Why NOT till?

[@Seasoncromwell]

Heyyy Nerds. Funny story. My child (8) will hear a gardening video on and will walk in and say Heyyy Nerds. Lol. Made an impression on him.

[@ddouglas3687]

Only time I till is when starting a new garden area which is usually as hard as a rock! Before I till, I put down at least six inches of leaves and then light a fire and carefully burn all the leaves. This really helps eliminate most weed seeds in the top 2-3 inches of soil. Then I'll add more leaves and some straw(not hay!) on top along with some 10-10-10 and till it all in. I let it sit a few weeks or a month then plant my seeds or seedlings. This gives you a basic good setup for a garden area you really don't need to amend or adjust for the first 2 months of growth. I try to go light on fertilizer because of salt! You cannot get the salt out! I've transitioned to jadam and natural home made fertilizers and am seeing decent results but time will tell. The reason you don't want to till is the fact that the soil becomes its own ecosystem rife with those little bugs working hard to break things down. Tilling just upsets the entire system. I'll still till a row here and there to incorporate compost or fresh green matter but it is rare. Thanks for the insights!

[@ursamajor1936]

I grow a pretty small garden but every year i open up a little more area by broadforking and hand picking the weeds and roots. Being retired, it's a truly enjoyable experience to sit in the garden, warmed by the sun and commune with the bees, birds, butterflies, earthworms and the occasional tree frog.

[@blenderbenderguy]

I appreciate all of your content and especially your dry wit delivery.... thanks for your efforts!

[@donavinnezar]

im on team no till but i definitely see the benefit of tillage especially when initially setting up and trying to fix soil texture / fertility

[@YouareasheepX]

You almost have to unless you lasagna bed around 2-3 feet.

[@velokigate6505]

I really enjoy your way of handling touchy subjects. You're light-hearted and fun to listen to!!

[@brokenmeats5928]

I love ALL No-Till Growers videos!

[@donnabrooks1173]

I watch a lot of Charles Dowding videos . He been doing no till for over forty years. He has absolutely beautiful gardens and he is also a market grower as well in England.

[@aileensmith3062]

We will be finishing our first full year of attempted No-Till. It has been a FLOP in a few ways and VERY encouraging in others. Hopefully we will have a decent amount of compost to apply to part of our garden. And the march goes on and our view is No-Till from now on. As always Thank You for another fun and informative Sunday Morning video!

[@bobg5362]

I first tried it with about four inches of wood chips back in 2018. It took about 15-18 months to really make a difference but once I saw the results, I never tilled again.

[@aileensmith3062]

@@bobg5362 That would be a LOT of wood chips in our 5,000 foot garden. We basically live in the desert and it would be cost prohibited I believe. We do use wood chips around our trees and bushes though. Hoping to be able to produce enough compost this year to cover a third or more of the garden with a couple of inches of compost. Yes a slow process but we feel it will also be positive progress as well. Thank You for the Comment Sir!

[@LiamG903]

Tilling is so key for many reasons, one is for those in the north it's a great way to get the soil warmed up to get those critical early weeks. Using a product like earth alive get the bacteria back healthy and forces worms to work. Tilling is great for weeds as well. Know your soil and why you do what you do for best results. No such thing as one best way, you learn to ge the best for you conditions

[@billsnyder6945]

The dogma prevents some people from getting a head start in clay soils. I think the only thing you might have missed is the benefit of broad forking to support no-till in clayey soils.

[@AnenLaylle]

No-till is environmentalist propaganda/ideology disguised as a farming system. Sure it works, but it lowers yields and is more work for and money for the farmer. Conventional and hydroponics are both much better systems. The research is already showing this, much to the dismay of the biased research community. I could tell you everything about the guy in the videos political beliefs entirely from the fact he's such a blind proponent of no-till. People who blindly follow one fad, will obviously blindly follow others.

[@richardtaylor6341]

Dogmatic thinking is always bad ok

[@johndoh5182]

Dogma is a bad thing and I used that very word many videos ago on this very topic where people think because they've seen cardboard set down and then compost added to the top and then mulch and then put plants into that, this will always be a good solution. So this really depends because if you have the material to bring in you can use different treatments first which help to penetrate the clay soil, plant some plants that are known to work their way into clay soil, terminate those crops, maybe cover with tarp for a few months and THEN come in with cardboard along with a very thick layer of compost and a good growing medium so that for the most part the roots don't need to go down into the clay, but even if they do the clay was opened up some. For the rest of us that's impractical because we can't bring in enough material and I'm going to bring in a sandy soil and a lot of compost and do a deep tillage. But to say the inverse, that a deep till is always good for clay soil is ALSO dogma, and what works is going to be dependent on the land and environment, access to different materials, what crops you want to grow, etc...... If you're always working to build up a bigger layer of growing medium on top of the clay soil then broadforking isn't important depending on how the drainage works.

