Something to keep in mind as we discuss gardening/farming is that a dogmatic approach to growing food very likely arises from the fact that there's SO MUCH TO KNOW, and it can be overwhelming. Trying to collapse all the rules, the exceptions to the rules, and variations to the rules into a simple framework of thou shalts and thou shalt nots is a perfectly reasonable- if ultimately unhelpful- human response to complexity. Dogmatic growers are very likely new growers. I hope we can remember to be gentle with them. There will be a season when none of their rules work, and when that season comes, it's probably best if we've kept those lines of conversation open for them.
I agree with you. We use a whole bunch of "techniques" on our property. What we do depends on the piece of land. Are we breaking sod? rotating long used plots? Is it in the hoop house? Under trees? Really, it depends. When we lived in a suburb with a micro backyard, "square foot gardening" worked for us. Doesn't work for our current situation. I think the anxiety of wanting - or needing - to produce food adds to the dogmatic approach. It is difficult to relax when you have a family to fee, I think.
I think that's totally fair! I also think, though, dogma can blind folks to the principles/practices that would genuinely be helpful. There are dogmas that I want to encourage, like "context is everything" and "ask your soil what it needs, not bring your ideas to the soil". A dogma of "no disturbance at all costs" could lead them to no success in the garden, which would be disastrous. That said, I could address this more helpfully, for sure. Thanks!
Carl Clark, well said! There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. One is quite valuable and the other is often the fruit of failure and success. I call it congealed sweat.
The danger is that the headline "No-Till = good" misleads new gardeners into thinking that all soil disturbance is bad. "No-Till" may roll off the tongue easily, but we have to make sure that the emphasis is on soil health and not just soil disturbance. I would definitely consider using a broadfork "tilling" the soil, it's just a much less destructive and erosive approach to tilling than what is commonly employed in mass-market agriculture.
Respect is owed to people, NOT the ideas ( dogmas) that pollute their brains . Free expression is not about being gentle or/and respectuous ... It is about sorting out BAD information vs the GOOD . That one ends up being angry because I presented evidence for one or another agricultural practice ... Is a waste of time . That person has to get back at me with better evidence that I will "accept" and incorporate in my farming practice . Feelings & religious BS are never owed any respect . Good day Carl . ps: As per Tilling ( LOL ) ... On our small fresh market farm of 225 acres ... We use a variety of equipment from no-till to moldboard plow ... Depending on the preceding crop and land attribution for the next growing season . We are an odd one as about 35% of our surface is not farmed on any year ... Our neighbor are ripping their hair out as we have incorporated that practice years ago and most of our neighbors cannot "financially" afford to rest part of their surface in that manner . Controlled non-farming and wildflower for pollinators for our 45 acres of Summer sqaushes has proven to make a difference in soil compaction/front line decomposers and soil stability . But ... It is not for everyone, I respect that idea :) Carl ... Have a good one .
I prefer regenerative over the term no till. The most important idea is that you are leaving the soil in either as good or better condition than you started. The important part is to stop degrading the soil!
This was the most comprehensive tutorial I've watched in quite some time--and it wasn't intended to be. Really great show of knowledge breadth and depth here on soils. Love the holistic thinking. We're stewards of the ecosystem here and your approach is clear!
I think some tilling can be useful. So in itself one can't say tilling is either specifically good or specifically bad. It depends on the soils, the local climate, the types of grass growing and even the insects, what you have available to enrich the soil and what you intend to grow etc. Do what you need to do at the time - but keep the overall picture of conservation and being gentle to nature in mind.
Yeah . . . for example, in my area we have extremely heavy silt/clay, the remnants of a long-vanished inland sea. It's rich in minerals and slow-draining (essential in our high desert climate), but once compacted, not even weeds will venture to grow in it. So tilling in compost and organic matter in the spring is essential to getting things to grow in an annual garden set-up, though more tillage actually just evaporates the compost. I'm experimenting with cover crops to see whether I can reduce the need for tilling, but for now it's still necessary in order to actually get a yield from my vegetable garden.
To me, Tillage means to mechanically rotate the soil surface prior to planting. In my definition it’s neither positive or negative; it just is what it is.
It's a bit of a woke mentality. Trying to change the meaning of a word were a new term would do. Latin is a great language dead like the rednapp in feild will be in a few hours.
@@jamesgribben7024 Yep, lots of good info on this channel, but the reality is hardly anyone gives a rats ass about tillage and most people don't have any negative connotations of the word. As long as tillage feeds 99% of us that will remain the same.
@@dancooper6002 mmmm idk, plenty of fruit and vegetable growers care about tillage. It's just the big corporate wheat, corn, and soy farmers don't give a rat's ass about tillage
I think the avoidance I had to an initial super tillage event was too extreme. I didn’t want to do it, but it was needed for me. To start a plot, never used for growing and in an area of strong compaction and a huge amount of fist sized and larger rocks… sorry, I’ll “super till” remove the rocks and then test, amend, cover crop and let recover at least a year, maybe two. If I don’t do this, then for the life of my plot, I’m fighting surfacing rocks and the efficiencies of fixed rows every single day. The initial work for prepping the soil, running irrigation headers - call it infrastructure, is a one time major event if done right. The year setback should be quickly overcome with the living soil practices, efficient production and yes, greater enjoyment and fulfillment of the working with the soil.
Absolutely. An excellent example of stepping outside of dogma based on sound application of first principles. We do the same, because we're not starting from land tended by previous generations of farmers who make those nice rock piles...
It would have been cool to do half one way and half another way or thirds, or quarters. You could have scientifically tested things. I am not sure how much to care either way, as I am reminded of the gopher, mole, and other ground dwelling (tilling) critters. Take care.
Definitely true when creating a garden out of a baron or weed-filled plot or monoculture, there are good reasons to till initially. There are videos where Jesse does exactly that and explains exactly that. And so does Charles Dowding. Best to think of it this way: you are transitioning soil that is of low-value into something of high-value. Why is it low-value? Because it has been bare, or was growing a crop of weeds or lawn or something else that provided a monoculture chemistry in the soil not conducive to growing vegetables. Nothing will provide an immediate microbiome that is healthy, of course! It is like getting a truckload of mixed compost and loam in a new bed - it will not have a good microbiome. The building blocks are there but it's going to take a season or more of being planted to build a healthy microbiome and worm and insect life. You need to fertilize this first season because if you want to grow something there's not going to be much (or any) fertility in the soil at this point, whether you tilled or planted without tilling). Our experience has been halfway through the second season we've developed enough of the microbiome that we can cut the fertilizer down to something normal. Midway through the second season we have a healthy microbiome.
I started in a similar scenario. I did till the first season, clay so compacted and rocky there was very little life in that mess to destroy. Thankfully, no longer the case and I no longer use the tiller
Thank you farmer Jessie for sharing these videos. I first found your podcast about three years when I needed some inspiration for making a large transition on our farm. We are a half acre market garden in SW Colorado that has been in operation since 2005. When I began farming the traditional wisdom aimed for an FLS - fine level seedbed - that involved using a BCS tiller in between each crop rotation. So, in essence, our beds got tilled up to 3-4 times per season and this is on aeolian deposited soils of the desert west. To say the least we now grow a garden of thistle and bindweed because of the compaction we have created. Three years ago when I found your podcast and other videos from Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden and Singing Frogs Farm in California we started to transition towards the goal of no-till, deep compost beds. The only thing was that we had a shortage of materials for compost and living in a very rural area the closest distributor for bulk compost is six hours away over two mountain passes. So, we did what we could little by little and placed our worst areas into fallow. Now, this year we have a couple sources for free bulk materials and have purchased a dump trailer and started making our own compost (and biochar from dead pinyon trees in our forest) with the hopes of having enough material by this fall to add to our beds. It's a crazy uphill challenge, but we feel inspired to the task and are already seeing the results of the small amounts of compost we've put on so far. So I just wanted to say, keep up the good work and thank you for all the knowledge you've shared over the years! ~ Michele Martz, SongHaven Farm, Cahone, CO
We live on sandy soil (think beach front property). 🙂 The first-year for each garden row receives about 12" of grass/leaves/manure/compost. It's tilled in with a Troy and left to breakdown until the next Spring. It takes 2-3 years to find the first worms, but they do come for the organic matter and stay. After the first year, we add lots of compost and shredded leaves/grass each year around the plants. Works for us.
Thank you for this video! My dad and I work together in my market garden, and seeing his transformation from “all till, all day” to “till only when absolutely necessary” was something to see. He just plowed a garden expansion that will increase my growing size by almost triple, and he first wanted “keep tilling this first year” when it needs it, but now he’s ready to just build beds and broad fork/mulch/wood chip as needed to just start that way from the beginning. It’s nice to not have to drag a tiller out. I have beds that were tilled once when I first started that plot 3 years ago, but not since. Being flexible stewards of the soil is a great approach. Thanks again!
Thanks Jessie for your video. Here in France we call no till : 'sol vivant' (living soil) or 'conservation des sols' (soils' preservation), which is maybe a little more positive ? Idea : all the technics which increase the life in the soil. Sorry for my english 😅 Julie
Sol vivant! What a fabulous term. Not only makes it sound alive, but thriving as well!! Like the earth is living its best life. Vive le terre! (Google translate assures me that means “long live the soil”, hopefully that’s correct :)
This was exactly my thought as I watched this video, it's the NO-till word that needs changing. Also I think this would be simpler to do and more positive. I really like the sol vivant term for instance (what's not to like about vibrant soil). Also, your English is great, better than my French I expect.
"Living soil" is also a recognized phrase/concept to many Americans. I agree it's more positive, and it gets people thinking about how healthy soil is indeed a vibrant ecosystem. I like to say that my main job is growing healthy, living soil, and if you can grow healthy soil you can grow any sorts of plants you plant. 🙂
I can guarantee that people that make the comments you referenced at the beginning of the video have no experience in farming. Thank you for the great work you do. It's been extremely helpful for my farm.
In the past tillage had quite a function in weed and pest control too. Plowing happened when the frost lightened up, and there were no crops (-cover) yet. Weeds (often whole wild grass mats, as grass grows at lower temperature and continues growing after the crop has been harvested) and any plant material left from the last cycle that could be contaminated with pests was plowed under. In the modern commercial no-till farming this has been replaced by applying round-up carefully timed with seeding so that the weed is dead when the seeds sprout. Pests that occur less frequently are dealt with as they happen, but the old farmers often didn't have that luxury (other than weeding or removing pests by hand, preparation was all that they had). Mulching whole fields is hard to do, most fiber will deteriorate over the winter anyway.
