To till or not to till? This was one of the first questions that we asked ourselves during the dreaming stage. You know, that time when you’re dreaming up possibilities and thinking of “what if’s”, “could we’s” and “should we’s”. We were pretty set on not investing in a tractor right away because DANG! those are really expensive pieces of equipment. Even a BCS walking tractor will end up costing you a little over $9k with the addition of the flail mower, rotary plow, and rototiller attachments. Yeah, turns out when you buy a tractor, walking or riding, it’s just the tractor...all of those attachments are additional purchases!
The choice to be no-till is one grounded in love for our soil and all the creepy crawlies that call it home. We don’t want to disrupt the soil too much or change what those microenvironments look like. Those microorganisms, worms and other bugs dwelling in the soil are a part of our environment and it’s important for us to nurture them. In turn, they’ll continue to aerate the soil and provide nutrients to the plants. Also, as a two-person team, we’re trying to minimize our time that we spend weeding. Each time that you till, you kick up new seeds that have been laying dormant in the soil and bring them closer to the sun so that they can germinate.
So if we’re not tilling, then how exactly are we turning a horse pasture into a growing field? Well…first, it takes time. It’s a much slower process and we are grateful to have the entire Fall and Winter to work on it. We’re using a few methods to help us get our field ready: permanent beds, occultation, sheet mulching, and cover cropping.
Permanent Beds
Our first permanent bed .
We decided to create permanent beds so that we can continuously improve the soil health of those beds. Our soil is a little on the clay side, so we wanted to be able to improve the quality of soil in the areas where we plan to grow by adding compost, sheet mulching, and cover cropping. Creating permanent beds also allows us to buy and acquire enough materials for just the beds, rather than the whole field and it allows us to limit our foot compaction to just the areas that will be our pathways. Our beds will be 30 inches wide x 100 feet long. We’ll have 1 foot spacing between most beds. Some of our pathways will be wider so that we can be accessible to folks with mobility needs.
Occultation
Our first field that we are working on is 100’ x 100’. We started by mowing the tall grass down using a vintage mower from the 70s that Jihelah’s parents had. We actually ended up breaking it (woops!) and as we waited for parts to be flown in from Mexico, we decided to just use an old piece of plywood to smoosh down the grass. After that, we laid out two 20’ x 100’ 6mm black polyethylene tarps (aka silage tarps) over the grass. Those poly tarps have been down for about 5 weeks now. They effectively block out the sunlight and prevent the grass beneath it from growing, ultimately killing the grass. Because of the heat that is produced under the tarp, they also allow for some seeds to germinate. These too will die due to lack of sunlight, little airflow, and overheating. This process can take anywhere from 2 weeks - 8 weeks depending on the outdoor temperature. Right now in Hood River Valley, the temps are in the 40s during the day and 30s at night, and we’re also in the rainy season so we’re leaving our tarps on for at least a month and then checking out the progress each week after that.
We definitely had some feels about using & purchasing plastic that we had to navigate. Ultimately we decided that it felt less destructive than tilling and we knew that we would use the plastic again for smothering out our cover crops. We’re still grappling with the inevitable, what do we do with the poly tarp once it’s torn up or has too many holes to be effective in occultation? We welcome any suggestions that you might have!
Sheet Mulching
We did some sheet mulching with cardboard, coffee chaff, aged horse manure, aged chicken manure, soil, and fallen leaves to create our garlic bed. First, we loosened up the soil using a broadfork. Then, we laid down a layer of cardboard on top of the mowed grass. This layer of cardboard will block the grass from receiving sunlight and will suppress its growth. We overlapped the cardboard about 3-6 inches so that the grass wouldn’t poke up through the edges. After our layer of cardboard, we added 6 inches of soil, 2 inches of manure, and 2 inches of coffee chaff. We then mixed that all together to create a nice, well-draining soil mixture that we could plant our garlic into. After planting our garlic, we topped the bed off with 3 inches of coffee chaff and 3 inches of leaves. Over the winter, the cardboard, coffee chaff, and leaves will all break down. On either side of the garlic bed, we covered the grass with burlap sacks. We’re using burlap sacks from the coffee roasting facility to suppress weeds in the spaces that will be the paths between our beds. We’ve been able to get nearly all of our materials for sheet mulching our garlic bed for free. The coffee chaff and burlap sacks are waste products from the coffee roasting facility. We pull up to the dumpster area and load up our CR-V everytime we’re in that area of town. There is always so much more coffee chaff and burlap left. The manures we were able to get from neighbors for free by offering to muck out their stables and chicken coops. The cardboard we got from the dumpster at the hardware stores. The challenge with sheet mulching is scaling up. We are constantly collecting cardboard, coffee chaff, burlap whenever we go out on an errand and bringing it back to our farm. We need much more than our car can carry, but it’s November so we still have time.
Dumpster diving for cardboard
Laying down cardboard
Loosening up the soil with a broadfork
Cover Cropping
I won’t go too much into cover cropping just yet, because we’re not there in our process. Right now we’re in the process of converting pasture into permanent beds. However, cover cropping will play a major role in our no-till farm once our permanent beds are established. Cover cropping with crops like winter rye, oats, field peas, vetch, and alfalfa will allow us to restore nitrogen into the soil, and create mulch for weed suppression.
Right now, no-till makes sense for us. We have the time to be able to convert our pasture into field using these methods. This isn’t always the situation. Some people gain access to the land they’re going to be working with in the middle of the growing season and they need to get beds prepped and planted so that they can grow and sell their crops. We just want to share our methods with you and if you read something here that you want to try out, go for it!