no-till agriculture?

[WarriorMonk]

Hey all, I was just reading about the benefits of no-till agriculture, and was wondering if anybody here practices it or is familiar with it. (It helps prevent erosion, and can supposedly improve the soil)
I have pretty poor soil on my land now, and I was wondering how you improve the soil without tilling it? Anybody know?

Think it's all a bunch of hogwash? Why?

thanks,

WM

PS - Here's the article for you:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=no-till

[big rockpile]

I've used No Till with Beans and Corn,main thing is depending on your Herbisides.Saves lots of time and Fuel.This is always a good option when following with Beans after Wheat.

I still like to work the ground good every so often.

big rockpile

[brosil]

Back when I was renting some of my farm out, the renter used no-till and the top one inch was fine black loam when I took it back. I guess it's pretty good even with the chemical use but I've gone organic and will use other means.

[Thoughthound]

Most big farmers in Iowa are no-till. They plant corn and soybeans mostly. After harvest, crop residue is allowed to decay on the surface.

Personally, I don't think most crop residue can replenish the organic matter it removes.

No-till does not disturb the soil so it maintains soil structure, benefits symbiotic relationships, and as said, reduces time and fuel costs.

It requires the use of herbicides.

Tilling reduces shallow soil compaction, speeds up the decay of organic matter, disturbs insect pests, and increases pore space.

The best way to improve soil is to add organic matter. Lots of compost, lawn cuttings and tree leaves.

[haypoint]

No Till reduces erosion. It depends on Herbicides. It saves fuel. Seems like burying the crop residue would aid in decay, No Till folks say crop residue breaks down better in top.
Either way more organic material improves soil health.
If you don't mind the chemicals, it is the best way to go.

[SimplerTimez]

Originally Posted by WarriorMonk

Hey all, I was just reading about the benefits of no-till agriculture, and was wondering if anybody here practices it or is familiar with it. (It helps prevent erosion, and can supposedly improve the soil)
I have pretty poor soil on my land now, and I was wondering how you improve the soil without tilling it? Anybody know?

Think it's all a bunch of hogwash? Why?

thanks,

WM

I am trying no-till this year for my fall and winter garden, no herbicides. The garden weeds were over five feet tall when I started. I've been laying them down over the soil as I work. Most of the clover I am trying to leave for nitrogen. Small stuff (plantain, grasses) I just pull up by hand. I'm using Greensand and Azomite when I plant, poking a hole through the ground cover. Also using horse manure from the trails and straw for mulch. I tried hole composting but got tired of the dogs digging it up!! I'm also looking into a fungi spore amendment to coat the seeds and/or toss into the bottom of the planting hole for transplants. Right now I use 'woods' dirt in the bottom of the hole at transplant time.

My aparagus bed has composting food at the bottom, then weed stalks (mostly berry runners and tree spinach with some pokewed thrown in), then aged horse manure, straw, and more weed rubbish. I do wet it down frequently to move the decomp along, and I add comfrey and nettle to it as well.
What I don't use for crops, I'm leaving in weeds; and when I clear a crop area that isn't going to be replanted I'll sow either clover or rye as a ground cover.

It has been hard work by hand, but the soil was in such good shape, lots of earthworms, critters and pollinators that I thought this was a good type of soil to try it with. I'll let ya know how it goes (or if my back can continue to take the workload...haha!)

[Old Vet]

You can go no till for a while and have good luck. After three or four seasions you need to break up the soil and subsoil so that oxygen can get to the roots and get enough water to the roots unless you realy like chemicals and you feed them from the top. Every time you drive a tractor or even walk on the soil it will compact If you have a small tractor it will compact in the 6 inch range if you walk on it for severial times it will compact in the first 1-2 inches.

[Windy in Kansas]

No-til or minimum till farming is certainly no hogwash. When I was farming in the 1970s and early 1980s I was using it and it made the difference in dry western Kansas whether you got a crop or not.

As an example Farmer A used full no-till and wound up with a crop yield of 80 bushels per acre of milo. Farmer B whose field was less than a ½ mile away used convention tillage and collected disaster payments due to almost nonexistent yield. I was farmer C just a ½ from farmer B and I had used minimum tillage. Instead of full no-till I had worked the ground one time with a disk and used chemical weed control for the remainder of the time. My crop yield was 56 bushels per acre. To refresh A-80, B-20+, C-56. Pretty easy to see how chemicals relate to yields.

In modern times western Kansas farmers did not receive enough moisture to grow dryland corn using conventional tillage. With chemical and no-till farmers are once again growing corn, not great yields, but okay ones.

Most of us mulch our gardens to keep weeds down and to conserve moisture. No-till farming is really just doing the same thing but planting through the already in place mulch instead of placing it after the crop is up.

Rodale Institute operates the New Farm Web site. They are working on no-till organic farming which you may want to take a look at. This link is for a roller than lays over the green manure crop and crimps the stems to kill it rather than spraying it.
http://www.newfarm.org/depts/notill/...drawings.shtml Look around the site and you will find plenty of interesting reading material.

I left occupational farming when interest rates hit 18% back in the early 1980s otherwise I am sure I would have been using it all of the years since. Yes, it works.

I might add that liquid fertilizers fit the no-till program better than anhydrous ammonia. I suppose that dry granular can be used but I don't know how well it fits into a program of no-till. I guess if you follow New Farm methods you won't need any.

Best wishes.

[ksfarmer]

No-till saves fuel and time and prevents erosion and conserves moisture. It also increases the need for herbicides and insecticides. The residue left on the surface provides a habitat for a huge insect population and many plant diseases. One reason it is so popular with large farmers is the saving in time, not to mention fuel savings. Most farm so many acres that it would be impossible to get it all done with conventional tillage.

[Danaus29]

It has it's good points and bad points. I have seen spring run-off from no till corn fields that washed down fences and closed roads because the crop debris was washed downstream. I've seen the damage done by using no-till but no crop rotation other than corn and beans. On the other hand I don't till my garden but I do dump loads and loads of organic material over the garden every fall winter and spring. And then you have regional soil variations to consider. In some locations it works better to leave the stumps/stems and root in the soil, in some locations the old crop debris will not decay unless it is tilled in or has a top dressing of manure added.

[mnn2501]

Admitedly I am a small time gardener and not a farmer, but I've always had lousy soil no matter where I have lived and have been able to improve it greatly within 1 season by tilling in organics, by the 2nd season you'd think I had bought the best gardening dirt around -- I have no idea how you could do that quickly with no till, but there are people here who swear by it..
as for me -- I grow good dirt, then the dirt grows the veggies.

[Windy in Kansas]

Originally Posted by mnn2501

Admitedly I am a small time gardener and not a farmer, but I've always had lousy soil no matter where I have lived and have been able to improve it greatly within 1 season by tilling in organics, by the 2nd season you'd think I had bought the best gardening dirt around -- I have no idea how you could do that quickly with no till, but there are people here who swear by it..
as for me -- I grow good dirt, then the dirt grows the veggies.

By leaving residue and green manure crops in place earthworms will come to the surface and work in the residue taking the organic matter through casts deeper into the soil profile.

I agree with you about soil building in gardens and like to till in as much organic matter as is available. Once it is rich and dark brown teeming with earth worms then it could easily become a no-till plot.