Complimentary Blueberry Juice

For a few years now we have, at the end of each season, applied a large amount of compost to our zero-till beds. Through the years we experimented with different sorts of combinations of leaves, mulch and broadforking, all in attempt to loosen up our hard clay.

In general it worked. We accomplished our goals: consistent lettuce/greens production, easy-harvest carrots, green onions, parsnips, and leeks. We saw the soil open up with life and we saw the field explode with diverse organisms not seen in any of our more conventional cropping systems. But it had one big, big, big shortfall…weed pressure.

One of the several reasons we decided to go down the path of zero-till was that, as many a farmer-YouTuber-influencer claims, zero-till results in less weed pressure: all that is required is a little setup, and you’re off to the races, weed-free.

To some extent this was true, however we would always revert to having carpets of weeds, just like any other system. We made marginal attempts to address this, but did not see the response we wanted. In some cases the different tactics we employed worked for a short while, but would always end up back in a jungle of weeds.

This is psychologically draining…accepting that weeds just exist, and you’ll have to harvest among them, ignoring every seed head burst with millions more, just waiting to add water. After years of covering this up with mulch and more compost at the end of the season, we decided to admit defeat and surrender in advance to the army of weed seeds lying in wait for us in spring 2024.

Our biggest zero-till lesson of 2023 is that we cannot continue to double down, triple down, and quadruple down on the same method that produced the problem and expect a different result. There is no reason for this, as we are not attached to any one method, other than finding the ones that are best for us. We always told ourselves it was a management issue, that we just didn’t get to the weeds early enough, or that it was possible to control the weed problem if we just worked a little harder, and put a few more hours in.

If we are attached to anything in this field, it is a principle of continuous experimentation with sustainable and biodiverse methods of agriculture that can produce high-quality and volume of crop on a small area that serves our community-based clientele. It is a principle that consistently furthers our own understanding on different farming methods. It has been the place we first eliminated chemicals, our first irrigation, our first zero-till attempts and many, many, many successful and high-quality crops that were otherwise not possible for us.

The next several weeks I will explore how we will find the next steps that will take us forward and continue on our regenerative path.

Big changes coming ahead!

Stay curious.

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice