No Till Didn't Work For Us!

Why no till didn’t work for us in our gardens and this is how we fixed it! No till is not a panacea and context needs to be taken into account when planning your homestead!

For those of you who have been following our site for a while you may remember our Emelia Hazlip style beds we put in early on. Our version was a raised bed system with sunken paths surrounding small mounded growing areas. The idea was to eliminate soil disturbance, warm the soil sooner in the season, and manage moisture during our cool, wet springs.

What went wrong?

Conceptually the beds worked the way they were supposed to. They warmed up earlier, and dried out sooner. The major drawback that we found was that they warmed up earlier and dried out sooner…..once spring passed the small beds were extremely difficult to manage moisture in and keep the plants healthy during our dry summer season. They also became a haven for burrowing rodents who loved the warm dry soil in the mounds. What eventually happened is they were overtaken by perennial grass and weeds that were better able to thrive in those conditions.

What we were attempting was a low labor system that could produce without tillage, and minimal inputs from us. What we ended up with was a high input system that required more watering, weeding, and time than we were willing to supply! The proof of concept was sound, the context of application was not!!!

How we remedied the problem…

Upon further experimentation and research we decided to go with terraced garden beds for our hilly site!

We knocked down all of the raised mounds, moved tons of dirt, and created a rough terrace.
The next step was moving the pigs in for the winter (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnCT3bUW1d0) to work through the area, eat the roots of the perennials, and even things out a little more….all while providing fertility to the system.
The next stage was to till the whole thing again to smooth it
We then went through and dug out foot paths again, tossing the soil from the path onto the growing area creating a raised bed
The last step was filling all of the sunken paths with wood chips (8-12 inched deep)

At that point we were done with the tera-forming and moved on to planting a cover crop of triticale, field pea, and rapeseed. As the cover crop came up and matured to the soft boot stage, we went out with a scythe and cut it down to be fed fresh to the pigs who had moved on to a new paddock for more work.

Did it work?!?!

At this point we’re going into our second season of crop production in this area and we are very happy with the terrace systems in our context! They are proving to be a much better fit: allowing for reduced labor, increased production, and ease of use! Currently we are creating more terraced garden areas to expand our production, and you better believe that our homestead hogs are a major player in that work…the love it!!!