Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>]

Marty Kraft wrote:
> Hi
>
> If you are doing an organic (not necessarily certified) no till  
> garden i would like to know about it. How you are doing with it? What  
> are the obstacles? What are the successes? I am looking for possible  
> sites to film and people to interview for my http://www.youtube.com/ 
> organotill channel. This is my intention. I am very busy with my own  
> gardens and other work and will have to squeeze visits in as i can. I  
> would still like to know about your no till attempts even if i don't  
> visit.
>
> Thanks
>
> Marty
>
>   

A major innovation in my garden this year: A small garden flock in the 
garden the *entire* season. When not needed for tillage, they will be in 
a wire-enclosed "compost corner" as shredders/composters. When needed 
for tillage, I will move their "chicken tractor" shelter (parked in the 
composting enclosure, and sized to the width of my garden beds) out onto 
the bed needing tillage, where they will "cruise" up and down the bed 
until the cover crop is thoroughly tilled in. Free natural foods for the 
birds, labor saving tillage for me, fertilization of the soil in the bed 
with the scratched-in poops. Win-win every way I look at it.

Now don't get picky: The chickens will "till" in the cover crop. But I 
still consider this within the parameters of no-till gardening. Their 
tillage only goes a couple of inches deep--it does not invert/mix the 
natural layers that develop in health soil profile, nor break down soil 
structure--and doesn't seriously disrupt the soil food web in this most 
active profile zone. Indeed, the addition of the poops boosts the soil 
life community.

Note that another innovation in my garden this year is cover cropping a 
full 50 percent of the beds, so the chooks will be working a lot as 
no-till tillers.

I speak of "innovations," but actually I've used both parts of the 
strategy extensively in the past: Using chickens in a "chicken tractor" 
to till in cover crops in garden beds; and using chickens as 
shredder/composters to generate far more compost than I'd ever be able 
to achieve a la Sir Albert Howard. The innovation will be having a flock 
working at one or the other, inside the garden, the *entire* season.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

My book, THE MODERN HOMESTEAD POULTRY FLOCK, will be published next year by 
Chelsea Green Publishing.