[@billsnyder6945]

@@johndoh5182 you have your own videos? Please let me know how to find them. My comment was on the never till mantra which is the dogma I speak of. Your comment sounds like that is yours too because a suggestion of any tilling seems to bother you and you challenge my simple statement. Of course there are other ways than initial tillage with compost amendment to convert clay soil that work, but they take longer, I am 70, don’t have time and know it works. Call that my “dogma” if you like, but my comment never said you have to till and there is no other way so you are tilting at windmills there. Understanding your soil structure and environment should be a prerequisite for any gardening and there is never one size fits all. Knowledgeable gardeners know that. I know my situation does not match Charles Dowding, or Jesse’s. Unfortunately there are many new gardeners that will never take the time to get the basics understood. Then you seem to take issue with a suggestion of the benefits of broakforking? I don’t think we are on the same page at all.

[@rblongfellow]

​@@billsnyder6945 I agree with you. No till isn't for everyone everywhere. Also, home gardeners may be able to keep enough material on the soil to not till but people trying to farm and expand their farm will run into trouble. Not to mention the nutrient excesses you will run into. Phosphorus can go haywire quick

[@mwmingram]

Glad to see this conversation opened up.

[@okpen1234]

I prepared 2 beds for a friend in a city superb context, the soil was so compacted and dead that I chose to till and incorporate compost+ rabbit manure. Tilling isn't always bad.

[@hoosierpioneer]

He did mention that. He said some soil is in such bad shape you need to till to incorporate things to bring it back to life.

[@okpen1234]

@@hoosierpioneer I'm not arguing with what he is saying I'm giving my opinion.

[@ajrichardson3871]

I am learning more and more about no till gardening and it makes sense! You are a plethora of information, and I LOVE IT!!! Thank you Jesse!

[@octaverouge2148]

Greetings from France, I was not expecting the "ça marche?" ;)

[@griffymon]

I'm in educational gardener and I cannot thank you enough for these amazing videos!

[@scottbeavers1713]

As a rule I till my garden but this year I set aside about half as a no/less till area to try it out. I saw no real difference in weed pressure but did see a slight improvement in erosion. I am composting with leaf material because it is free and plentiful and will continue the no till next year to see if conditions improve. Thanks for the videos.

[@123WorryFreeGardening]

Thank you for your great videos. We try both here in our smaller gardens. Depends so much on the soil you start with.

[@Grow-all-year]

3.5 inches of rain last couple days and i can walk my woodchip paths like nothing happened. Before no till it would be a weed paradise in a week and too muddy to walk. Im tempted to tilth, but affraid i will rejuvenate the weed seeds just below the surface

[@Not_So_Weird_in_Austin]

I use wicking buckets in Austin and top dress with compost mixing my top couple of inches with fresh compost and leaving harvested plant roots in the soil to break down and use granular fertelizer to amend my succession planting then mulch with lawn clippings.

[@theburnhams2925]

Jesse, I appreciate your videos and the effort you invest in creating them. I would very much like to follow your "no" or "minimum" till methods. I live in (hot) N.W. Fl. in "Sand County" (not really, but it IS, for all practical purposes, "Beach Sand.") I've been dragging organic materials to this property for over 40 years with little apparent increase in OM. I grow (mostly, except for my "kitchen garden") elephant garlic. Garlic is planted (as I'm sure you're aware) by burying cloves about 2-3" deep. If I didn't rotavate my garlic beds I could not push the seed cloves deep enough to avoid "cooking" in our merciless Fl. sun. I keep the beds covered (usually with iron and clay peas) during the hot months. I/C peas make SO MUCH "STUFF" that tilling them in is the "onliest" way to "git shed" of 'em. I have 'way too much bed area to tarp and my experiments with sorghum/sudan grass scared the livin' daylights outta me....(peas can be problematic too, but are easier to "pull" ...) I would welcome any suggestions you might care to make (not promising I'd necessarily follow them...) because producing (anything) here can be challenging. I long ago took to heart the necessity of keeping beds covered all the time and your dictum of keeping "living roots" in the ground at all times strikes true. Thanks again for all you do for us! Bob, Sycamore Gardens

[@lilolgreyhairdlady4093]

Hi Kitty!!! Yay!

