Is it okay to till the ground to grow food? If not, what can we do instead?

In the previous blog, Mike introduced the 5 principles of regenerative agriculture, but that was a bit heady, and he didn’t talk much about how to implement those principles. It’s now time to dive into the practical stuff again!  

In this blog I will dig (pardon the pun) into the first principle: Minimize Soil Disturbance. I will explain why it is important so you and I can change the way we garden, or grow food, or see the world... well maybe that goes too far, but you get the point.  

So, what is wrong with turning up the soil?

The ground we live on and see everywhere is a lot more complex and finely pieced together than the naked eye would assume. Healthy soil is made up of five essential components:

1.    Minerals (sand, loam, or clay)

2.    Water

3.    Air

4.    Living organisms (Insects, worms, microbes, etc…)

5.    Organic matter (OM = decomposed plants and animals)   

All of these play a crucial role in sustaining our agriculture, but disturbing the soil can negatively impact all of them. When soil is not touched, has a good amount of OM, and has living roots, it is able to form a structure that is naturally porous and holds together. This structure allows for good water retention through the OM, and drainage because of the roots which reduce compaction. Its permeable structure is also conducive to air and living organisms that thrive in the free space.

Constant deep tillage destroys the structure of the ground, exposing precious OM to be released into the air, removing the plant roots and the microorganisms’ homes. When done repeatedly, especially by heavy machinery, it will result in soil compaction because all that is left is the minerals, which cannot hold the soil structure together like OM can. When the soil is compacted and has lost its porous arrangement it is susceptible to flooding, erosion, drought, and cannot house the billions of microorganisms that feed and protect plants.

Now that we all understand why soil structure is so important and that disturbing it will crush all our hopes and dreams of growing happy healthy plants for many years, let’s get into the fun ways to grow without damaging our good ground.

The best way to grow food without disturbing the soil is through grazing animals. Raising sheep, cows, bison, pigs (kinda) and/or wildebeests on pasture, with rotational grazing, not only keeps the soil structure intact, but it can also benefit it as well. We will get into that more in principle five’s blog, for now we will focus on what to do in the garden, which is easier said than done.

Let’s start with the home garden. Use a tarp or cardboard to clear your garden plot of weeds instead of taking the rototiller to it. Leaving the tarp on for 3 weeks or more will leave the ground bare and ready to transplant in. To loosen up the soil and mimic what a deep root system would do you can use a broad fork, which splits the soil without turning it over. If you want to direct seed your garden the soil will need to be tilled a little, but you can keep this to a minimum by only disturbing the top 2 inches.

Another way to start your garden while minimizing soil disturbance is to spread weed free compost at least 2 inches thick on top of your beds and seed or transplant directly into that. The compost is not only a natural fertilizer for your plants but also acts as a mulch, suppressing the weeds.            

Now as you scale up to a market garden it gets tricky, because you can’t spend hours pulling weeds, so we use an extra step, called the stale seed bed technique, to guarantee the least weeds. The process is to prepare the bed, water it, and wait 10 to 15 days for all the weeds to sprout up. At this point we plant the crop and just before the veggies germinate, we come along with a flame weeder to kill all the young weeds. After this point we keep disturbance to a minimum, only hoeing the top inch or less to kill the remaining weeds and to avoid bringing up any more weed seeds from further down.

Congratulations, you now know the practical implications of the first principle (Minimize Soil Disturbance) enabling you to keep your soil structure thriving. Good ground =good food!

-Josh

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