Thank you! I got so much from this - I’m slowly teaching my husband the benefits of feeding the soil, by these means, on our passed down farm after decades of disturbing habitat/balance. I will definitely be showing him this vid. I’ll check out the link to your book for sure! Kind greetings from Aus 🇦🇺 💗🙏🏼✌️
I've been doing no-til in my raised beds for 10 years with just compost, manure and mulch added on. By the end of the growing season though the soil becomes compacted. Thankfully the monsoon rains take care of it. Lajo from India 💕
I appreciate your reference to no-till dogma. I think the goal of promoting soil health and supporting living soil are what's important. Being mindful and considering your actions is important, but how you get there is less important than the outcome.
Beer good. 🍺 Perfect video topic for this month. My brain is all tied in knots about how to prep my little garden for spring. I’m revitalizing a small garden that must have been over worked or something cause it refused to grow much besides hot peppers for the last few years. And what it did grow was giant plants and some fruits that never ripened… So I got chickens and put all their poop in there (no science or plan behind that decision) and now it’s much better. Not fixed but better. Still learning. Thanks! And the word “stink” used to mean “smell sweet”.
AND......................................... this is why I'm subscribed to this channel. I got a good chuckle when you threw out the word dogma because that about sums up many people. They learn something and then they're fixated on it so much that they think there are some hard path to the promised land of beautiful, healthy plants and that's just not true, and there's one practice that I've seen that I think can be VERY helpful but the first thing it requires is that the user of that soil knows what they're doing, and that's a deep turning of soil. It's something that usually is only done once but it could require a 2nd time and hopefully no more than that, and you aren't just deep turning, you're working organic material throughout a deep level of soil. The benefits is you get a deeper layer of a more unified quality of soil. I wouldn't worry about this if I were just growing trees, but in developing a plot of land for years of growing crops, it might be a good idea. It depends on the soil. The people who believe in the ONE path are going to start with cardboard over the soil, or maybe plant a cover crop. But that doesn't give you information about the soil you're trying to grow on. You could have hard layers in that soil which are going to hinder the health/growth of the soil/crops. The intent as has been talked about by different channels should be growing healthy soil, and there is by no means a single path to doing that, and the type of soil that you have (not a single category, but multiple categories/conditions) can require different treatment. THANKS for a great video!
I like your comparison of tillers and blenders - same "choppy choppy" killing of soil. I use a lot of mulch and compost which I make myself. I have raised beds and before I plant, I "turn" my soil gently. My worms get disturbed but not killed. Whatever surface organic matter there is, gets flipped down into the bottom of the hole. I gauge how I am doing by the health of my produce AND my worms. My worms get bigger and my soil gets richer every year. I think I got it right...
Good one , dude. What I've found in my short tenure with no till is that too many people are afraid of tillage, theyve read too much anti tilling info like Faulkner's "Plowman's Folly". While all that is true to a large extent,most of us, myself included, are trying to establish no till on fields that have been previously farmed or been pasture forever. So we have serious compaction, poor drainage, and other associated issues. So while some TH-cam "farmers" just do the thing with cardboard and compost, ive found that not to work at all,for me at least, and definitely not give an optimum long term result. What I do now ,and strongly recommend on any block of 1/4 acre on up, is : 1:Disc the living shit out of it 2:Chisel plow likewise, ideally in two directions to break up old plowpan and cattle compaction 3:Use a bed shaper if you can find one, I made an easy one with an old toolbar and hilling discs 4: LIGHTLY, SHALLOWLY, rototill the bed with your BCS , Troybilt horse, whatever you got. 5: THEN start layering compost in your no till odyssey. Your cover cropping and super hippie woo woo practices for the next many years will more than make up for this one round of Caucasian colonialist super tillage and you and the earth will be all the better for it. Don't be afraid of tractors, they are your friend when used properly. That being said mine has not been driven in my one acre garden for three years now, and won't be for the foreseeable future. Also I have used the moldboard plow but am phasing that out except for working up old pasture for reseeding. I defer to the disc most of the time for minimal mixture of soil layers.
Ironically Faulkner wasn't against plows at all, he emphasized even to use less disturbing plows like disc plows! It seems that oversimplification and a dogmatic approach do more harm than reading carefully what Faulkner adviced in his books some 80 years ago.
I grew up on a heavy tillage conventional farm, then upon listening to Elaine Ingham and others became a devout no tiller. After working for years with it and listening to the likes of John Kempf and others I have found myself somewhere in the middle, minimal tillage or tillage at establishment. Our new farm was pretty much dead over greased Henry Clay and we have found it first pass of tillage, then cover crop then disking that cover crop in has been phenomenal to spark life in our soil going forward.
For hot tropical weather like in Malaysia, compost is layered and tilled into the clayish soil is better way to build up the organic matter in the soil. From time to time until the soil structure improved and microbs activity built up, then broadfork and non-destructive method will work.
Amazing how this video just fits. I have just dug out a trench in my garden bed to put bokashi in to let it decompose. At the same time I worried that I have tilled the soil which is a "bad" thing.
Great Video. I only use tillage in the spring. mainly because Ive added a great deal of year old or more animal manure/ compost and I want to work it into my active layer I call it. Usually thats all put on in the fall, or the end of the season here. then worked in during the spring. soil remains very active and healthy to this day.
some soil disturbance make plants grow better. if you have to work by hand, disturb only small part of the soil where you plant / sow the seed. You'll save a lot of labour.
In university (as a nature conservation engineer) and by a teacher (about sustainability, natural farming and some philosophy) I came to the term for 'tilling' to mean turning the soil during preparation, then leaving it bare. I like this definition because (although it is kind of a closed one) it both addresses the harm and also points to identifiable (and largely avoidable) actions. I think "practices that cause long term harm" would better serve as an umbrella definition for a bunch of, well, practices (one of which is tilling, if defined as above). Terms should be practical - dogma would come into play when we start labeling them without context.
Tilling the soil means ‘tilling the soil’, zero till means inserting seed into existing soil structures. Usually by chemically killing the plants already growing there as a first step. As a necessity and rule gardening requires tillage to remove weed competition and poisoning the garden soils is verboten.
Well in natural farming it's quite common to use microbes (IMO, JMS,EM,...) for deep soil tilling. It is a less invasive practice, but still leads to erosion, when the soil is uncovered for longer times.
You saved my life! No matter however much force I used to throw those seeds down in the rock and clay they just bounced around! Mother earth apparantly wasn't yawning that day to gobble them up. Tennessee sucks for dogma in the garden. Great video. I cover cropped with rye for the first time and will be doing it again with Radishes, turnips, rutabagas, and some Austrian peas this fall. I'm planning on 3 rounds of this with adding of compost and then hopefully just broadforking after that. It took the last 3 years just to get the rocks and geodes and Johnson grass out which was about 3 tonnes.
Thank you for explaining this so thoroughly. I have fairly compacted clay soil that I want to improve. I already have an excellent cover crop mix that I think will do wonders, but I have to do something to this compacted soil for the seed mix to even have the ability to take root. I plan to broad fork this area as it's not super large and that seems like the best / most supportive way to break it up so that oxygen, organic material, microbes, and worms can start to do their thing. I honestly don't think it'll need tillage after this first season as there will always be some kind of cover crop as well as chickens in this area. But my concern was that I'd be doing something terrible for the soil by breaking it up even with just this first time broad-forking. That's what the usual definitions of tillage were making me think, anyway. But what you've explained here makes so much sense. Yes, the broad fork will cause some disturbance and could harm some of the worm and microbe populations. But I won't just be leaving it like that. I'll be adding some organic matter, seeding cover crops, and mulching to help protect and improve it. And I mean, something has to be done because right now there's just tons of erosion to the point that I'll have to bring in some top soil to help level out certain areas. At least I feel much better about this initial broad-forking that has to happen.
Right, do what makes the most sense for your context! It sounds like it wouldn't hurt to work in some organic matter. A tiller can be a fine way to do that or if you layer it on the surface, a broadfork will slowly work it in there over a couple years.
Jessie, thanks for all your content. It truly lines up with what I feel is the best framework for regeneration. As carl Clark commented, dogma is likely a way to make an impossibly complex subject digestible. I like to say that my one rule is to optimize the flow of energy from the sun through plants into soil. No tool should be disregarded in that goal, including soil manipulation. Trade offs are inevitable and will always exist. Our job is to understand those trade offs and make the best decisions we can. Thanks for this video and all your others!
I'm glad that this video appeared in my feed today, and I took the time to watch it. It was a very practical introduction, and clearly showed your passion, knowledge, and pragmatics. It's an area I need to get better at for our gardens. On thought that kept going through my mind as I watched is that it's the NO-till word that needs to be replaced, rather than tillage. The comment with the French "sol vivant" term struck a cord with me, perhaps we could make it a single universal word solvivant (sounds like vibrant soil, which has a nice ring to it for me). That way tillage can stay as "prepare the soil for crops" and perhaps also be returned to the a positive term. I realize this presents a bit of a problem for you having built up a No Till brand though ;). Thanks for this, I hope I find more of your videos just as useful and thought provoking.
I think what you are explaining about this topic is very true... Plants and microbes feed the soil and broad forking is the best and all you need to do.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on conservation tillage, especially for northern climates. A lot of field crops require tillage in the spring to warm the soil. I use a Grillo with a spader and living pathways, Helen Atthowe style, to farm 1/2 acre of tomatoes with JADAM.
First, I love Helen's work and I just got an advanced copy of here book and it's 🔥. So be on the lookout for The Ecological Farm. Also, she used a lot of living pathways and living mulches and also plastic in the beds when she was in Montana. That was here context and clearly her soil was fine from it. I think strip tillage/conservation tillage definitely has a place, especially on larger scales.
I’ve got a greenhouse. I grow tomatoes in Montana because I believe in local agriculture, to be brief. Minimal tillage is much preferable to trucking produce thousands of miles, and my tomatoes are nutrient dense and taste great, unlike tomatoes in the grocery store.
Jesse, your videos are always creating a pathway for great discussions and reasoning. My very subjective, 'Clear as Mud' definition of Tillage, is the disruption of topsoil in order plant a crop. 'No Till', is by definition, 'Low Till', tilling by slightly disturbing the soil in order to plant a crop.
The most succinct and easily understood explaination I've found of why rototilling is a huge contributor to inceased CO2 in our atmosphere (and ummmm climate change?!) starts at 6 minutes. Thank you SO much! (And I love your humor!)
Subsoiling occasionally seems like a great usage of a form of tilling with a tractor to benfit soil life and soil structure. I got an 80s 2 cycle Massey Ferguson and ran a couple passes on my backyard garden and it was crazy how compact and barren looking the subsoil was. Looking forward to deeper living soil biology.
Why not? You can apply the right bacterias as well. They help to remove soil compaction as well. In regenerative Agriculture they are called regenerative microbes.
In regards to industrial applications of no-till John Kemp at AEA says that an initial mechanical tillage/disturbance of soil is required to handle compaction.
@@yagodnii_gorod_TAMBOV I believe the minimum depth recommended is 4", I don't think there was a limit, but if you have a lot of compaction with clay, do an initial breakup of the soil and then let the roots do the rest.