[@gunning6407]

Thanks Jesse for the reminder about early season access in the no-till garden. I kept an eye out this year and noticed that I was putting plants into our community garden plot weeks before some other folks started tilling. We're now in year 5 in this bed and our weed pressure is very low and plants require infrequent watering relative to neighboring plots. As Jesse has said before, farming (gardening) is a lot more pleasant when I spend most of my time planting and harvesting instead of managing weeds!

[@flatsville9343]

After trying numerous, seemingly fad methods, for what appeared to be only marginal gains, if any, I managed to distill my in ground & slightly elevated raised beds to a formula for main, if not all crops. I plant a winter kill, nitro fixing covercrop in mid fall, followed by 4 in +/- of leaf mould or chopped leaves in mid to late winter (after hard frost killed the cc.) Fertilizer & mulch is then in place for spring. Pull back to dirt for planting seedlings, or lay thin compost for direct sow/mound. Since the rhizosphere is so tiny, I'm now covercropping in the strips where I plant into rather than the whole bed. Oddly, no noticeable reduction in yield. I am not market gardening. For a home gardener, it is the minimal amount of effort that produces maximum results with little damage to the soil. I provide plenty of worm casting drench at planting & castings there after.

[@KrazyKajun602]

I am trying to do a lasagna method, I plant a cover crop, knock it down, cover it with tarps for a couple of weeks then cover with compost. plant into the compost and repeat.

[@goodboysongs]

Is your compost completely weed-free? I sometimes think about knocking down the cover crop and putting compost on top of it to germinate any weeds in the compost while also breaking down the cover crop at the same time. Plus, the compost microbes would get a boost from feeding them the breaking-down cover crop in those weeks leading up to planting.

[@okpen1234]

There is no such thing as weed free compost, in any case you'll always have weeds no matter what.

[@goodboysongs]

@@okpen1234 That’s an overstatement for sure, but yes 0% weeds is impossible. But there is weedy compost full of weed seeds versus virtually weed-free compost where the composter properly got the pile hot enough to kill weed seeds and potentially harmful plant pathogens (thermophilic process). In either case, I think it still stands that applying compost before tarping may have multiple benefits.

[@waterboi4846]

You’re wrong i made a lot of “sterilised” compost no weed grows in it

[@KrazyKajun602]

Yes, there is no compost weed free, I do it to add organic matter to improve the soil. It's better than constantly tilling and damaging the soil. I still have to keep up with little grass and weeds, but its alot easier to remove them in compost than hard clay soil

[@combitz]

Your book is on it's way to us 😁

[@D4ni3773]

Thanks for sharing! Great video!

[@davidhendricks1234]

I think the biggest thing that gets overlooked with no-till is that people still use pesticides. The whole goal is to build life in your soil, you can't continously spray it with poison and expect life to thrive.

[@YouareasheepX]

Idk, I have yet to use pesticides on mine. I use lady bugs.

[@chancericks5297]

I do no till for a few years then till for a few. With clay soil it really helps to get nutrients into the compacted soil with light tilling.

[@DongusKong]

I tried to till my soil this spring, and it literally could not break the clay. I ended up snapping 2 separate broadforks. I eventually bought a very expensive one, and still bent the shit out of it, but I FINALLY got the soil to be less compacted, then planted my entire property with daikon radish, and peas/beans, then did about 4 inches of woodchips, and have been slowly making biochar all year, and just dumping it into the wood chips after I inoculate it, and covering with even more wood chips. So far, it's doing really well, and all my fruit trees are looking amazing

[@rondavis2791]

I love the no till method. But one thing nobody talks about is to get it to work on large scale farms at some point they have to use chemicals to control the weeds.

[@robabob420]

Microbes will control the weeds

[@SgtSnausages]

​@@robabob420No. They absolutely wont.

[@jarnevanbec2886]

​@@robabob420source?

[@robabob420]

@@SgtSnausages the explain why they won't in a quick summary

[@rondavis2791]

@@robabob420 please explain why they will.

