The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution by Andrew Mefferd

Author:Andrew Mefferd
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781771422727
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2019-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

We know farmers who are very respected farmers, who insist that you have to till. Other than the potato digger, these fields, especially over there, have not been tilled in twenty-three years.

—POLLY ARMOUR

“Another cool thing we do is direct seed all of our onions,” said Jenna. “We’re not dealing with them in the greenhouse really early in the season, and spending all the labor of planting in flats. We just prep all the beds in the fall. We apply the compost, and then as soon as we can get in, we just scuffle hoe. Sometimes, I cut that out and just direct seed. Because the weed pressure is so low, the onions are able to get a start.”

“Oh right, and you can get on the beds earlier because you don’t have to wait for them to dry out enough to drive a tractor on them,” I said. Most people in the northeast transplant onions for two reasons. For one, they need the plants to start growing before they can get on their fields with heavy equipment. And secondly, because onions are slow growers that don’t compete well with weeds, they get a head start in the greenhouse without competition. I realize that when you can eliminate tillage and weeds, it opens up possibilities that are not available in most tillage systems.

“So, how much weeding would you do? Onions like these are direct seeded in the spring here. Have there been weeding passes through here, once or twice?” I asked.

“When they’re really tiny, I do a quick hand weeding, just to grab any of the bigger things that are coming up, and then I did a quick scuffle hoe. Then we’ve done a couple hand weedings,” said Jenna. “But often, the weeding is like, ‘Oh, here is just one giant purslane plant.’ And it goes really fast because the weeds come out really, really easily.”

“Another thing you can do, you can mix different crops of different maturities in the same bed, because you don’t have to think about planting it or tilling it after the crop comes out,” said Polly.

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