4 ms·
to till or not to till, that's the question. one way to look at is check the yields that result from dig vs no dig. Charles dowding did exactly that. for sev
by heathrow83829 7mo ago
to till or not to till, that's the question. one way to look at is check the yields that result from dig vs no dig. Charles dowding did exactly that. for seven years he had two plots, one where he dug and one where he didn't. in each one he added the same amount of compost and grew teh same crops on both sides.
Overall, the nodig plot harvest 10% more. but here's where it gets interesting. those yields were not uniformly spread across the vegetable types. if you dig into the data, you'll see, some did quite worse with dig and some did quite better. guess which ones did better on dig? Potatoes, Rutabagas, carrots and parsnips and cabbage all did better in Dig! roughly to the tune of about Potatoes 21%, carrots 21%, Rutabaga 14%, Cabbage, 11%, broad beans 10% better. it's all published in his books. Everything else did better with no dig. Shallots especially did 33% better with no-dig, ales 21% better, onions 22% better with no dig.
- chongli 7mo agoThe no dig method has taken on a life of its own, almost a religion. It's probably a mistake for most people though. "One dig" is almost always going to be superior, given soil that has never been used for gardening before. Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment.
- fuzzy_biscuit 7mo agoWe call that New Jersey here!
- moron4hire 7mo agoThe dirt in my part of Virginia is almost suitable for pottery straight out of the ground. Just need to filter out the feldspar, quartz, and gold first.
- ch4s3 7mo agoI go to my mom’s old farm and marvel at the thought of them having grown anything in that hard red ground.
- hansvm 7mo agoMan, I wish I had access to heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy-clay soil. It's the 80% rock that makes even basic tasks a day-long chore.
- chongli 7mo agoThe soil in my backyard has very few rocks but the clay is so hard and dense it may as well be a brick wall.
- thatcat 7mo agoWhen it's wet, but not saturated - like 1-2 days after a rain - you can decompact the soil with a strong metal broadfork and leave the soil in large block aggregates. This keeps the soil structure and maintains some fungal web connections. Add nutrients, wood chips, stick and sand below aggregates and in cracks. Cover with compost and plant clover to cover.
- greazy 7mo agoThis is amazing info thank you. What is the purpose of planting clover?
- pja 7mo agoClover is a nitrogen fixing plant - used to be that you’d plant clover for a year in between other crops to make your soil fertile again. (It’s the bacteria in the roots that do the actual nitrogen chemistry.)
- Angostura 7mo agoReally good advice above. But if you want to cheat a bit, I used https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/vitax-clay-breaker--25-kg-box/6CB23TM https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/vitax-clay-breaker--25-kg-... on my heavy clay garden and it helped a lot, in combination with extra organic material etc.
- 7mo ago
- chairmansteve 7mo ago"Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment". For sure. In Dowdings method you put a quite thick layer of compost on top of the existing soil. You then top up the compost every year.
- tbossanova 7mo agoRaised planters can help too
- chabska 7mo agoOh yeah, just top up the compost every year. Where are you getting that compost from? Wood chips you say? You'd have to denude ten acres of forest to make enough compost to Dowding one acre of field. He's a soil vampire, sucking in fertility from somewhere else to feed his own garden.
- world2vec 7mo agoIn my parents' farm the compost comes from cleaning up the forest around it (trim branches, vegetation, dying trees, etc) mixed with the chicken and goat manure plus whatever else gets mixed in there (food leftovers, ashes, coffee grounds, etc). Of course it's at a small-ish scale (less than 1 hectare) but my parents definitely don't denude 4 hectares to do so.
- jimnotgym 7mo agoWell...we are hn so we use a website https://getchipdrop.com/ https://getchipdrop.com/ Tree surgeons/arborists are always trying to get rid of chips An acre? Charles Dowding is a market Gardner, not a farmer, but he has done it on a scale of a few acres. His compost is a mixture of 1) homemade. When you are trying to expand a plot growing stuff to compost can help. Grass clippings, waste from the garden etc. This is a minor source of very good compost. 2) woodchip, see above 3) green waste. This is other people's garden waste, normally composted poorly by a local authority. You want it some time before you use it so it can compost more fully 4) farmyard/ horse manure 5) spent mushroom compost. Actually I never saw him use this, but it is very common. One farmer I saw said the secret of no till is 'other peoples carbon', you are correct. But some people have carbon to get rid of.
- cyberjar 7mo agoI thought that was always the case. Dig as required to get your soil to the correct type for what you want to grow, then let it be and don't dig. Digging to turn the soil seems like an old adage that has been passed down through generations, but modern scientific studies are now showing it provides very little to no benefit for yields.
- jimnotgym 7mo ago> Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment. If you start with Charles Dowdings 6 inches of compost on top, that is not necessarily true. The soil comes to life as worms go mad pulling that compost down into the soil. It actually works rather well. Year 1 can be very good. Year 2 even better. The real disappointment in Year 1 is the amount of weeds that find 6 inches of compost no barrier at all! With digging you can get a lot of perennial weed roots out, and hoe off the annuals. With no dig you have to pull them. I'm not a idealogue, so actually suggest glyphosate before compost...but people don't normally like that suggestion.
- samirillian 7mo agoThe one straw revolution guy planted root vegetables among fruit trees in orchards I wonder if that would make a difference
- dimitri-vs 7mo agoConsidering the amount of fungicide/pesticide needed even (especially?) for organic fruit, it would be suboptimal.
- obfuscator 7mo agoFor context: The guy is called Fukuoka and it is the best book I read last year: https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/The_One_Straw_Revolution.pdf https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/The_One_St...
- ikidd 7mo agoThe biggest difference in no-till is water infiltration and retention. The next is ability to work land earlier with equipment that would sink in tilled soil when wet. Another is less equipment passes, for fuel use as well as owning the equipment needed to do those passes. On the con side, no-till trades diesel for spray costs.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoIt's almost like all arable land and all arable crops aren't identical and trivially interchangeable, eh?
- bluGill 7mo agoA general rule of thumb is when you switch corn from to to notill for the first seven years yields will be worse, but in the eighth year and after they are better.
- antisthenes 7mo agoI have a really hard time believing someone can keep all other variables constant for 8 years to definitively say that yields will be better because of switching to no-till, rather than any other multitude of factors.
- bluGill 7mo agoUniversities study this. They study the common corn/soybean rotation. I have no idea how they control variables - likely by having many farmers report their results and using stastics