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  • From: STEVE GILMAN <stevegilman AT verizon.net>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Tillage is tillage
  • Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 14:19:46 -0500

This really isn't so simplistic. 

Our northeast farms, including those in Coleman's Maine, were initially hacked out of the forest by burning (a la the Native Americans) and then with the coming of the white man, by European implements and grazing. I saw an early 1900's postcard of the last tree standing in southern VT -- all the mountain ranges in the distance  had been denuded for fuel and potash. Sod saved the day, protecting the steep slopes and flatlands alike from further erosion. That sod is tough (thankfully) -- and primary tillage is necessary to open up the soil, while repeated cultivation is needed to keep it open and workable. Tillage and cultivation BOTH work the soil to some extent but tillage isn't necessarily more injurious than cultivation. On a farm scale, chisel plowing is less deleterious than rotovating, for example.  They are both injurious to the extent that they destroy organic matter and soil aggregation. Modern tractor powered spaders are designed to lessen these impacts.

In the no till approaches, mulching is a positive option, on small holdings at least. Growing grass and natural herb biostrips between beds takes a third of the field out of cultivation but they need to be maintained through mowing -- and the beds still have to be dealt with. Planting into winter-killed and scalp-killed cover crops utilizes an in-place mulch effect,  without having to haul in and spread outside materials. NEWFARM.org, for one,  is refining cover-killing machinery for organic growers.  

Conventional no till has been around awhile and is touted as a superior way of preventing erosion (and saving the planet, even.) The chemical farmers just kill cover crops and sod with herbicides and plant directly into the dead stubble with heavy-duty planters. But here is the rub: Mulch/no till keeps soils cold well into the spring, just by the fact that the sun and warmth don't penetrate. Soil temps need to be 60 degrees plus to awaken the microbial activity needed to mineralize soil nutrients for crop growth. Organic growers are using ridge-till, which plants into the top of open raised ridges exposed to sun and warmth, with the base of the pyramid-shaped ridges kept deep in winter-killed or till-killed mulch. 

To get around cold soils the chemical farmers just add synthetic Nitrogen fertilizer which boosts the plant directly and bypassing microbial activity. Of course they don't like to talk about the downsides of the Chem No-Till system. Fully HALF of the soluble chemical N is "lost" -- going directly into the ground water (and is whisked away by the extensive drainage tile networks into streams, waterways and dead zones) or into the atmosphere when the nitrates are volatilized into nitrous oxide (N2O) -- a potent greenhouse gas that is 296 times more injurious than CO2. Conventional ag is a MAJOR contributor to Global Warming. N2O also attacks the ozone in the stratosphere, increasing dangerous UV radiation here on earth, impacting crops and humans alike.

The basis of organic agriculture is about building soil, crop, livestock and human health by building soil organic matter. Adding enriched compost is a primary, but limited, method. Soil amendments are supplements. A major tool is cover cropping, which increases the organic biomass above and below ground (in the rootmass), aerates the soil, retrieves and pumps up nutrients from the deeper down soil horizons, contributes to building beneficial mycorrhizal fungal mass and massive  carbon storage in glomalin, provides room and board for soil microorganisms and the entire soil foodweb, protecting against erosion, etc., etc.

Of course, to reap these benefits you're going to need to use some forms of tillage and cultivation...

Steve Gilman
Ruckytucks Farm
upstate NY, zone 5





On Feb 2, 2007, at 12:00 PM, market-farming-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

Message: 2

Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:42:51 -0700

From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost AT lobo.net>

Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Coleman: "We no longer dig the garden."

To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Message-ID: <200702020942510902.02F0CCAC AT mail.lobo.net">200702020942510902.02F0CCAC AT mail.lobo.net>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"



And I'm not here to quibble over definitions either. When Coleman states

"we do not dig the garden" there's no interpretation involved. You can call

shallow hoeing of a few weeds by hand "cultivation" if you want.

Personally I favor other non-chemical methods of weed control that have

been demonstrated to work with very little if any hand weeding or hoeing.

You're incorrect about me insisting that "every detail of what works for

Coleman must work for every other farmer".  I said nothing that implied

that. I stated he was writing for market gardeners and he's very successful

at if after 30 years of improving his methods. 


It's pretty clear from a lot of extension research that tillage degrades

soil organic matter almost as fast as it can be added. And constantly

adding organic matter by spreading compost or growing green manure crops

gets into a lot of work. Growing in single file tractor rows that use a lot

of space inefficiently only increases the time and cost of weeding and

irrigation. Reducing work and cost of machinery should be a goal to work

for. I just don't think the typical mechanical market growing approach is

the last word everywhere. And I want market growers to keep doing better

and get enough return on their time and investment to stay on the land and

keep growing. 






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