Where we farm in Western Australia's central wheatbelt region, our top soil is only 100mm or so deep ,under that is very sodic and high in aluminium . Our top soil sets like concrete and if a paddock has been left to pasture especially running livestock for the year it is so hard that any rain runs away. I try to rip as much as i can on the first rains of the year so the following rains can soak in either with conventional tillage or even a minimum till knife point just to crack the crust and alow water to enter . These paddocks will out yield any other in our operation every time . We also use conventional tillage to incorporate crushed lime . Our operation is broad acre cropping (cereals and legumes) and sheep
IF you live in Florida you can turn your entire lawn into a Garden. Even if you live in an HOA that bans Gardens you can still remove all your grass and have your Entire yard as a Garden. There is a law in Florida called "Florida Friendly Landscaping", that prohibits an HOA from telling a resident they cannot install a Garden, Food Forest, Wild Flower Meadow in the yard if they own the Land. The Florida Government wants Florida Residents to stop growing grass lawns because its a waste of fresh water resources. Also lawns have toxic pesticides and fertilizers that drain into the Canals and cause all kinds of issues with water quality. I removed all the grass in my yard and turned it into a garden, this year I produced $5,000 worth of vegetables in my front yard.
I appreciate the way you introduce the idea of dogma to how some farms operate. I’ve been doing regen grazing for 3 years now, and as I’ve gotten into that community I find a lot of people are zealots about what you should and shouldn’t do. Dogma is the perfect way to describe it. I can’t have a conversation without the risk of judgement. Not everyone by any stretch but it’s a prevalent theme. I’m binging on your videos as I’ve just recently found your channel. Going to implement our first no-till garden soon.
Definitions change over the years, when I hear no till I automatically think no soil disturbance. I personally do not turn my soil I only add and this has worked out great for me in my garden. To each their own we are stewards of the land, if your improving your land and soil then you’re doing it right.
I purchased the "Living Soil handbook" and I'm on my third time reading it! I'm loving it! I am a non-agricultural suburbanite, but recently bought a farm and have a large garden. I'm practicing no till for the second year and I can see huge benefits already. Being able to work the garden after a rain and pull weeds is definitely a lot easier! Weeds are not near as big a problem because I've use cardboard & mulch, but I am interested to see how I'm going to transition 13:48 from the summer to the fall garden. Any ideas? By the way to me tillage must include mechanical manipulation of the soil in its definition.
I'm not a market gardener, just a beginner taking over a mix of ex-grass lawn and ex-agricultural land. But I could not have done ANYTHING these first couple of years without my rotivator to initially break the ground. Well, the Square Foot type beds in the front garden. But that cost an absolute fortune in soil "ingredients". I have a small orchard, but even that doesn't seem to make a big enough compost heap...
i like the connection between tillage and soil inversion especially where that mixes the different soil horizons, thus a plough at 4 inches is better than a glyphosphate and min/notill drill planting. where tilth is required for seeding etc is also usually in the top inch but below 6 being flipped/smashed/crumbled and inverted is massive nono-
Many traditional subsistence farms also include some kind of tilling. It only becomes a problem when the entirety of plant root zone gets disturbed leading to it losing moisture, furthermore it makes the zone above groundwater table too dry to the point of it becoming hydrophobic and not retaining moisture there even when it rains. Not to mention, small level of soil disturbances is part of natural system as well. Burrowing and boring animals does the part below surface and grazing animals and birds foraging in soil do it in the surface. I have heard that our grandfathers used to go lightly distrub the soil surface in the yard with a gardening hoe just before a rain, to retain more water
Great conversation! I have a big Troy-Bilt tiller we used regularly. Nowadays it gets used very rarely, as we have moved into low-till or minimal-till methods. In fact, I haven't used it for the past two seasons. It does still have its place, though, on rare occasions. I'd love to see a video on gardening dogma. One commenter below (carlclark3167) observes that dogmatic growers are usually newbies. I won't disagree but I do know several long-time (40+ years) growers who are are VERY fixed in their ways. Example: one guy I know well has a terrible problem with common potato scab. I once did but lowered the pH of my soil to 5.5 with elemental sulfur. Scab remains dormant at that level of acidity. He can't because his crops MUST be rotated and nothing else he grows can tolerate an acidic soil. So.... he continues to grow huge quantities of ugly, ruined potatoes while mine are award-winning, simply because he cannot allow himself to think outside the box. Dogma does not belong in the garden.
I don't disagree with anything you said, except for lexicography. I would prefer a more explicit definition of tillage and still leave the value judgement to be developed or be adjectives that modify it. So tillage is explictly "a mechanical disturbance of growing medium in situ through inversion or blending". It ain't soil, it is usually dirt! Another nit is I think anthropomorphizing plants plays into widespread ignorance on how natural selection works. Species we humans use for food happen to those who occupy the niche of having traits which are adapted to flourishing in soil that is not yet an ideal medium. The biproducts of their growth have a regenerative effect, changing soil to be more optimum through increased organic matter, biological diversity of microbial life, and natural pest defenses. Plants didn't make a conscientious choice to do those things, they were just successful doing them. All that said, ANOTHER great video!
That's fair! Though I do think it's a fine line in sci-comm to balance analogy (anthropomorphizing) and accuracy. In fact, I think it's an aversion to comparison that sometimes renders science out of the grasp of many people. But I can also be more careful about that. Thanks!
Im more of a "limited till" gardener. I used to garden using a bag of good old 10-10-10 and deep tilling but have switched focus to utilizing compost and vermicompost i make myself. My problem is making enough compost for my needs. My compost is made from old garden plants, comfrey, fall leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, coffee grinds and dairy cow manure. Its great compost however i struggle to provide an enough each year due to lack of raw materials. Because of this shortage of compost, I lightly till/scratch in some amendments like kelp and alfalfa using a small rototiller set at a depth of about 2 inches to rough up the soil surface for incorporation of amendments. I hope to get away from tilling all together but need a couple years to make that a reality. Sometimes you have to work with what you got and have an end goal.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and being so informative. I love your content! I see tillage as a tool, so it is neither good or bad, but how it is used depending on the farmer's context (small scale vs at scale for example). I think it's about the actions and enhancing the ecosystem that surrounds us.
Tillage: to manually or mechanically turn or break the soil horizon for the purpose of agricultural management. Benefits may include weed removal, short-term nutrient release, decompaction, and aeration. Negative effects may include erosion, hard pans, and reducing soil life and organic matter. Tillage combined with large applications of NPK fertiliser are currently the number one cause of desertification and the decline of agricultural soils. However, limited use to mediate specific soil issues has been shown to sometimes be extremely beneficial.
Hard case soil high Clay concentration till. Working with hi carbonized and organic compounds with fertility loose simple turning. Small garden. Brake hardpan or suffer. Thanks for sharing. Great subject
Thank you for this post and the comments. I think your point about identifying your soil goals, and knowledgeably choosing the best tools to achieve the goals is super valuable. Better than dogma, as you say. Although as one commenter noted, dogma feels safe in the face of overwhelming complexity. If there is *anything* that is overwhelmingly complex, soil and plants are it! Love your videos. Wanna get your book. ❤️
Good to clarify. As someone who doesn't do farming, if someone told me they don't till, but I saw them using a roto-'TILLER', that would seem disingenuous. I understand the difference now, but most people out there who don't farm think you mean 'no churning up or turning of the soil', without explaining it to them.
Good explanation. I hadn’t thought about tilling adding O2 to the soil and changing the biome of the soil. Instead of changing the meanings and definitions of words, wouldn’t it be better to just create new words that mean what you are actually doing? I liked some of the words suggested in the other comments. “Living soil” sounds good. Maybe something like “symbiotic agriculture”. Then explain the tenants of symbiotic agriculture. A rotary plow looks a lot like a roto tiller so explain the differences. My soil is a hard compacted clay mess. Trying to make and add lots of compost and mulch. Thinking of trying to make and pulverize some charcoal and tilling that in. As you mentioned after I get some organic worked in I won’t have to till again. Thanks for the video.
I inherited 'parking lot' soil more like hard pan than topsoil. Even tilling with a rear tine tiller was a challenge and a front tine tiller was a run across the garden! One fall, I put a 12' ring of 4' tall snow fence in the garden filled it with leaves. In the spring, I removed the snow fence and the remnants and discovered that the tiller struggled elsewhere, but effortlessly sunk to it's maximum depth where the leaves had been. The take away of the story is that with deep mulch, nature does the tillage far better than we can do with plow or tiller. Hmmm....so in a way, mulching is natural tillage.🙂
Here in NC my compacted clay is impossible to drow on without first "tilling" What I do is till in one years leaves and then cover crop plant it for 2 years at that point their will be roots and fungi keeping the soil good an occasional broad forking may be needed as well But turning this land productive does take a few years
I prefer to talk about extractive vs regenerative farming practices. My definition of tilling is mechanically rotating or pulverizing soil. I don't consider deep forking tillage because it doesn't change the layering of the soil. It seems more like aeration. Which can also be disruptive, depending on how it's done, but I don't make that assumption automatically, for either practice. To me, it's not the term tillage that has a negative connotation (beyond having very high risk factors), but the context: extractive, industrial, &c.
My soil had to be broken up to plant beans, peas, and greens densely to begin building a healthy soil. Topsoil was 2 to 4 inches deep max decades after the lot was created by leveling a hill down to a very hard red clay/sand/gravel mixture. I did it by hand...a 3x4 feet space each day with a very strong Japanese hand tool. First I sharpened it with a file to remove the grass and its roots...then used the pointed end to hack away clumps...then chopped those up. After planting I used grass clippings as mulch everywhere. Gonna chop up oak leaves and pine straw etc after the first frost (expected in days...central Louisiana) and gather them from the nearby wooded areas when it`s cold so nothing bad like snakes or ground hornets gets me. I also need to find soil around here to add to certain areas to make squash and melon mounds and put some beneath my makeshift trellis.
We humans love labels and boogeymen and unfortunately it doesn't serve "the public" well as they will jump on and use terms they are not intimately involved with and then they go forth and replicate "jargon" that can actually be used as propaganda. Sometimes a newbie no-till grower adopts said jargon and "skill" as a mantra and spends years trying to be perfect at it! This conversation is so valuable!
Depending on the soil composition , some soils become impermeable and harden some of the largest tillage implements do the least compaction and mulch the most effectively. The quickest way to increase soil organic matter is by mulching and spreading manure some of the richest soil I have seen was improved this way.
I'm moving from California to east Tennessee in about a month. I'm 26 now and I just got sick and tired of living in the city so I bought a farm house. Don't get me wrong the weather and the geography is beautiful but Cali is a sinking ship. videos like this motivated me to do something different with my life. I just want to say thank you for all the helpful content you post.
