Complimentary Blueberry Juice

One of the challenges of implementing cover crops in a zero-till system for our farm is that we still need to grow a lot of produce and keep the farm running! We need to figure out exactly what absolutely needs to stay inside a zero-till system. The rest, at least for one season, we can find solutions for.

Something complicating this thought experiment is the enormous deer pressure we have to deal with. Our zero-till space is entirely enclosed inside a deer fence, however the rest of our farm is not. There is one field that has relatively low or very little deer pressure, but the trade-off there is that there is no access to simple irrigation. To irrigate in this field, we must bring a water tank.

In 2023, we ran a large part of our CSA and Market programs with approximately 14 000 square feet of zero-till beds (or about 1300 square metres). The goal will be to reduce this to the absolute minimum, to begin a new process of regeneration and weed control with cover crops. The more area we can cover, we can more quickly return to the zero-till or minimum-till methodology.

Over the last several years it has become impossible to imagine harvesting carrots outside of a zero-till system…it works primarily because they are much easier and faster to harvest and clean. We will need 5 beds total for carrots. In the same arena as carrots are parsnips and leeks, both require digging and in our heavy clay, there is zero possibility of harvesting items like these without the use of a tractor implement. So these must also remain in our zero-till system, and we will need two beds for parsnips and leeks.

It is worth noting that prior to our ventures no-till, we had great difficulty and inconsistency (or outright crop failure) growing carrots, leeks and parsnips. We owe a great deal of our success in the past several years to these great improvements in our methods, which involved zero-till. So much so, that it’s painful to imagine going back.

Our lettuce and greens must also remain in our no-till, which benefit greatly from the large amounts of compost we use. Having lettuce uninterrupted for 12+ weeks during the season is a great success story for us, and one of the things that is a big positive takeaway from our no-till, learning and dialling crop planning: seeding times, transplanting times, and harvesting times. We will need at least 3 beds to start the season for lettuce.

Another crop I feel we cannot get around not doing in a no-till is our celery. Like other crops, only in the past few years have we excelled at celery and grown a high-quality crop. This is a crop that requires a lot of biology and a lot of water to do well. This crop best remains where we can apply more compost if needed, amend with foliar applications, and turn on our irrigation. We only need one bed for celery.

The rest of the items we need fall into a different category. These are radishes, hakurei turnips, and green onions. These are all seeded with our Jang Seeder, which is much easier to operate with nice fluffy substrate. These crops are also much easier to harvest, and much easier to clean…otherwise they get glued into the clay, and we will have high crop damage attempting to harvest them. They benefit from irrigation for germination, and another benefit is that they are crops that are finished within three weeks. This means we can plant a second crop on these beds by early July. We need three beds for these crops to start.

So, this means we are at a total of 14 beds so far. We will add one more for some insurance/wiggle room just in case. This means we can move forward with 15 beds, for 5625 square feet, or 522 square metres.

Said another way…to start the 2024 season, we will only use at maximum 40% of the full potential of our no-till field while we begin to transition to include a cover crop rotation.

That seems a little scary…but, it also seemed scary to start this whole no-till thing to begin with. The learning curve is steep but also rewarding….there is no replacement for the diversity of life that comes with no-till, and there is no doubt as to the efficiency of our operation and increasing the amount of great vegetables we can grow with these methods.

My prediction is that we will learn many more things/start walking a path of steep learning curve in two areas. One: the implementation of cover crops, which we have never done and are unfamiliar with. Two: we will see many unexpected things and have many surprises with the crops we choose to move out of the no-till zone for 2024.

Now we can take a big breath, let out a big sigh of relief, and do the fun work: the work of imagining all the possibilities and amazing discoveries we will make as we walk this new path.

Graham

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