Update on the no-till summer field! The first succession of herbs is doing great and we’ve been able to take bunches to a couple of markets now. We just pulled off the plastic for the second herb row and it looks great! Basically no weeds and the stuff that was under the plastic was yellow and dying. We pulled all the debris to the side so we can mulch the pepper row with it.

What we’ve learned so far from our no-till field:

1. Plastic tarping seems more effective in warmer weather because things grow and geminate under it just to be killed or solarized
2. There’s a lot of ants…
3. There’s a lot of weeds…
4. We experimentally only broad forked half of the herb bed and the half that was forked seemed to bounce back faster after transplanting and established better
5. It’s really hard to plant into an un-forked bed
6. This seems like a doable system and we could see it over time becoming easier as the soil becomes less compacted the more we work it.