This week’s #homesteadingchallenge is in honor of Earth/Arbor Day! So i thought that it would be a good idea to write about how we treat our soil.
A few years ago we discovered no-till farming method and since then we try to implement it as much as we can. Big part of no-till farming is covering soil as much as possible (to avoid erosion). For that purpose, when there is no crops in the ground, we use heavy-duty silage tarps to cover it.
In this video you can see how soil looks after being covered for about 12 months. Most of the weeds are dead and soil is quite loose.
This will be the first time in a few decades this plot will be used to grow vegetables. All those years before there was a meadow and we are positive, that there will be big weed pressure in this plot, so for that reason first crop we will be growing there will be potatoes (weeds do not affect them that much; proof of that -> ).
After we’ll harvest potatoes we will cover these raised beds with silage tarps again and will smother the weeds for about 6 months again. And next year we will have already prepared raised beds with much lower weed pressure.
(Beds that were covered for 2 years looks like that: )
And there we can already seed some smaller crops like carrots, beets or even salads, although it would be even better to grow some crops under agrotextile in these beds
like strawberries
or lettuce :)
And then in the 4th or 5th year there would be almost no weed pressure (as long as we are not tilling and inverting soil and bringing all the dormant weed seeds from the deeper layers of the soil).
Most important reasons why we grow our food this way:
- We preserve soil biology (“ Tilling the soil is the equivalent of an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and forest fire occurring simultaneously to the world of soil organisms. …Simply stated, tillage is bad for the soil.” - USDA;
- We save money, because we do not need to go to the gym :) we get great upper-body, core and lower body workout! :)
- We can grow veggies earlier in the season - black tarp warms the soil. Also, often it is harder (or even not possible) to work in the soil with a tractor early in the season, because it is too moist in our climate. When you’re working with a shovel, you don’t mind that much that your boots get stuck in the ground. Much worse is to get stuck with your BCS or tractor.
If you are interested in no-till farming, i highly recommend to check out "Singing frogs farm", "Ridgedale Permaculture" and "La Ferme des Quatre-Temps" - all these great farmers are our inspiration!
Best of luck!
Tadas :)