I'm in East TN near Tellico Plains. You may not have super clay soils. I do in some places and don't in others. Gardening in the southeast US is different than gardening in the west, sw, mountain states, NE, etc. More insect and disease pressures, lighter soils (in the chemical sense), longer weed season (hello spiny pig weed), hotter temps, etc. Then again, with a bit of protection, we can grow cool season crops though most of the winter.
@kristinsvensson1429 i did my homework on that and thought about all of the possible outcomes as far as disease, pests, geography, and weather. I love the challenge that it presents because it's certainly different from California there's no question on that.
I really like your book. I recently started interning at a more conventional market farm. He had the perspective that No-Till methods only make sense on sandy or loamy soil. And that if you have a heavy clay soil. The amount of time and effort that it would take to de-compact that enough to be useful at all would be entirely impractical. Which for him means that No-Till doesn't work on heavy clay. I am curious about what you or other people here think of that idea? I have learned a lot from them, although I have also realized their way of farming is relatively input-heavy. As it uses a lot of fuel. But, outside of that delivery of website sales is one of their biggest expenses in several ways which is why they are pivoting to selling through a co-op. The land I have access to isn't heavy clay anyways so I have been planning on doing some sort of no or low-till anyways. I have also seen a couple videos and studies of people creating new beds with multiple methods of bed preparation. They found that starting with tillage for initial field prep but planting a cover crop mix that promotes microbial activity and suppresses weeds leads to about twice as much microbial activity and respiration as a Lasagna bed, or a simpler no-till bed setup. And in addition resulted in much lower soil salinity, and a more moderate level of phosphorus. Which suggests that those No-Till methods of bed preparation create a risk of groundwater pollution. You do mention cover-cropping as a better method to establish a bed when you have more time in your book though. The main hypothesis for that effect is that microbes that need to be close enough to the soil surface to live are kept lower than is good for them by the cardboard barriers put down until they eventually dissolve. And the microbes that live in compost maybe less plentiful. Potentially that factor might be able to be mitigated by an inoculating compost made from a local Forrest or something? The additional salinity might be addressable through increasing the amount of leaf mold in comparison to the amount of manure-based or general compost. Or maybe trying to find a compost tested to have a lower sodium content? I have considered doing some experimentation into methods of bed preparation and seeing what kind of effect changes have on the microbial levels in the soil. It is an area that has a little bit of research. But not as much as I would like to be able to find. I at least plan to make a couple raised beds, and some where I till and cover-crop to replicate to a lesser extent the info I found.
A Secondary issue I have been thinking about is how practical it would be to automate or mechanize precision cultivation for weed control? It isn't a particularly difficult task. But it is fairly time consuming. Potentially if you could make a lightweight machine that was small enough to not cause compaction issues with a wider width of wire cultivators it might be feasible to use that to reduce weeding time?
Great content, especially in this video! Very well said and as an agriculturist studying soil microbial life, I ended up to the same conclusion. Keep up the great work 👍
It goes almost without saying that a LOT of agricultural plowing/tilling does a LOT of harm to the soil. Having 'said' that, I inherited a soil that was like subsoil with no topsoil. To garden at all, I grew and tilled in buckwheat, fall leaves, and compost and now have a decent garden soil. However, one fall I placed a 12' round of snow fence in the garden filled with leaves. When I tilled in the spring it was tough going until I hit the spot where the leaves had been and the tiller sunke effortlessly to it's maximum depth - nature had tilled that soil!!!
I'll try to keep this short and respectful. I think that these new definitions of tillage and no-till are not necessary. These definitions line up quite well with existing words, such as degenerative and regenerative agriculture. The focus on outcomes and context is laudable and you do an excellent job explaining both of those. Still, I don't see the need to redefine tillage as anything other than actions which physically disturb the soil. As you say, tillage isn't inherently bad and going "full" no-till is not inherently positive either. If someone is pushing purity about certain tool and is unwilling to step back and consider context, that usually tells me I'm talking to one of two kinds of people: either a long time user of a tool who feels threatened by a new idea or a recent convert who hasn't taken the time to appreciate how complex the system is. How to go forward in either case totally depends on how genuine I sense the motivation is to understand one another. Just my two cents.
I call my garden a low-till garden. We have heavy clay soil, stuff gets compacted, and as I expand the growing area I have to till the first year to break it up a bit, I then add some compost or cut a lot of lawn clippings into the soil, and mix in some cheap bagged soil, and the next year it is much improved and I don't need to till that spot again. And when I do till I don't do it super heavily in the first place.
To me, tillage means turning the soil and destroying the layering of microbial networks that nature created to help the plants grow. That said, I'm on my 6th year of creating a suburban backyard food forest, and to do that requires deep digging through compacted clay in order to introduce organic materials back into the soil and make it permeable to roots again. The soil needs a rest and recovery period, but I've gone from shallow rooted tomatoes that only get 2 feet tall and need constant watering through the summer to 6-7 foot tall tomatoes that don't really require any watering through the summer. My "tillage" means digging 6 ft deep holes and then mixing the extracted soil with compost and soil amendments, but it's a one time job in my situation.
*tillage* (noun) _the preparation of soil by mechanical means_ I think that covers it. Tillage has (mainly positive) short-term effects and (mainly negative) long-term effects. It's a spectrum of effects, both positive and negative. The trend is towards degradation of the soil and soil biology if continued over time.
I am currently trying to make my clay heavy rock hard soil manageable. This year is my second year growing and I am going to try and only till in the fall. My current thought is to annually add more plant material into the soil through tilling in my mulch and rotting veggies in the fall after which add a new layer of mulch from the falling leaves and cut grass to sit over winter and for the next summer. Hoping that at some point the soil will become less compacted.
thanks! Also, Which is easer on the microbe health of compacted soil. Initial rototill-age or the initial use of a small garden tractor with a single plow; and following up with a disk and a rake? All this, with the intent toward both planting and or consumable ground cover, and heading toward the use of the Broadford for oxygen introduction. Thanks in advance. .
I’m tilling to create a smooth grade as I prepare to have a garden. I don’t have water yet, but I sow White Dutch Clover, Red Cover and standard grass seed for lawns to mitigate bare soil- whatever will grow without help. So far tilling has been not too destructive; I still have a significant mole problem. Once the moles move away, I’ll know I’ve killed too many worms. How are moles dealt with on a “no till” system? And what are some other indicators of diminishing soil life?
Sounds like everything you’ve talked about works quite well for most small plot sized gardens. When the neighbor goes to work this spring, he said last week they are on track to plant about 1000acres of potatoes. I’m not sure they employ your tactics of no-till and remain financially sound. Either that or a dozen potatoes would cost a boatload more than a dozen eggs because you only get one crop a year from potatoes.
I just prepared a bed for perennials by laying down a layer of wet dirty leaves, a sprinkle of aged manure, cardboard, and then a thick layer of hay from the goat shed full of little berries. I’ll let this compress down before I plant it up. My real problem area is in the side yard where a bank of dirt was taken out in the fall. It left lifeless, rock hard, water bogged ( soil?). I did cover it with a thick layer of old hay at that time, and I’ve thrown coffee grounds and kitchen waste on it all winter. Still, it is very bad just underneath the top layer. I think I’ll either broadfork or till to loosen it up and then cover with more hay. Do you have any other suggestions?
You could leave it alone now that it is covered with some plant material and watch what mother nature does with it. You might learn some things. Make sure to water it every once a while. Cover it with leaves too . Take care.
Hate to bring it up so soon after it happened and the feelings are still raw, but the Dust Bowl was caused by human agricultural activity. Farmers and ranchers who bought land were told by those selling that “rain follows the plow” so if you just plow the land up, then the rain will fall! Welp, did too much of that, then the dust bowl happened. Doesn’t mean all tilling or messing about with the ground is necessarily bad, it’s all about the bigger picture. Keeping healthy soil and preventing erosion is kind of a big deal! Love your videos, keep up the excellent work! ✌️ Ps- your comedic digressions are hilarious please don’t stop 😂
The succession that begins around min mark 8:15 is a good example of how to prep a garden bed into real production. Covercrps & long crops are good for this. You have to start at least 9 mos to 1 year ahead. If you want to see just how bad your soil is with no prep, try gowing sweet potatoes. A friend did this. He got no actual potatoes, but a bunch of blood red arteries growing into the top 4 in or so. It was ghastly looking. Like a horror movie. He chopped down the tops & tarped it. THAT actually helped the soil recover. Got in a late winter covercrop on the back end which also helped.
Perhaps use of the term “no till” should be minimised, somewhat like “paperless”, or changed to “minimal till”. I also prefer using “regenerative” as it is more descriptive. Thank you for this and so many other entertaining and instructive videos!
Well-said as usual, thank you. I agree that dogma can be dangerous, and I avoid using words like "always" and "never." There are indeed *some* instances when *some* tilling techniques *may* be appropriate. In general, yes I avoid disturbing the soil by mechanical means... but that's not always practical.
Not sure why everyone has to shuffle around definitions. Seems like rearranging what each term means to fit everyones personal idea, only complicates the communication process.
Something to keep in mind as we discuss gardening/farming is that a dogmatic approach to growing food very likely arises from the fact that there's SO MUCH TO KNOW, and it can be overwhelming. Trying to collapse all the rules, the exceptions to the rules, and variations to the rules into a simple framework of thou shalts and thou shalt nots is a perfectly reasonable- if ultimately unhelpful- human response to complexity. Dogmatic growers are very likely new growers. I hope we can remember to be gentle with them. There will be a season when none of their rules work, and when that season comes, it's probably best if we've kept those lines of conversation open for them.
I agree with you.
We use a whole bunch of "techniques" on our property. What we do depends on the piece of land. Are we breaking sod? rotating long used plots? Is it in the hoop house? Under trees? Really, it depends. When we lived in a suburb with a micro backyard, "square foot gardening" worked for us. Doesn't work for our current situation.
I think the anxiety of wanting - or needing - to produce food adds to the dogmatic approach. It is difficult to relax when you have a family to fee, I think.
I think that's totally fair! I also think, though, dogma can blind folks to the principles/practices that would genuinely be helpful. There are dogmas that I want to encourage, like "context is everything" and "ask your soil what it needs, not bring your ideas to the soil". A dogma of "no disturbance at all costs" could lead them to no success in the garden, which would be disastrous. That said, I could address this more helpfully, for sure. Thanks!
Carl Clark, well said! There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. One is quite valuable and the other is often the fruit of failure and success. I call it congealed sweat.
The danger is that the headline "No-Till = good" misleads new gardeners into thinking that all soil disturbance is bad. "No-Till" may roll off the tongue easily, but we have to make sure that the emphasis is on soil health and not just soil disturbance. I would definitely consider using a broadfork "tilling" the soil, it's just a much less destructive and erosive approach to tilling than what is commonly employed in mass-market agriculture.
