Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Coleman: "We no longer dig the garden." / No-till in the organic mainstream

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: road's end farm <organic101 AT linkny.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Coleman: "We no longer dig the garden." / No-till in the organic mainstream
  • Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 11:12:14 -0500


On Jan 30, 2007, at 12:03 PM, Tradingpost wrote:

Let's take a closer look at what Coleman wrote. On p.44 he wrote "You CAN
incorporate the green matter residues by turning over the soil shallowly
with a spade". He did not instruct us to do that, nor does he. You point
out that page 40 says "We spread compost on the surface and mix it in
shallowly". You missed the sentence right before that, "We no longer dig
the garden." Further, the page before, p.39, he writes "We haven't always
acted this wisely. In springs long past, we dug and spaded with a
vengeance." I hope that clears up any misreading of Coleman. I'm sure you
understand that shallow weed hoeing (or using the broadfork) is not
tillage. Coleman is clearly no-till and it works.

No, I don't understand that cultivation to control weeds is not tillage. This is a relatively new field and the terminology seems to be a little unsettled, but a strict no-till system (which is what I specified that I meant) not only doesn't invert the soil, it also doesn't disturb the soil surface, except for the minimum opening required to insert the seeds or plants of the desired crop. The terms reduced tillage, minimum tillage, etc. can be used for systems that do include some soil disturbance. Quite a lot of soil biological activity is in that top inch or two of the soil which is disrupted by hoeing/cultivating.

You state
By the way -- as with any farm or garden system, not everything that
works for Coleman will work for everyone else. The Coleman collineal
hoe, for instance, is very likely great if you have light sandy soil
without rocks. I have one hanging in the barn; the very light blade lasted something
like ten minutes before bending uselessly out of shape. There are sturdier hoes that
are used in the same or similar fashion.

Yet Coleman's using that hoe, in an area of rocky soil, harsh winters, and
he's a long time, highly successful market grower describing methods that
work for market growers. And as he points out, there are now (at least)
eight other market growers in Maine following his lead.


Quoting Coleman again, from "Four Season Harvest". page 31: "our soil in Maine . . .was very sandy"; from page 32 "stones . . . have been removed over time". The winters have nothing to do with the function of the hoe.

I'm probably not going to keep posting on this issue. You've got your own definition of no-till, and your own reading of Coleman. I don't know why you're so insistent that every detail of what works for Coleman must work for every other farmer, everywhere; but I'm not going to keep arguing about this. However, I am going to keep reporting my own actual experience on this list; as well as sometimes the experience of others who I know well. Other growers reading the list will of course come to their own individual conclusions as to what techniques to try and as to what works for them; and I hope will also continue to post their own results.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page