land... and he hated banks. I mean he really hated banks!
First time deer plot, I did a no till clover plot. I prepped the 1/3acre site, raked to bare dirt, tested soil, sowed seeds and 2 weeks later after watering/rain I have fresh growth, seeds sprouted within the 1st week. I'd say no till can work if regardless of region if done/prepped properly. But that also depends what's being sowed and at what rate.
I grow a few things around my yard. Because my time is limited, I find fruiting shrubs to give the most return for the effort. The shrubs I just mulch, and they don't need water as much once they get going. Vegetables need soil preparations, weeding, and watching out for bugs.
I asked a soil scientist about tilling. He told me that tilling does disturb the soil microbiome but it returns to normal after a few weeks. I should not over till and not make the soil into a fine powder. If I till, I should till leaves and/or compost into the soil. I should also have the soil tested every three years.
Tp keep down weeds I put down landscape fabric and plant though holes in the fabric. In the fall I take up the landscape fabric up and till in leaves.
I love your book, the regenerative label definitely encourages me to buy.
No till was synonymous with using chemicals herbicides and fertilizers, which was expensive. It’s an interesting idea to couple no till farming with growing organic foods. You seem to be able to make it work.
Apart from all the reasons given in the video, in my country machines for agriculture are all centered around tilling, which is why almost no farmers use a no-till method. You are "supposed" to till, then harrow, then sow and so on, that's just how it's done and there are hardly any machines available for any other way of growing things on a large scale. I have asked a bunch of old timers here how to improve my soil and they all say I must till, that's the only way they know how to do it. Luckily, thanks to channels like yours, I know that's not true, there are loads of ways to improve the soil without tilling. But every time I mention that to farmers they kind of laugh at me and stop taking me seriously.
Many times what can successfully be done on a small scale is not possible on a large scale.
@@cecilchristopher5092 That's because until then, existing machines have been designed to be sold to tillers. There are many stories of mid- and large scale farmers who resort to invent their own notill-compatible machines.
Tilling is detrimental to the soil, regardless of the size of your farm.
@@cecilchristopher5092I agree. You can’t compare a farmer farming above and beyond 25 acres to a back yard gardener. Or a cpl acres.
So humble to even answer the question. Kudos!
People find it hard to change their routines. They need to keep education on their list of to-do's.😊
This is great advice. I have been struggling to follow a lot of the advice given by other gardeners. Not that they aren't good, but they may not be best for my situation, and they are sometimes too expensive for my pocket.
Great video, like they all are. I think scale is one reason that holds big farmers back. As Jesse said, at these scales, compost becomes really expensive. Plus, for a long time there was no proper equipment available. Some early big farm pioneers made their own equipment such as planters and drillers. It is also about attitudes. Farmers are stubborn people and it's hard to convince them to change their practices. "I have been farming this way all my life, as did my dad and my granddad, and now you're telling me we were all wrong?!". That sort of thing. I think it is important to stress that what they were doing back then under the socio-economic circumstances of these times was the right thing to do. Society and the economy back then (crisis years, WWII, post WWII) demanded cheap and plenty available produce. The "agricultural revolution" with its mechanization of agriculture and with the use of agrichemicals provided for that. Remember, back then farming was much harder. Now, technology has improved and no-till practices at a larger scale are possible and they do are applied at larger scales. Check guys such as Gabe Brown and the late David Brandt that have been applying no-till and cover crops and who have managed to get off the government tit and the dependence on inputs and chemicals.
i Use no till for my vegetables and minimal till for commercial watermelon and butternut farming. In my experience No till works if the seedlings are not to small and Spring temperatures isn't above 86F but at 90 to 105 deg the compost dries out fast and everything dies. With minimal tilling the soil with mulch (peanut shells) stay wetter and cooler but weeds could be a problem. We had a heatwave of 107F for 10 days and caused massive damage to the vegetables so i started over. Temperatures and irrigation types is also factors to consider.
great stuff! You touched on it with "money," but I'd say there's more to it: regenerative farming practices are not really economic practices -- they provide value to society beyond just meeting people's material needs. But we tend to think the market should somehow support them, when that's not the market's job -- which is to get material things to the people who need them as efficiently as possible. Instead, no-till-like practices should be supported in other ways: sure, the government. But better is the free support (instead of forced support, through taxation) by people who recognize the societal benefit of regenerative practices. Support for no-till shouldn't be in the market price (nor, really, in the state-sponsored farm bill); by trying to include it we mix up societal functions that should be left separated, confusing farmers and consumers alike.