Respect is owed to people, NOT the ideas ( dogmas) that pollute their brains . Free expression is not about being gentle or/and respectuous ... It is about sorting out BAD information vs the GOOD .
That one ends up being angry because I presented evidence for one or another agricultural practice ... Is a waste of time . That person has to get back at me with better evidence that I will "accept" and incorporate in my farming practice .
Feelings & religious BS are never owed any respect . Good day Carl .
ps: As per Tilling ( LOL ) ... On our small fresh market farm of 225 acres ... We use a variety of equipment from no-till to moldboard plow ... Depending on the preceding crop and land attribution for the next growing season . We are an odd one as about 35% of our surface is not farmed on any year ... Our neighbor are ripping their hair out as we have incorporated that practice years ago and most of our neighbors cannot "financially" afford to rest part of their surface in that manner . Controlled non-farming and wildflower for pollinators for our 45 acres of Summer sqaushes has proven to make a difference in soil compaction/front line decomposers and soil stability . But ... It is not for everyone, I respect that idea :)
Carl ... Have a good one .
I prefer regenerative over the term no till. The most important idea is that you are leaving the soil in either as good or better condition than you started. The important part is to stop degrading the soil!
Same. Rebranding a word stinks of a government campaign. I also call it "the compaction problem".
This was the most comprehensive tutorial I've watched in quite some time--and it wasn't intended to be. Really great show of knowledge breadth and depth here on soils. Love the holistic thinking. We're stewards of the ecosystem here and your approach is clear!
I think some tilling can be useful. So in itself one can't say tilling is either specifically good or specifically bad.
It depends on the soils, the local climate, the types of grass growing and even the insects, what you have available to enrich the soil and what you intend to grow etc.
Do what you need to do at the time - but keep the overall picture of conservation and being gentle to nature in mind.
"gentle to nature" very nice philosophy!
Yeah . . . for example, in my area we have extremely heavy silt/clay, the remnants of a long-vanished inland sea. It's rich in minerals and slow-draining (essential in our high desert climate), but once compacted, not even weeds will venture to grow in it. So tilling in compost and organic matter in the spring is essential to getting things to grow in an annual garden set-up, though more tillage actually just evaporates the compost. I'm experimenting with cover crops to see whether I can reduce the need for tilling, but for now it's still necessary in order to actually get a yield from my vegetable garden.
To me, Tillage means to mechanically rotate the soil surface prior to planting. In my definition it’s neither positive or negative; it just is what it is.
You’re right. And I think we’ve attributed feelings and attached an entire dogma to it.
It's a bit of a woke mentality. Trying to change the meaning of a word were a new term would do. Latin is a great language dead like the rednapp in feild will be in a few hours.
@@jamesgribben7024 Yep, lots of good info on this channel, but the reality is hardly anyone gives a rats ass about tillage and most people don't have any negative connotations of the word. As long as tillage feeds 99% of us that will remain the same.
@@jamesgribben7024 *where. Stop trying to change the spelling of a word where the correct spelling would do.
@@dancooper6002 mmmm idk, plenty of fruit and vegetable growers care about tillage. It's just the big corporate wheat, corn, and soy farmers don't give a rat's ass about tillage
I think the avoidance I had to an initial super tillage event was too extreme. I didn’t want to do it, but it was needed for me. To start a plot, never used for growing and in an area of strong compaction and a huge amount of fist sized and larger rocks… sorry, I’ll “super till” remove the rocks and then test, amend, cover crop and let recover at least a year, maybe two. If I don’t do this, then for the life of my plot, I’m fighting surfacing rocks and the efficiencies of fixed rows every single day. The initial work for prepping the soil, running irrigation headers - call it infrastructure, is a one time major event if done right. The year setback should be quickly overcome with the living soil practices, efficient production and yes, greater enjoyment and fulfillment of the working with the soil.
Absolutely. An excellent example of stepping outside of dogma based on sound application of first principles. We do the same, because we're not starting from land tended by previous generations of farmers who make those nice rock piles...
Some times you have to break eggs to make omelette.
It would have been cool to do half one way and half another way or thirds, or quarters. You could have scientifically tested things.
I am not sure how much to care either way, as I am reminded of the gopher, mole, and other ground dwelling (tilling) critters.
Take care.
Definitely true when creating a garden out of a baron or weed-filled plot or monoculture, there are good reasons to till initially. There are videos where Jesse does exactly that and explains exactly that. And so does Charles Dowding. Best to think of it this way: you are transitioning soil that is of low-value into something of high-value. Why is it low-value? Because it has been bare, or was growing a crop of weeds or lawn or something else that provided a monoculture chemistry in the soil not conducive to growing vegetables. Nothing will provide an immediate microbiome that is healthy, of course! It is like getting a truckload of mixed compost and loam in a new bed - it will not have a good microbiome. The building blocks are there but it's going to take a season or more of being planted to build a healthy microbiome and worm and insect life. You need to fertilize this first season because if you want to grow something there's not going to be much (or any) fertility in the soil at this point, whether you tilled or planted without tilling). Our experience has been halfway through the second season we've developed enough of the microbiome that we can cut the fertilizer down to something normal. Midway through the second season we have a healthy microbiome.
I started in a similar scenario. I did till the first season, clay so compacted and rocky there was very little life in that mess to destroy. Thankfully, no longer the case and I no longer use the tiller
Thank you farmer Jessie for sharing these videos. I first found your podcast about three years when I needed some inspiration for making a large transition on our farm. We are a half acre market garden in SW Colorado that has been in operation since 2005. When I began farming the traditional wisdom aimed for an FLS - fine level seedbed - that involved using a BCS tiller in between each crop rotation. So, in essence, our beds got tilled up to 3-4 times per season and this is on aeolian deposited soils of the desert west. To say the least we now grow a garden of thistle and bindweed because of the compaction we have created. Three years ago when I found your podcast and other videos from Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden and Singing Frogs Farm in California we started to transition towards the goal of no-till, deep compost beds. The only thing was that we had a shortage of materials for compost and living in a very rural area the closest distributor for bulk compost is six hours away over two mountain passes. So, we did what we could little by little and placed our worst areas into fallow. Now, this year we have a couple sources for free bulk materials and have purchased a dump trailer and started making our own compost (and biochar from dead pinyon trees in our forest) with the hopes of having enough material by this fall to add to our beds. It's a crazy uphill challenge, but we feel inspired to the task and are already seeing the results of the small amounts of compost we've put on so far. So I just wanted to say, keep up the good work and thank you for all the knowledge you've shared over the years! ~ Michele Martz, SongHaven Farm, Cahone, CO
We live on sandy soil (think beach front property). 🙂 The first-year for each garden row receives about 12" of grass/leaves/manure/compost. It's tilled in with a Troy and left to breakdown until the next Spring. It takes 2-3 years to find the first worms, but they do come for the organic matter and stay. After the first year, we add lots of compost and shredded leaves/grass each year around the plants. Works for us.
Thank you for this video! My dad and I work together in my market garden, and seeing his transformation from “all till, all day” to “till only when absolutely necessary” was something to see. He just plowed a garden expansion that will increase my growing size by almost triple, and he first wanted “keep tilling this first year” when it needs it, but now he’s ready to just build beds and broad fork/mulch/wood chip as needed to just start that way from the beginning. It’s nice to not have to drag a tiller out. I have beds that were tilled once when I first started that plot 3 years ago, but not since. Being flexible stewards of the soil is a great approach. Thanks again!
It's a Rotavator on this side of the pond and I scraped mine over 25 years ago and never regretted it. It made more work than it saved.
What did you scrape it on, a wall or something?
Of course! It's important to do it that first season. No till from then on?
Thanks Jessie for your video. Here in France we call no till : 'sol vivant' (living soil) or 'conservation des sols' (soils' preservation), which is maybe a little more positive ? Idea : all the technics which increase the life in the soil. Sorry for my english 😅 Julie
Sol vivant! What a fabulous term. Not only makes it sound alive, but thriving as well!! Like the earth is living its best life. Vive le terre! (Google translate assures me that means “long live the soil”, hopefully that’s correct :)
Close enough, but it’s "vive la Terre", because earth is feminine, thus the pronoun ”la"
This was exactly my thought as I watched this video, it's the NO-till word that needs changing. Also I think this would be simpler to do and more positive. I really like the sol vivant term for instance (what's not to like about vibrant soil). Also, your English is great, better than my French I expect.
"Living soil" is also a recognized phrase/concept to many Americans. I agree it's more positive, and it gets people thinking about how healthy soil is indeed a vibrant ecosystem.
I like to say that my main job is growing healthy, living soil, and if you can grow healthy soil you can grow any sorts of plants you plant. 🙂
I've heard 'SBS - Sans Bêcher Sol'. Whereabouts are you Julie?
I can guarantee that people that make the comments you referenced at the beginning of the video have no experience in farming.
Thank you for the great work you do.
It's been extremely helpful for my farm.
In the past tillage had quite a function in weed and pest control too. Plowing happened when the frost lightened up, and there were no crops (-cover) yet. Weeds (often whole wild grass mats, as grass grows at lower temperature and continues growing after the crop has been harvested) and any plant material left from the last cycle that could be contaminated with pests was plowed under. In the modern commercial no-till farming this has been replaced by applying round-up carefully timed with seeding so that the weed is dead when the seeds sprout. Pests that occur less frequently are dealt with as they happen, but the old farmers often didn't have that luxury (other than weeding or removing pests by hand, preparation was all that they had). Mulching whole fields is hard to do, most fiber will deteriorate over the winter anyway.
Thank you! I got so much from this - I’m slowly teaching my husband the benefits of feeding the soil, by these means, on our passed down farm after decades of disturbing habitat/balance. I will definitely be showing him this vid. I’ll check out the link to your book for sure! Kind greetings from Aus 🇦🇺 💗🙏🏼✌️
I've been doing no-til in my raised beds for 10 years with just compost, manure and mulch added on. By the end of the growing season though the soil becomes compacted. Thankfully the monsoon rains take care of it. Lajo from India 💕
I appreciate your reference to no-till dogma. I think the goal of promoting soil health and supporting living soil are what's important. Being mindful and considering your actions is important, but how you get there is less important than the outcome.
Beer good. 🍺 Perfect video topic for this month. My brain is all tied in knots about how to prep my little garden for spring. I’m revitalizing a small garden that must have been over worked or something cause it refused to grow much besides hot peppers for the last few years. And what it did grow was giant plants and some fruits that never ripened… So I got chickens and put all their poop in there (no science or plan behind that decision) and now it’s much better. Not fixed but better. Still learning. Thanks!
And the word “stink” used to mean “smell sweet”.
AND......................................... this is why I'm subscribed to this channel.