[@MarkDurbin]

Thanks!

[@notillgrowers]

Thank YOU! 🙌

[@julie-annepineau4022]

I do 1 till to start an area, incorporating well aged manure, then let it solarize for a few days to dry out the weeds. After that I water, mulch, rest for a few more days, then plant. It doesn't do amazing that first year but it still grows food. The next year is much better.

[@tolbaszy8067]

I try to limit tilling to new ground and then only to small areas. I have an old Gravely walk behind with a rotary plow and the shallow rotary cultivator, which looks like a conventional roto tiller, but is easy to set for shallow tillage. The rotary plow is great for making trenches or raised beds. I tried growing pumpkins in the paw paw orchard this year and used the rotary plow to make an initial three foot wide by fifty foot long trench in the sod. I left this open for some time, added compost then used the rotary plow to throw the soil back into the trench. I planted hills down the center and mulched with cardboard and pine slabs from a sawmill. I just had to pull a few seedling weeds around the sprouts. When the orchard grew up with hay and weeds, I scythed it and used this hay to mulch the trees and pumpkins. So far, the vines are spreading nicely. By tilling just a narrow swath, I think it keeps mycorrhizal fungi intact along side the trench, so it re-populates the disturbed area quickly. Mowing hay may be energy intensive, but it leaves the ground covered.

[@charlesvickers4804]

I've come to view compost mulch as tillage. It's just done off site and moved to the garden. I do like your approach . Not everyone is correct and not everyone is wrong. Everyone should grow something with the best tools ,information, conditions available to them.

[@MxAxG]

Interesting thought “offsite tillage” 🧐 I’m gonna borrow that one…

[@later_daze_4080]

Growing food rules!

[@The1Elcil]

thanks

[@GlynDomingue]

I am doing tillage now because my ground is over 300 lbs compacted, roots grow sideways. I am adding mulch to help loosen up my ground. Hope to see some results soon.

[@davidakerlund6296]

why not just broadfork ?

[@ironmaiden3751]

@@davidakerlund6296 I can't answer for them but I couldn't get a broadfork into my clay soil...tilled the top layer only and now the tillage radish as growing 'like weeds'.

[@rickthelian2215]

Hi Jessie and Kitty🐈 Air-rating May be needed with no-till😊

[@wdsp69]

Great content and love your videos. I am an American living in Japan and space is very limited. I need to do trench composting due to the size of my garden plot. It seems to work well here and my productions levels are always high. Please see if other no till people with limited space do this. Thank you.

[@danphillips4590]

What is trench composting?

[@redhen689]

@@danphillips4590you bury your compostable waste.

[@wdsp69]

@@danphillips4590 Digging a trench around 500 cm deep and 2 to 3 meters long and layering it with organic matter, cow poop and dirt. Repeat process.

[@samgriffiths1017]

I have to go no dig cause Im not well enough to dig over ground... Lucky for me no till works great cause I'd be stuck with it either way 😅

[@sethgriffith9724]

Love the content, and put it to use every week thanks bubba

[@PNNYRFACE]

‘Till Death’ do us part

[@ZachSwena]

Looking at your soil in the thumbnail I can see a number of reasons not to till repeatedly... (Said as a person who regularly tills his wet sand). I only work my soil when wet as dry tillage distroys it and I cant afford to mulch acres of area...

[@dnawormcastings]

Great video 🇳🇿❤️

[@craigmatheson2736]

There are certain places where no-till is mandatory... Like your asparagus beds. A Mantis brand tiller might work around to score the hard pack on the surface but the big machines that go super deep are a no-no. In this case you're more after scoring the ground/ scratching the surface and not plowing.

[@georgepretnick4460]

I understand this video is directed to home gardeners. There are severe reasons to not use 'no till'. The Maumee river drainage in Northwest Ohio is an example. Farmers were coerced into no till farming by, surprise surprise, agriculture scientists a while back to reduce soil erosion. They had previously deep tilled and fertilized. With no till becoming popular because of fuel and time savings, they currently top fertilize with both chemical fertilizer and animal manure. It works, for the farmers. Unfortunately, the surface fertilizing quickly washes into the drainage, then into the Maumee, which enters Lake Erie. This over fertilizes the lake causing extreme algal blooms that in recent years have actually shut down the Toledo water system and spread through the rest of the lake. To which the farmers reply, "So? Not our problem. We did as you suggested, It works for us. Too bad for anybody else."

