Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>]

There are weeds and you kill them by tilling. Tilling brings up a new set of seed so you start over.  After 1-2 years of no till there will be few weeds. You stop bring up the weed seed.  In our garden we had six beds, 6 ft x 70 ft. and it took me 15 minutes a week to pull all the weeks.

Produce what you are producing now.

 

VA:  I'm a left-over from the original soils list, was converted then to no-till but I'm still learning.  Had our first hard frost last night, but I was prepared with the help of Coleman's "Four-Season Harvest".  Our beds produce year 'round, never mono-crop, mostly volunteers.  Amazingly simple.  My 99 year old mother, who grew up on a Michigan farm, is still shocked at how well this works.  Even with last winter's 6 feet of snow.  Tom Vincent

 

Ken 

 

--- On Mon, 11/29/10, moon@ceva.net <moon@ceva.net> wrote:

From: moon@ceva.net <moon@ceva.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] roto crutch
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Monday, November 29, 2010, 10:00 AM

Hi Ken,
I'm hooked on equip. Would be a joy to not depend on it. Especialy as fuel gets more dear. I often topdress a bed w/ composted horsepoo and sawdust, then till it in. seems like more gain then loss. What do you produce w/ no-till?
I also have sandy river botton, I spread manure and leaf mold, use a falk spader and bury it w/ all the weeds for garlic, and summer vege bed prep. Even in my small garden, a 3pt hitch rorotiller can bury all the frost bit basil and mulch and fortify the bed w/ org matter while cleaning up for reseeding. Looks great,like choc cake.
Is this evil in the no-till notebook? . Is the worm count the final jury?
How else to manage? Too much to fork, too many weeds, weed skeletons and 1/2 rotted mulch seems sinking them under helps. Midseason, in Va, the weeds are so fierce I can only cultivate w/ a sm cultv tractor to keep the comp down. too much to mulch. I have fabric for my peps,squash and tomas.
You can let the DVD answer.
Thanks, Ann zone 7

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