I got a good chuckle when you threw out the word dogma because that about sums up many people. They learn something and then they're fixated on it so much that they think there are some hard path to the promised land of beautiful, healthy plants and that's just not true, and there's one practice that I've seen that I think can be VERY helpful but the first thing it requires is that the user of that soil knows what they're doing, and that's a deep turning of soil. It's something that usually is only done once but it could require a 2nd time and hopefully no more than that, and you aren't just deep turning, you're working organic material throughout a deep level of soil.
The benefits is you get a deeper layer of a more unified quality of soil. I wouldn't worry about this if I were just growing trees, but in developing a plot of land for years of growing crops, it might be a good idea. It depends on the soil. The people who believe in the ONE path are going to start with cardboard over the soil, or maybe plant a cover crop. But that doesn't give you information about the soil you're trying to grow on. You could have hard layers in that soil which are going to hinder the health/growth of the soil/crops. The intent as has been talked about by different channels should be growing healthy soil, and there is by no means a single path to doing that, and the type of soil that you have (not a single category, but multiple categories/conditions) can require different treatment.
THANKS for a great video!
I like your comparison of tillers and blenders - same "choppy choppy" killing of soil. I use a lot of mulch and compost which I make myself. I have raised beds and before I plant, I "turn" my soil gently. My worms get disturbed but not killed. Whatever surface organic matter there is, gets flipped down into the bottom of the hole. I gauge how I am doing by the health of my produce AND my worms. My worms get bigger and my soil gets richer every year. I think I got it right...
Good one , dude. What I've found in my short tenure with no till is that too many people are afraid of tillage, theyve read too much anti tilling info like Faulkner's "Plowman's Folly". While all that is true to a large extent,most of us, myself included, are trying to establish no till on fields that have been previously farmed or been pasture forever. So we have serious compaction, poor drainage, and other associated issues. So while some TH-cam "farmers" just do the thing with cardboard and compost, ive found that not to work at all,for me at least, and definitely not give an optimum long term result. What I do now ,and strongly recommend on any block of 1/4 acre on up, is :
1:Disc the living shit out of it
2:Chisel plow likewise, ideally in two directions to break up old plowpan and cattle compaction
3:Use a bed shaper if you can find one, I made an easy one with an old toolbar and hilling discs
4: LIGHTLY, SHALLOWLY, rototill the bed with your BCS , Troybilt horse, whatever you got.
5: THEN start layering compost in your no till odyssey.
Your cover cropping and super hippie woo woo practices for the next many years will more than make up for this one round of Caucasian colonialist super tillage and you and the earth will be all the better for it.
Don't be afraid of tractors, they are your friend when used properly. That being said mine has not been driven in my one acre garden for three years now, and won't be for the foreseeable future.
Also I have used the moldboard plow but am phasing that out except for working up old pasture for reseeding. I defer to the disc most of the time for minimal mixture of soil layers.
Ironically Faulkner wasn't against plows at all, he emphasized even to use less disturbing plows like disc plows! It seems that oversimplification and a dogmatic approach do more harm than reading carefully what Faulkner adviced in his books some 80 years ago.
Yep, a disc and chisel plow can do the thing.
I grew up on a heavy tillage conventional farm, then upon listening to Elaine Ingham and others became a devout no tiller. After working for years with it and listening to the likes of John Kempf and others I have found myself somewhere in the middle, minimal tillage or tillage at establishment. Our new farm was pretty much dead over greased Henry Clay and we have found it first pass of tillage, then cover crop then disking that cover crop in has been phenomenal to spark life in our soil going forward.
For hot tropical weather like in Malaysia, compost is layered and tilled into the clayish soil is better way to build up the organic matter in the soil. From time to time until the soil structure improved and microbs activity built up, then broadfork and non-destructive method will work.
Amazing how this video just fits. I have just dug out a trench in my garden bed to put bokashi in to let it decompose. At the same time I worried that I have tilled the soil which is a "bad" thing.
Great Video. I only use tillage in the spring. mainly because Ive added a great deal of year old or more animal manure/ compost and I want to work it into my active layer I call it. Usually thats all put on in the fall, or the end of the season here. then worked in during the spring. soil remains very active and healthy to this day.
some soil disturbance make plants grow better. if you have to work by hand, disturb only small part of the soil where you plant / sow the seed. You'll save a lot of labour.
In university (as a nature conservation engineer) and by a teacher (about sustainability, natural farming and some philosophy) I came to the term for 'tilling' to mean turning the soil during preparation, then leaving it bare. I like this definition because (although it is kind of a closed one) it both addresses the harm and also points to identifiable (and largely avoidable) actions.
I think "practices that cause long term harm" would better serve as an umbrella definition for a bunch of, well, practices (one of which is tilling, if defined as above). Terms should be practical - dogma would come into play when we start labeling them without context.
Tilling the soil means ‘tilling the soil’, zero till means inserting seed into existing soil structures. Usually by chemically killing the plants already growing there as a first step. As a necessity and rule gardening requires tillage to remove weed competition and poisoning the garden soils is verboten.
Well in natural farming it's quite common to use microbes (IMO, JMS,EM,...) for deep soil tilling.
It is a less invasive practice, but still leads to erosion, when the soil is uncovered for longer times.
You saved my life! No matter however much force I used to throw those seeds down in the rock and clay they just bounced around! Mother earth apparantly wasn't yawning that day to gobble them up. Tennessee sucks for dogma in the garden. Great video. I cover cropped with rye for the first time and will be doing it again with Radishes, turnips, rutabagas, and some Austrian peas this fall. I'm planning on 3 rounds of this with adding of compost and then hopefully just broadforking after that. It took the last 3 years just to get the rocks and geodes and Johnson grass out which was about 3 tonnes.
Thank you for explaining this so thoroughly. I have fairly compacted clay soil that I want to improve. I already have an excellent cover crop mix that I think will do wonders, but I have to do something to this compacted soil for the seed mix to even have the ability to take root. I plan to broad fork this area as it's not super large and that seems like the best / most supportive way to break it up so that oxygen, organic material, microbes, and worms can start to do their thing. I honestly don't think it'll need tillage after this first season as there will always be some kind of cover crop as well as chickens in this area. But my concern was that I'd be doing something terrible for the soil by breaking it up even with just this first time broad-forking. That's what the usual definitions of tillage were making me think, anyway.
But what you've explained here makes so much sense. Yes, the broad fork will cause some disturbance and could harm some of the worm and microbe populations. But I won't just be leaving it like that. I'll be adding some organic matter, seeding cover crops, and mulching to help protect and improve it. And I mean, something has to be done because right now there's just tons of erosion to the point that I'll have to bring in some top soil to help level out certain areas. At least I feel much better about this initial broad-forking that has to happen.
Right, do what makes the most sense for your context! It sounds like it wouldn't hurt to work in some organic matter. A tiller can be a fine way to do that or if you layer it on the surface, a broadfork will slowly work it in there over a couple years.
Jessie, thanks for all your content. It truly lines up with what I feel is the best framework for regeneration. As carl Clark commented, dogma is likely a way to make an impossibly complex subject digestible. I like to say that my one rule is to optimize the flow of energy from the sun through plants into soil. No tool should be disregarded in that goal, including soil manipulation. Trade offs are inevitable and will always exist. Our job is to understand those trade offs and make the best decisions we can.
Thanks for this video and all your others!
I'm glad that this video appeared in my feed today, and I took the time to watch it. It was a very practical introduction, and clearly showed your passion, knowledge, and pragmatics. It's an area I need to get better at for our gardens. On thought that kept going through my mind as I watched is that it's the NO-till word that needs to be replaced, rather than tillage. The comment with the French "sol vivant" term struck a cord with me, perhaps we could make it a single universal word solvivant (sounds like vibrant soil, which has a nice ring to it for me). That way tillage can stay as "prepare the soil for crops" and perhaps also be returned to the a positive term.
I realize this presents a bit of a problem for you having built up a No Till brand though ;). Thanks for this, I hope I find more of your videos just as useful and thought provoking.
Yes agree - tillage is using a tiller. By removing the word tillage and using a term like sol vivant there is no confusion.
I think what you are explaining about this topic is very true... Plants and microbes feed the soil and broad forking is the best and all you need to do.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on conservation tillage, especially for northern climates. A lot of field crops require tillage in the spring to warm the soil. I use a Grillo with a spader and living pathways, Helen Atthowe style, to farm 1/2 acre of tomatoes with JADAM.
First, I love Helen's work and I just got an advanced copy of here book and it's 🔥. So be on the lookout for The Ecological Farm. Also, she used a lot of living pathways and living mulches and also plastic in the beds when she was in Montana. That was here context and clearly her soil was fine from it. I think strip tillage/conservation tillage definitely has a place, especially on larger scales.
I’ve got a greenhouse. I grow tomatoes in Montana because I believe in local agriculture, to be brief. Minimal tillage is much preferable to trucking produce thousands of miles, and my tomatoes are nutrient dense and taste great, unlike tomatoes in the grocery store.
Jesse, your videos are always creating a pathway for great discussions and reasoning. My very subjective, 'Clear as Mud' definition of Tillage, is the disruption of topsoil in order plant a crop. 'No Till', is by definition, 'Low Till', tilling by slightly disturbing the soil in order to plant a crop.
The most succinct and easily understood explaination I've found of why rototilling is a huge contributor to inceased CO2 in our atmosphere (and ummmm climate change?!) starts at 6 minutes. Thank you SO much! (And I love your humor!)
Subsoiling occasionally seems like a great usage of a form of tilling with a tractor to benfit soil life and soil structure. I got an 80s 2 cycle Massey Ferguson and ran a couple passes on my backyard garden and it was crazy how compact and barren looking the subsoil was. Looking forward to deeper living soil biology.
Right, on a larger scale it makes way more sense than a broadfork, which is effectively doing the same thing.
@666 nice, glad your subsoiling. Another trick is feeding the soil sugar to help soil before and after tillage.
Why not? You can apply the right bacterias as well. They help to remove soil compaction as well. In regenerative Agriculture they are called regenerative microbes.
I didn't know M-F built two-stroke diesel tractors. I'm heading over to Yesterday's Tractors for more information.
I learn so much from your tutorials and absolutely love your dry sense of humor; cracks me up so often.
In regards to industrial applications of no-till John Kemp at AEA says that an initial mechanical tillage/disturbance of soil is required to handle compaction.
Hi. To what depth?
@@yagodnii_gorod_TAMBOV I believe the minimum depth recommended is 4", I don't think there was a limit, but if you have a lot of compaction with clay, do an initial breakup of the soil and then let the roots do the rest.