[@whydoyouwantmynamegoogle396]

KITTY!

[@MorningLoud760]

My question is why transplant? I always direct sow and thin later

[@DongusKong]

You get an earlier start on the seeds. I start a lot of my plants inside in January/February in zone 6, and as soon as they hit the soil in March, they're already big, and just explode with growth

[@MorningLoud760]

@@DongusKong oh okay that makes a lot of sense! I appreciate the reply 🙏

[@mckennahicks5259]

I like to compost over the top and then use the tiller it just hits the tops of the weeds and the compost normally Smothers them but I also don’t care about weeds because their just pulling up nutrients that go back into the compost or in the garden

[@midwestribeye7820]

I love no till! I can walk in my garden bare foot now. I don't have to worry about getting muddy.

[@suave47]

So, love your channel. Great ideas a theroys involved. And they r almost a no trainer, for a longer growing season, which u have. 2 questions. I'm in Canada. We have a 5 month growing season on a good year. Sometimes less. So, utilizing only an acre of growing area is extremely hard. Multiple plantings is not always an option. Thus we need more acreage to have multiple plantings. We need to utilize more area so we can have multiple plantings throughout the shorter season. Your type if low till solutions r great for a smaller acerage, but what about when that us not an option. I am currently, just getting into the market gardening career. But to do what u do on one acre, take me 5 acres. I'm alking financially at this point. U can do multiple plantings of lettuce and carrots and such but that is almost not an option for us. My carrots have just come on, and can b harvested. But once harvested, I can't plant another round cause we just don't have the time. So, have u heard of or know of ppl that do this type of farming over very large areas, without breaking the bank on such things like labour or just the fact that only one crop can b grown per season. As for tillage, I love the minimal tillage idea. Weeding is such a nightmare. Would a deep tillage ( not sure the name of thw implement, but it is basicly a row of 7 or so spikes that drive into thw ground to break everything up) it doesn't turn any soil, but breaks up that compaction and allows airflow into the soil about 18" down. Basicly u r just opening the earth for nutrients and o2 to get down deep. Loosens the soil so roots can break through easier. What r your thoughts on this? Is just opening the soil and not actually turning it over a way to keep life within thw soil alive and vigorous but utilizing a tillage on larger scales.

[@ursamajor1936]

I think the implement you're describing is a spring tooth harrow. They were primarily used to level out and de-clod the mold board plowed field. Just try new ideas on small areas and see what works. As for the winter season, the old timers would use that time to build new equipment, fix old equipment, keep the housed stock fed, build up the manure pile, buy supplies for spring.....you get the idea. When not actively growing they actively prepared for growing. It's a lifestyle, no matter how big or small the garden, farm or agribusiness. Hope this helps. Now days, I'm one of the old timers. The old timers I learned from were born in the late 1800s.

[@tamarackartstudio7893]

No-till is kind of a misnomer, and just creates division among people without a nuanced viewpoint. It’s all just spectrums of tillage, from deep plowing, to power harrowing, to broadforking, to using a tilther. One thing I would point out is it’s a lot harder to use cover crops without tillage than with, especially in a northern climate.

[@karasu6541]

To till, or not to till, that is the question

[@stefanr570]

I prefer no-till because it works for me and it's less work and I don't like destroying the worm tunnels, etc. But I don't follow the argument that tilling brings up seeds from deep below for them to germinate. Seeds don't develop deep in the soil, instead they develop above soil and fall on top of the soil. If seeds are deep in the soil, it's because they have been tilled in there, meaning they were removed from the chance of germination which is a good thing. If they are brought back up at the next tilling and are still viable then they may germinate but that would not be a net bad thing since they would have germinated previously anyway. Maybe someone can explain this conundrum to me.

[@glassbackdiy3949]

I don't think we can talk about till vs no till in orgnic systems without refering to REDOX (see Olivier Hussons mammoth papers or his more accessible presentations on YT) it's arguably much more important than pH, and if you also include information on pest and pathogen resistance relationships to nutrition, from people like John Kempf & Dr Don Huber, and how diverse soil biology provides those nutrients naturally in Nature from people like Dr James White & Dr. Elaine Ingham, no till becomes a no brainer. BUT you have to earn the right to go no till first, by removing compaction, supplying the minerals and soil biology lacking, and best management choices so your soil doesn't recompact (by the multitude of different routes and practices available). I'm convinced that with the correct mineral profile, diverse biology, good soil aggrigation to provide a range of REDOX, and good garden management to maintain those conditions, we can raise pest and pathogen free, high nutrient density healthy food, and therefore start to reverse the collective decline in humanities health. Assuming we can do this before the world goes completely to hell in a hand basket that is (lol).