5:41 How true... Or as the Swiss RegenAg advocate Wolfang Sturny says : until then, the agricultural methods have been developped around the machines, rather than the other way round.
What you explain in this video is part of the reason I don't like the no till label. Disturbing the soil effects different soil types differently and is sometimes highly beneficial. Most effective compost systems for example depend on high levels of disturbance of the compost component of the soil. Sandy soils can often tolerate different types of cultivation than other types of soils...
Always a pleasure
i live in a large scale cereal grain production area (southern Alberta, Canada). A lot of farmers around me use 60ft disc air drills to plant 1000's of acres no-till . of course they weed control with round up and use GM seed to do it...
My training is in conservation and rejuvenation. Tilling is an important part of rejuvenation especially when you want to remove contamination and invasive species or soil that has been stopped bare by human or invasive animals (specifically horses in Australia, as we have never had large land animals and they compact the soil.)
Obviously this isn't about farming, but depending what and where you are growing, especially if growing natives in home grows, it's really important.
Hi Jesse, good video. Virtually all cotton production in North Carolina uses no till. As you well know no till does present some issues that can be difficult to work around on a large scale operation. The biggist problem is weeds. Certain weeds are hard to deal without some sort of tillage like nutsedge. Also in eastern North Carolina it is very easy to form a hardpan in the soil with the clay, silt, and sand raitios. You have to rip the soil with an implement that will break the soil's hardpan layer to get the crops roots to reach deeper in the soil for moisture. The biggest issue though I see is the lack of eductation on the tremendous benefits of cover crops used for nutrition on a piece of soil. I have followed winter nutrition cover crops with vegetable crops with some very good results and some surprising results. Last year I planted a red clover and vetch crop that I followed with sweet corn.. I used very little fertilizer on the corn and got a very good looking sweet corn crop. The surprise was when it warmed up both the clover and vetch died leaving an almost bare spot of soil before I planted my corn. The density of the cover crop was so great that the usual spring weeds were suppressed to the point that I could have planted the corn no till. I didn't because I did not have a no till planter. I think the government could play a larger role in this by offering tax incentives to farmers who implement no till or reduced till.
Just before this one I saw the "danger of no dig" by Huw Richards. It seems to be the right time to broaden the picture and step away form ideology versus pragmatic approaches. Nice one !
I spent some time in Wisconsin, smack in the middle of farm land , I did see some large operations doing no till, I asked my neighbor about it and I believe he said it would take 3 years to convert and too risky, they seem to get continually kicked in the butt, every time you get a bumper crop, the price drops, the weather kills you, etc. just my experience, great point about not trying to fit one system to any land!!
Another great video. Wow a laser robot weeder - kewl (I want one!)
No Till / No dig is great but everywhere you look (Charles Dowding, Jesse Frost, Richard Perkins, Ruth Stout, Paul Gautschi.....) ALL use large amounts of compost or mulch. OFTEN not readily available (or affordable) to backyard gardeners, let alone large scale production (not to mention concerns now over persistent herbicide contamination in mulches and manures!!!).
I think the solution (or one solution) just may be cover crops and in many cases mowing and shallow tillage to terminate, disturbing the soil biology as little as possible. I reason that shallow tillage of say 2-3"~ offers little disturbance to the soil food web and may even stimulate it.
I also think that more aggressive leaf recovery is in order as in may areas leaves in fall are treated as waste and end up in landfills. 🙂
Yes, here in the East Coast we have so many leaves that everyone works hard to bag up and throw away. Then they pay for bags and bags of wood chips in the spring for their ornamental gardens. It makes no sense as they could use the leaves as mulch for free. I find leaves suppress weeds better than a comparable amount of wood chips…-plus I believe they have beneficial minerals etc.
I think the laser weeders are an amazing advancement. I’d rather that than loads of chemicals. Most systems have some weeds and keeping them under control can lessen the seed bank over the years allowing more regenerative methods to be more feasible. I’m all for it…
A few years ago, in the spirit of Ruth Stout, I tried no-till with hay mulch. I felt it was mostly a fail as it brought with it a LOT of weed seeds....that even after tillage, was/is an on-goning problem in my 3000 sq. ft. garden. And so it goes. I'm still working towards no or low till methods. 🙂
Charles Dowding makes a lot of his own compost, which anyone with a garden or some acreage should also attempt to do, since it's free. He also gets manure from a local stableyard. Anyone can ask farmers or stables for manure to add to their compost. Also Charles doesn't put a great deal on his established beds, about 2-3cm (approx 1 inch) once a year in winter. His garden was originally about a quarter acre, it's a bit more now.