Where we farm in Western Australia's central wheatbelt region, our top soil is only 100mm or so deep ,under that is very sodic and high in aluminium . Our top soil sets like concrete and if a paddock has been left to pasture especially running livestock for the year it is so hard that any rain runs away. I try to rip as much as i can on the first rains of the year so the following rains can soak in either with conventional tillage or even a minimum till knife point just to crack the crust and alow water to enter . These paddocks will out yield any other in our operation every time . We also use conventional tillage to incorporate crushed lime . Our operation is broad acre cropping (cereals and legumes) and sheep
IF you live in Florida you can turn your entire lawn into a Garden. Even if you live in an HOA that bans Gardens you can still remove all your grass and have your Entire yard as a Garden. There is a law in Florida called "Florida Friendly Landscaping", that prohibits an HOA from telling a resident they cannot install a Garden, Food Forest, Wild Flower Meadow in the yard if they own the Land. The Florida Government wants Florida Residents to stop growing grass lawns because its a waste of fresh water resources. Also lawns have toxic pesticides and fertilizers that drain into the Canals and cause all kinds of issues with water quality. I removed all the grass in my yard and turned it into a garden, this year I produced $5,000 worth of vegetables in my front yard.
Another absolutely amazing video jammed with knowledge. A real talent for us less scientific nerds to understand the principles. Your awesome
Thanks Jessie! I think you hit the nail on the head. Keep up the great work!!
I appreciate the way you introduce the idea of dogma to how some farms operate. I’ve been doing regen grazing for 3 years now, and as I’ve gotten into that community I find a lot of people are zealots about what you should and shouldn’t do. Dogma is the perfect way to describe it. I can’t have a conversation without the risk of judgement. Not everyone by any stretch but it’s a prevalent theme.
I’m binging on your videos as I’ve just recently found your channel. Going to implement our first no-till garden soon.
Definitions change over the years, when I hear no till I automatically think no soil disturbance. I personally do not turn my soil I only add and this has worked out great for me in my garden. To each their own we are stewards of the land, if your improving your land and soil then you’re doing it right.
I purchased the "Living Soil handbook" and I'm on my third time reading it! I'm loving it! I am a non-agricultural suburbanite, but recently bought a farm and have a large garden. I'm practicing no till for the second year and I can see huge benefits already. Being able to work the garden after a rain and pull weeds is definitely a lot easier! Weeds are not near as big a problem because I've use cardboard & mulch, but I am interested to see how I'm going to transition 13:48 from the summer to the fall garden. Any ideas? By the way to me tillage must include mechanical manipulation of the soil in its definition.
I'm not a market gardener, just a beginner taking over a mix of ex-grass lawn and ex-agricultural land. But I could not have done ANYTHING these first couple of years without my rotivator to initially break the ground. Well, the Square Foot type beds in the front garden. But that cost an absolute fortune in soil "ingredients". I have a small orchard, but even that doesn't seem to make a big enough compost heap...
Well said sunny, as with everything, context is crucial, principles are important to understand, improved management comes with understanding.
i like the connection between tillage and soil inversion especially where that mixes the different soil horizons, thus a plough at 4 inches is better than a glyphosphate and min/notill drill planting. where tilth is required for seeding etc is also usually in the top inch but below 6 being flipped/smashed/crumbled and inverted is massive nono-
Many traditional subsistence farms also include some kind of tilling. It only becomes a problem when the entirety of plant root zone gets disturbed leading to it losing moisture, furthermore it makes the zone above groundwater table too dry to the point of it becoming hydrophobic and not retaining moisture there even when it rains.
Not to mention, small level of soil disturbances is part of natural system as well. Burrowing and boring animals does the part below surface and grazing animals and birds foraging in soil do it in the surface.
I have heard that our grandfathers used to go lightly distrub the soil surface in the yard with a gardening hoe just before a rain, to retain more water
Absolutely part of a natural system--thanks, Aleena!
Thanks, I needed to hear you say that. Hwoo, we get so dramatic sometimes. Grace to all your wordly endeavors!!!!
Great conversation! I have a big Troy-Bilt tiller we used regularly. Nowadays it gets used very rarely, as we have moved into low-till or minimal-till methods. In fact, I haven't used it for the past two seasons. It does still have its place, though, on rare occasions.
I'd love to see a video on gardening dogma. One commenter below (carlclark3167) observes that dogmatic growers are usually newbies. I won't disagree but I do know several long-time (40+ years) growers who are are VERY fixed in their ways. Example: one guy I know well has a terrible problem with common potato scab. I once did but lowered the pH of my soil to 5.5 with elemental sulfur. Scab remains dormant at that level of acidity. He can't because his crops MUST be rotated and nothing else he grows can tolerate an acidic soil. So.... he continues to grow huge quantities of ugly, ruined potatoes while mine are award-winning, simply because he cannot allow himself to think outside the box. Dogma does not belong in the garden.
I don't disagree with anything you said, except for lexicography. I would prefer a more explicit definition of tillage and still leave the value judgement to be developed or be adjectives that modify it. So tillage is explictly "a mechanical disturbance of growing medium in situ through inversion or blending". It ain't soil, it is usually dirt!
Another nit is I think anthropomorphizing plants plays into widespread ignorance on how natural selection works. Species we humans use for food happen to those who occupy the niche of having traits which are adapted to flourishing in soil that is not yet an ideal medium. The biproducts of their growth have a regenerative effect, changing soil to be more optimum through increased organic matter, biological diversity of microbial life, and natural pest defenses. Plants didn't make a conscientious choice to do those things, they were just successful doing them.
All that said, ANOTHER great video!
That's fair! Though I do think it's a fine line in sci-comm to balance analogy (anthropomorphizing) and accuracy. In fact, I think it's an aversion to comparison that sometimes renders science out of the grasp of many people. But I can also be more careful about that. Thanks!
Im more of a "limited till" gardener. I used to garden using a bag of good old 10-10-10 and deep tilling but have switched focus to utilizing compost and vermicompost i make myself. My problem is making enough compost for my needs. My compost is made from old garden plants, comfrey, fall leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, coffee grinds and dairy cow manure. Its great compost however i struggle to provide an enough each year due to lack of raw materials. Because of this shortage of compost, I lightly till/scratch in some amendments like kelp and alfalfa using a small rototiller set at a depth of about 2 inches to rough up the soil surface for incorporation of amendments. I hope to get away from tilling all together but need a couple years to make that a reality.
Sometimes you have to work with what you got and have an end goal.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and being so informative. I love your content! I see tillage as a tool, so it is neither good or bad, but how it is used depending on the farmer's context (small scale vs at scale for example). I think it's about the actions and enhancing the ecosystem that surrounds us.
“Jargon” is one of my favorite words and collections of words! 5:17
Tillage: to manually or mechanically turn or break the soil horizon for the purpose of agricultural management. Benefits may include weed removal, short-term nutrient release, decompaction, and aeration. Negative effects may include erosion, hard pans, and reducing soil life and organic matter.
Tillage combined with large applications of NPK fertiliser are currently the number one cause of desertification and the decline of agricultural soils. However, limited use to mediate specific soil issues has been shown to sometimes be extremely beneficial.
Hard case soil high Clay concentration till. Working with hi carbonized and organic compounds with fertility loose simple turning. Small garden. Brake hardpan or suffer. Thanks for sharing. Great subject
Thank you for this post and the comments. I think your point about identifying your soil goals, and knowledgeably choosing the best tools to achieve the goals is super valuable. Better than dogma, as you say. Although as one commenter noted, dogma feels safe in the face of overwhelming complexity. If there is *anything* that is overwhelmingly complex, soil and plants are it! Love your videos. Wanna get your book. ❤️
We should use burlap bags for leaf pick up. Lay the bags over a field for the winter.... or the big paper bags...
Good to clarify. As someone who doesn't do farming, if someone told me they don't till, but I saw them using a roto-'TILLER', that would seem disingenuous. I understand the difference now, but most people out there who don't farm think you mean 'no churning up or turning of the soil', without explaining it to them.
Good explanation. I hadn’t thought about tilling adding O2 to the soil and changing the biome of the soil. Instead of changing the meanings and definitions of words, wouldn’t it be better to just create new words that mean what you are actually doing? I liked some of the words suggested in the other comments. “Living soil” sounds good. Maybe something like “symbiotic agriculture”. Then explain the tenants of symbiotic agriculture. A rotary plow looks a lot like a roto tiller so explain the differences.
My soil is a hard compacted clay mess. Trying to make and add lots of compost and mulch. Thinking of trying to make and pulverize some charcoal and tilling that in. As you mentioned after I get some organic worked in I won’t have to till again. Thanks for the video.
I inherited 'parking lot' soil more like hard pan than topsoil. Even tilling with a rear tine tiller was a challenge and a front tine tiller was a run across the garden! One fall, I put a 12' ring of 4' tall snow fence in the garden filled it with leaves. In the spring, I removed the snow fence and the remnants and discovered that the tiller struggled elsewhere, but effortlessly sunk to it's maximum depth where the leaves had been. The take away of the story is that with deep mulch, nature does the tillage far better than we can do with plow or tiller. Hmmm....so in a way, mulching is natural tillage.🙂
"Disturbances like hogs or fires or stripmalls..." That was a great line.
I bought a heavy duty broadfork a few years ago. It's the best garden investment I made for my clay soil.
Here in NC my compacted clay is impossible to drow on without first "tilling" What I do is till in one years leaves and then cover crop plant it for 2 years at that point their will be roots and fungi keeping the soil good an occasional broad forking may be needed as well But turning this land productive does take a few years
I prefer to talk about extractive vs regenerative farming practices. My definition of tilling is mechanically rotating or pulverizing soil. I don't consider deep forking tillage because it doesn't change the layering of the soil. It seems more like aeration. Which can also be disruptive, depending on how it's done, but I don't make that assumption automatically, for either practice. To me, it's not the term tillage that has a negative connotation (beyond having very high risk factors), but the context: extractive, industrial, &c.
My soil had to be broken up to plant beans, peas, and greens densely to begin building a healthy soil. Topsoil was 2 to 4 inches deep max decades after the lot was created by leveling a hill down to a very hard red clay/sand/gravel mixture. I did it by hand...a 3x4 feet space each day with a very strong Japanese hand tool. First I sharpened it with a file to remove the grass and its roots...then used the pointed end to hack away clumps...then chopped those up. After planting I used grass clippings as mulch everywhere. Gonna chop up oak leaves and pine straw etc after the first frost (expected in days...central Louisiana) and gather them from the nearby wooded areas when it`s cold so nothing bad like snakes or ground hornets gets me. I also need to find soil around here to add to certain areas to make squash and melon mounds and put some beneath my makeshift trellis.
Tilling is great and No tilling is great. Context is King
I dont feel you owed anyone a explanation on how you kick ass ,just keep kickin ass
Combating compaction is aeration, which requires disturbance. I am using an auger until a broadfork will make it in the soil.
I love your video, by the way. Thank you. Just ordered my book!!
We humans love labels and boogeymen and unfortunately it doesn't serve "the public" well as they will jump on and use terms they are not intimately involved with and then they go forth and replicate "jargon" that can actually be used as propaganda. Sometimes a newbie no-till grower adopts said jargon and "skill" as a mantra and spends years trying to be perfect at it! This conversation is so valuable!
