RE: [compost_tea] Re: Jill Clapperton at a no-till conference.

From: Bobbie, Hugh, Marley & Hoebie <hri7064_at_msn.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 22:18:41 -0800
Jon,

Are you interested in another point of view on no-till/minimum tillage
or is your mind made up?  If the former is true please read on. If the=
latter please disregard the following.

You wrote:
[Two quick points on why I disagree with her
(there are many others): No-till increases chemical usage.  I am
trying to make a living, not support the chemical companies. 
Second,  few people realize that nutrients can stratify in untilled ground.  I have seen the tests on this but I don't have them in front =
of me.  Don't believe me if you like.  Working the soil is good!]=

There are people who practice sustainable, organic, no-till agriculture
without the use of chemicals.  Examples follow:

Ref:
http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/1103/notillroller.shtml "'I
thought you guys were organic!'" So said one of The Rodale Institute's=
(TRI) conventionally farming neighbors earlier this year, after seeing
TRI's freshly planted soybean field. Rodale Farm Manager Jeff Moyer had
knocked down the cover crop of rye and planted the beans directly into
the residue. "It looked so good and the kill was so complete, he thoug= ht
it must have been sprayed," recalls Moyer.
Rest assured, however--there were no chemicals involved. Instead, Moyer
used a new, front-mounted cover-crop roller designed and built at The
Rodale Institute® as part of a continuing effort to develop practical
methods for reduced tillage organic production.

Then there is the work of Dr. Ron Morse:
Ref: 
http://www.newfarm.org/features/0104/no-till/index.shtml "No-= till,
no-herbicide cover  crop management and vegetable planting offer a vit= al
soil-building weed management strategy for organic growers and a
practical solution to the kind of soil loss that prompted the Carroll
County extension agent’s original call for help. Recent trials suggest that this approach may find broad application in diversified vegetable
production."

Finally there is the methods practiced by Anne and Eric Nordell on their (organic) horse powered farm:

Ref:   http://www.newfarm.org/features/1204/nordell/index.shtml &qu= ot;Their
alternative tillage techniques include mulch-tilling, ridge-tilling,
no-tilling, and skim plowing. Mulch-tilling shallowly incorporates
mature cover crops, leaving a mulch of cover crop residues on the soil
surface. Ridge-tilling involves forming ridges and seeding them to cover crops the preceding fall. In the spring, the winter-killed cover crop is knocked off the top of the ridge, leaving a narrow strip of clean soil
for direct seeding. No-tilling for the Nordells means slicing a narrow
furrow into a cover-cropped ridge and transplanting or hand planting
into the furrow. Skim plowing is used to shallowly incorporate
over-wintering cover crops. Each of these alternative tillage techniques preserves the soil structure created by the cover crops' root systems,
controls erosion, minimizes evaporation, and improves water
infiltration, creating a large reservoir of moisture for cash crops.
Each alternative tillage technique is used with specific cover crops to
coincide with target planting windows. Again, the cover crops are
divided into winter-killed and over-wintering species; the planting
windows can be generalized as early, mid-season and late."

Now my own thoughts:  No references immediately come to mind to counte= r
your claim about nutrient stratification in no-till systems but my
intuition says that your sources lack biology (especially earthworms) in the soil and/or aren't using cover crops correctly.  I would be very interested to read more about the tests you mentioned.

One final reference to ponder:

Building Soils for Better Crops by Fred Magdoff and Harold van Ess.  &= quot;It
typically takes a few years for no-tilled soils to improve, after which
no-till crops often out-yield crops grown with conventional tillage.
The quality of no-tilled soils, by almost any measure, improves over
time."

Back to my thoughts:  I want to minimize my addition to the bottom lin= e
of the chemical and petroleum companies.  I think this can be done wit= h
organic no-till/minimum till systems.

Since tillage methods may be a little off beat for this list I would be
interested in continuing this discussion off list.  You can e-mail me = at
hri7064_at_msn.com

Thanks,
Hugh



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Received on Fri Jan 21 2005 - 04:05:50 EST

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