@@gypsygem9395 The potential problem these days with outsourced materials is persistent herbicides. I'm not sure that the average homeowner can make enough compost for a moderate sized garden. But along with cover crops, I'm going to try.
@@MikeV607 yes I agree regarding the herbicides, Charles Dowding does mention those. Good luck with the green manure crops and compost making! You could also ask your neighbours for their veg waste and grass clippings
So this is a list of my reasons why I till:
-I don't want to use tarp, I hate plastic, I worked in conventional horticulture enough and I know you lose control of this trash pretty fast when you are overwhelmed with work. For example, mice love to tear this material spreading small pieces of plastic and then it's almost impossible to gather this later. After some years sun destroys this further making a lot of microplastic. Also, sometimes it's really hard to gather everything, and yeah, I'm really lazy. For this reason, I also don't want to have greenhouse production, maybe only for transplants. If I got money I will use glass tho.
-If I don't use a tarp, mulching with straw, hay and so on for a few years creates an ideal condition for perennial grasses, and I respect my back so I won't pull out weeds by hand.
-I don't use irrigation, mulching with compost creates a lot of erosion then.
-Harrowing, lightly tilling or tilling with push hoe a "black fallow" for a few weeks or even months is a great way to preserve moisture in soil from winter and greatly reduces weed seed bank and kills all perennial weeds. I don't have much rain in spring, using cover crops for plants seeded or planted in late spring (after last night frosts) will deplete most of the moisture, making seeding or planting impossible.
-Using a lot of compost or mulching material is back breaking.
-Bare soil warms faster in spring.
-Hopi lightly till without cover crops for 2000 years and created permanent fields in extremely harsh conditions.
But, I try to till as shallow as possible, I mostly use push hoe, so I don't go deeper than 2 cm, I also try to plow as little as possible, especially on sandy soils, I only do that when weeds grew too big and I just want to bury them as fast as possible before they go into seed.
Living beside farmers fields in pa.
I see minimal disturbance practices. And they have a great success rate.
Seems to me that farming large acreage holds the farmer hostage to the "gotta have more stuff" syndrome not to mention the BANK!!!!!!!!!!!. Don''t know what the answer is but I'd stick to small scale. Love your channel.
I farm around 10,000 acres, over the past 5 years we have moved over to minimal tillage, fields will just see a coulter run over it in the spring, we still opt for deep tillage when preparing potato land, we don’t add any composts or mulches, aside from the potato dirt that gets collected from harvest where will pile it and let it compost down for 1-2 years before we add it to poor areas, we feel like the minimal tillage has helped us
Hello Cobalt
This is a great point. You also mentioned one of my favorite "alternate" no-till systems, which is regenerative agriculture. Especially when you start getting into the really deep end with the folks doing what might be considered almost a form of dedicated research farming and it sometimes it begins to feel like you're starting to blend the concepts of agriculture and foraging.
I've always felt in agriculture, there's a big spectrum between growing plants in a completely artificial environment (think hydroponics), all the way through to people trying to "reseed" a natural environment and figuring out ways to encourage virtuous cycles to speed through less desirable states of nature (like turning into a bramble thicket, which then has to wait for animal life to come in and "correct" it.)
It's all super fascinating stuff.
Excellent - wide ranging discussion... nice vid.
Another name that could be used for no till is IPM- Integrated Pest Management. In New Mexico the definition of a pest is, and I quote, "Anything that competes for food and water" with nutrients belonging to the food category.
Like you say, terminology. Every large-scale farmer here in Saskatchewan (20,000acres+) will claim they are no-till. It's just the new (renewed) tech of air-seeding and of course all the other ag chemical inputs. But still, they don't till.
ps. i'm not defending that style, I'm highlighting what the term is up against.
Here's an idea for cover crop termination at scale: Cut at the front, laser zap in the middle, drop the cut residue back as mulch in the back. All in one device, probably mounted to the side of a tractor or completely robotic as the laser zapper already is. This shouldn't be too difficult to implement for the robozapper folks... maybe I'll pitch the idea to them, see what they say.
Hello Felix