We are watching you from central KY , got me I. The gardening mode , we practice no till , Thanks for the video
Depending on the soil composition , some soils become impermeable and harden some of the largest tillage implements do the least compaction and mulch the most effectively. The quickest way to increase soil organic matter is by mulching and spreading manure some of the richest soil I have seen was improved this way.
I'm moving from California to east Tennessee in about a month. I'm 26 now and I just got sick and tired of living in the city so I bought a farm house. Don't get me wrong the weather and the geography is beautiful but Cali is a sinking ship. videos like this motivated me to do something different with my life. I just want to say thank you for all the helpful content you post.
Going to have some very clay soil 😂
@squirrel9760 I did some bit of research and plus I love the challenge. Lol
I'm in East TN near Tellico Plains. You may not have super clay soils. I do in some places and don't in others. Gardening in the southeast US is different than gardening in the west, sw, mountain states, NE, etc. More insect and disease pressures, lighter soils (in the chemical sense), longer weed season (hello spiny pig weed), hotter temps, etc. Then again, with a bit of protection, we can grow cool season crops though most of the winter.
@kristinsvensson1429 i did my homework on that and thought about all of the possible outcomes as far as disease, pests, geography, and weather. I love the challenge that it presents because it's certainly different from California there's no question on that.
Just don't vote Democrat in Tennessee.
I till under dead plants every year. Learned from my grandmother. my garden plants turn out amazing every year.
I really like your book.
I recently started interning at a more conventional market farm. He had the perspective that No-Till methods only make sense on sandy or loamy soil. And that if you have a heavy clay soil. The amount of time and effort that it would take to de-compact that enough to be useful at all would be entirely impractical. Which for him means that No-Till doesn't work on heavy clay.
I am curious about what you or other people here think of that idea?
I have learned a lot from them, although I have also realized their way of farming is relatively input-heavy. As it uses a lot of fuel. But, outside of that delivery of website sales is one of their biggest expenses in several ways which is why they are pivoting to selling through a co-op.
The land I have access to isn't heavy clay anyways so I have been planning on doing some sort of no or low-till anyways.
I have also seen a couple videos and studies of people creating new beds with multiple methods of bed preparation. They found that starting with tillage for initial field prep but planting a cover crop mix that promotes microbial activity and suppresses weeds leads to about twice as much microbial activity and respiration as a Lasagna bed, or a simpler no-till bed setup. And in addition resulted in much lower soil salinity, and a more moderate level of phosphorus. Which suggests that those No-Till methods of bed preparation create a risk of groundwater pollution.
You do mention cover-cropping as a better method to establish a bed when you have more time in your book though.
The main hypothesis for that effect is that microbes that need to be close enough to the soil surface to live are kept lower than is good for them by the cardboard barriers put down until they eventually dissolve. And the microbes that live in compost maybe less plentiful. Potentially that factor might be able to be mitigated by an inoculating compost made from a local Forrest or something?
The additional salinity might be addressable through increasing the amount of leaf mold in comparison to the amount of manure-based or general compost. Or maybe trying to find a compost tested to have a lower sodium content?
I have considered doing some experimentation into methods of bed preparation and seeing what kind of effect changes have on the microbial levels in the soil. It is an area that has a little bit of research. But not as much as I would like to be able to find. I at least plan to make a couple raised beds, and some where I till and cover-crop to replicate to a lesser extent the info I found.
A Secondary issue I have been thinking about is how practical it would be to automate or mechanize precision cultivation for weed control?
It isn't a particularly difficult task. But it is fairly time consuming. Potentially if you could make a lightweight machine that was small enough to not cause compaction issues with a wider width of wire cultivators it might be feasible to use that to reduce weeding time?
Great content, especially in this video! Very well said and as an agriculturist studying soil microbial life, I ended up to the same conclusion.
Keep up the great work 👍
It goes almost without saying that a LOT of agricultural plowing/tilling does a LOT of harm to the soil.
Having 'said' that, I inherited a soil that was like subsoil with no topsoil. To garden at all, I grew and tilled in buckwheat, fall leaves, and compost and now have a decent garden soil.
However, one fall I placed a 12' round of snow fence in the garden filled with leaves. When I tilled in the spring it was tough going until I hit the spot where the leaves had been and the tiller sunke effortlessly to it's maximum depth - nature had tilled that soil!!!
I'll try to keep this short and respectful. I think that these new definitions of tillage and no-till are not necessary. These definitions line up quite well with existing words, such as degenerative and regenerative agriculture. The focus on outcomes and context is laudable and you do an excellent job explaining both of those. Still, I don't see the need to redefine tillage as anything other than actions which physically disturb the soil. As you say, tillage isn't inherently bad and going "full" no-till is not inherently positive either.
If someone is pushing purity about certain tool and is unwilling to step back and consider context, that usually tells me I'm talking to one of two kinds of people: either a long time user of a tool who feels threatened by a new idea or a recent convert who hasn't taken the time to appreciate how complex the system is. How to go forward in either case totally depends on how genuine I sense the motivation is to understand one another. Just my two cents.
I call my garden a low-till garden. We have heavy clay soil, stuff gets compacted, and as I expand the growing area I have to till the first year to break it up a bit, I then add some compost or cut a lot of lawn clippings into the soil, and mix in some cheap bagged soil, and the next year it is much improved and I don't need to till that spot again.
And when I do till I don't do it super heavily in the first place.
To me, tillage means turning the soil and destroying the layering of microbial networks that nature created to help the plants grow. That said, I'm on my 6th year of creating a suburban backyard food forest, and to do that requires deep digging through compacted clay in order to introduce organic materials back into the soil and make it permeable to roots again.
The soil needs a rest and recovery period, but I've gone from shallow rooted tomatoes that only get 2 feet tall and need constant watering through the summer to 6-7 foot tall tomatoes that don't really require any watering through the summer.
My "tillage" means digging 6 ft deep holes and then mixing the extracted soil with compost and soil amendments, but it's a one time job in my situation.
*tillage* (noun) _the preparation of soil by mechanical means_
I think that covers it. Tillage has (mainly positive) short-term effects and (mainly negative) long-term effects. It's a spectrum of effects, both positive and negative. The trend is towards degradation of the soil and soil biology if continued over time.
I am currently trying to make my clay heavy rock hard soil manageable. This year is my second year growing and I am going to try and only till in the fall. My current thought is to annually add more plant material into the soil through tilling in my mulch and rotting veggies in the fall after which add a new layer of mulch from the falling leaves and cut grass to sit over winter and for the next summer. Hoping that at some point the soil will become less compacted.
Thanks! Love the line “dogma doesn’t belong in the garden!”
Great point he made there. I'd buy that on a T-shirt.
🙌
Your haircut looks great ! You now still look like a professional farmer 👩🌾
My definition of tillage would be soil preparation that requires and includes significant and quite deep soil disturbance, like plowing a field
It's the lack of understanding about how compost is a interaction between air water fungle material carbon and so on makes soil great job 👍
thanks! Also, Which is easer on the microbe health of compacted soil. Initial rototill-age or the initial use of a small garden tractor with a single plow; and following up with a disk and a rake? All this, with the intent toward both planting and or consumable ground cover, and heading toward the use of the Broadford for oxygen introduction. Thanks in advance. .
Would low till not be a better description than no till? Less dogmatic.
I’m tilling to create a smooth grade as I prepare to have a garden. I don’t have water yet, but I sow White Dutch Clover, Red Cover and standard grass seed for lawns to mitigate bare soil- whatever will grow without help. So far tilling has been not too destructive; I still have a significant mole problem. Once the moles move away, I’ll know I’ve killed too many worms. How are moles dealt with on a “no till” system? And what are some other indicators of diminishing soil life?
Did survive the wind? Three trees down in Bullitt Co. Right on top of garden. New chain saw and a bunch of charcoal!
As expected another great informative video, Thank You!
Sounds like everything you’ve talked about works quite well for most small plot sized gardens.
When the neighbor goes to work this spring, he said last week they are on track to plant about 1000acres of potatoes. I’m not sure they employ your tactics of no-till and remain financially sound. Either that or a dozen potatoes would cost a boatload more than a dozen eggs because you only get one crop a year from potatoes.
I just prepared a bed for perennials by laying down a layer of wet dirty leaves, a sprinkle of aged manure, cardboard, and then a thick layer of hay from the goat shed full of little berries. I’ll let this compress down before I plant it up. My real problem area is in the side yard where a bank of dirt was taken out in the fall. It left lifeless, rock hard, water bogged ( soil?). I did cover it with a thick layer of old hay at that time, and I’ve thrown coffee grounds and kitchen waste on it all winter. Still, it is very bad just underneath the top layer. I think I’ll either broadfork or till to loosen it up and then cover with more hay. Do you have any other suggestions?
You could leave it alone now that it is covered with some plant material and watch what mother nature does with it. You might learn some things.
Make sure to water it every once a while. Cover it with leaves too .
Take care.
Hate to bring it up so soon after it happened and the feelings are still raw, but the Dust Bowl was caused by human agricultural activity. Farmers and ranchers who bought land were told by those selling that “rain follows the plow” so if you just plow the land up, then the rain will fall! Welp, did too much of that, then the dust bowl happened. Doesn’t mean all tilling or messing about with the ground is necessarily bad, it’s all about the bigger picture. Keeping healthy soil and preventing erosion is kind of a big deal!
Love your videos, keep up the excellent work! ✌️
Ps- your comedic digressions are hilarious please don’t stop 😂
Wildly the dustbowl is still a thing. There are still dust storms out west, albeit perhaps not quite on the same scale.
The succession that begins around min mark 8:15 is a good example of how to prep a garden bed into real production. Covercrps & long crops are good for this. You have to start at least 9 mos to 1 year ahead.
If you want to see just how bad your soil is with no prep, try gowing sweet potatoes. A friend did this. He got no actual potatoes, but a bunch of blood red arteries growing into the top 4 in or so. It was ghastly looking. Like a horror movie. He chopped down the tops & tarped it. THAT actually helped the soil recover. Got in a late winter covercrop on the back end which also helped.
that's an unfortunate story for your friend but I've heard sweet potatoes can make an excellent cover crop so 🤷
The definitions are a must
Perhaps use of the term “no till” should be minimised, somewhat like “paperless”, or changed to “minimal till”. I also prefer using “regenerative” as it is more descriptive.
Thank you for this and so many other entertaining and instructive videos!
Well-said as usual, thank you. I agree that dogma can be dangerous, and I avoid using words like "always" and "never." There are indeed *some* instances when *some* tilling techniques *may* be appropriate. In general, yes I avoid disturbing the soil by mechanical means... but that's not always practical.
Not sure why everyone has to shuffle around definitions. Seems like rearranging what each term means to fit everyones personal idea, only complicates the communication process.