No till, cover crop farming.

[video=youtube;nWXCLVCJWTU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWXCLVCJWTU[/video]

great vid...plus rep

Great video. Ain't new to me - I know people who would argue this til their cows come home. The good ol boys in the cotton states changing their ways is simply beautiful. i honestly don't believe they know fully the positive ramifications of it yet. Maybe even some outdoor growers here can learn a bit just by watching. Lovely is what Mother does best.

Thanks for the inputs.

I had no idea this kind of farming was being used in industrial farms in rural US. Incredible.

Thanks for the video. I've been using cover crops in my veg gardens for a few years but always tilled before planting. I use a mix of rye/wheat/vetch/clover. I like the idea of always having live roots in the soil and I plan on going to no-till next season. Only problem I foresee is keeping the cover cut back enough so it doesn't over take the veg crops. The Natural Way of Farming is a good read if you're interested in no-till farming http://www.rivendellvillage.org/Natural-Way-Of-Farming-Masanobu-Fukuoka-Green-Philosophy.pdf

Brokeoldbloke said:

Thanks for the video. I've been using cover crops in my veg gardens for a few years but always tilled before planting. I use a mix of rye/wheat/vetch/clover. I like the idea of always having live roots in the soil and I plan on going to no-till next season. Only problem I foresee is keeping the cover cut back enough so it doesn't over take the veg crops. The Natural Way of Farming is a good read if you're interested in no-till farming http://www.rivendellvillage.org/Natural-Way-Of-Farming-Masanobu-Fukuoka-Green-Philosophy.pdf

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Yes fukuoka i've read his teachings many times.
I like no-till farming but I am curious as to whether it is viable for tubers. I have some great potatoes land races and i would love to use no-till, but is it possible to harvest tubers without disturbing the soil?

You don't have a choice but to fork up potatoes if you grow them in the ground. I think it would be fine. I'll still have root crops that will be pull out of the soil. I don't see no-till as absolute but as an effort to limit soil disruption.

you can dig in the soil in a no-till, most do. fukoka advocates "doing nothing" but in reality, processes still need to occur, he is just really on nature and positioning to achieve that. For instance if a pig rooting around disturbs and "tills" the soil, similar to if you just went out and carefully rooted around for potatoes yourself. Essentially you are doing "nothing", the tillage is just a great after effect of looking for food.

Even tilling the soil occassionally can occur in no till practices [it happens], but soil types are all over the board, so what works for one soil may be totally irrelevant in another, something to keep in mind.

Logges said:

Yes fukuoka i've read his teachings many times.
I like no-till farming but I am curious as to whether it is viable for tubers. I have some great potatoes land races and i would love to use no-till, but is it possible to harvest tubers without disturbing the soil?

Click to expand...

you could look into how societies who ate mostly potatoes got them out of the ground. like the incas they ate a lot of potatoes