plantyhamchuk:

misadventured-piteous-overthrows:

Summer #NoTill Field

For this season, the farmers we work for are letting us use a field to grow some produce to sell at market. And we decided to try out some no till techniques since this is pretty low risk for us. This past winter we tarped off the section we wanted to use with some plastic that we got for free from a farmer friend. I think we laid it all out in early January. We originally used landscaping staples but found that the plastic tore really easily so rock bags work better.

And then we waited!

We occasionally had to go out and adjust the plastic when it was really windy and it came loose from the rock bags but other than that we didn’t do anything. Ideally, what we wanted to happen was the plastic warm the ground enough to cause seeds to geminate but then they wouldn’t get any light and ultimately die. Thus helping to reduce the weeds that would come up in the spring.

Then this spring it looked like this! Very nice and weed free, plus lots of organic matter added in. We also had to use a metal detector to find our staples since they had torn out.

At this point we broad forked half of the row we needed to plant and then used a cultivator to break up the clumps. I think if we had needed to we could’ve seeded right into the beds at that point. But instead we transplanted dill, parsley and basil. (The basil wasn’t doing well in the greenhouse because it was staying too wet and didn’t have great air flow so we decided to plant it early instead of risking it getting diseased.)

We put some row cover on to protect against cold overnight lows and pests like caterpillars and groundhogs and there ya have it!

The only worrisome parts we’ve encountered so far are: 1) there’s a lot of Johnson grass in this area because it hasn’t been in production and J grass is a pain in the butt and hard to kill. 2) the ground was harder than we would’ve ideally wanted for transplanting but again, this area has probably never been tilled but has been driven on a lot so it’s pretty compact. I don’t think one season of cultivating the ground is going to loosen the soil up but hopefully it’ll be enough for the plants

Awesome! You might see if you can get your hands on some mycorrhizae to help build the soil / soil life, especially if you think you might be doing this for more than a season. We’ve been experimenting with different products, so far ‘Mykos Xtreme Gardening’ seems the most promising - https://www.xtreme-gardening.com/mykos