[@davidpenfold]

Godztiller!

[@hadleymanmusic]

Hard like cement my dirt is

[@WildBillyGardening]

Can you or any other nerds here give some input on my situation - creating a garden on HEAVILY forested, unimproved land. Not brush, but densely packed trees. Naturally I have to cut a lot of them down (relax folks, it's primarily sweet gum and palm trees that have a trillion more). I can't assume to rip up the stump on every one of them so I cut them as low as possible, try to chop some of the biggest roots, but there are some heavy, ranging root systems spread underground that won't Naturally be composting any time soon, and just a little too dense for planting (and the gum trees are growing back in New shoots from roots). Would you guys run a one time heavy duty tiller through that? Maybe something that has more of a straight, slicing blade that cuts more than it does "throw"? Thanks if anyone responds. Nothing more aggravating then tugging on a thick root during a transplant, and seeing it prop in a line straight underneath all your other transplants

[@WickedNinja48]

so do you just pull every weed out and lay down straw how do you start your garden? Surely if you're not tiling it there's already some grass that needs to be taken care of first?

[@derekthayer5897]

So in your correlation to running a tiller over a city you are saying that city's/(garden soil) should be destroyed so it can rebuild better every so often

[@JamesLeatherman]

Hay crops don't have to be energy intensive - take, for example, Just A Few Acres Farm.

[@ursamajor1936]

Yes and grains used to be stripped off of the plants by hand and dropped into a gunney sack hung around the neck. Stock was turned out into the harvested fields to eat the plants, churn and fertilize the soil. This was before tractors were invented.

[@danphillips4590]

Jesse, what do u pay for organic wheat straw bales? I found a source, but $11/bale.

[@zanothandonjoli5859]

😂First comment. Beautiful 💖💖💖

[@noty6557]

❤

[@Flake4092]

What about permaculture practices?!

[@AnenLaylle]

Did you know that you don't even need soil to grow plants? I grow both conventionally (fields of corn), no-till (market garden), and hydroponically (market garden). I get the best results from hydroponics, which uses no soil at all! The second best results are always conventionally grown agriculture. Chemical fertilizers can be specially tailored to deliver the EXACT nutrients a plant growing in a field needs, no till just throws tons of compost on it praying it's enough for plants. That's just a dumb system. That's why none of these no-till farmers can ever get full-sized carrots, for example. There plants are not getting the nutrients they need. The soil may be "healthy" and full of microbes, but that does not translate to healthier plants, in general. It just doesn't. The premise of no-till agriculture is that soil health is the determining factor in a successful crop, and that just is not true. Hydroponics produces the most healthy, tasty crops of any of the three methods, and it uses absolutely no soil. That alone defeats the premise. By the logic of no-till, if you want the healthiest soil possible, you should just use hydroponics, which uses no soil, that way those "blessed" microbes do not get disturbed. The reason for this flawed premise is because no-till is not really a farming system, it's an environmentalist movement. This is fine, but you guys just need to admit this. All the research in this field is focused on carbon sequestration, often times at the farmers expensive. So what if we lose yield, we're sequestering carbon!!!! OK.... The research into no-till is simply academia setting up a pretense to pass new laws to control LEGALLY how family run farms operate. The goal is to develop a set of research papers as a pretense to change farm law, use lobbies to get new laws passed, and barrage small farms with so many new regulations that most of them sell to corporate farms who have the finances to incorporate the new no-till/regenerative/organic regulations into a program. THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING IN EUROPE. After that last paper released from Stanford that proved no-till most likely reduces yields, the pseudoscientific cope at the end of the paper, which is reminiscent to what communists say about communism "Real no-till will work, it just hasn't been tried", was the final nail in the coffin for me. The conclusion in that paper was so pseudoscientific and ideology driven that I threw down the gauntlet and said enough. I do farm no-till, but it is really the least productive system of the three aforementioned. And, don't come at me and say I'm just not doing it right. I do it exactly how no-till grower does, because his system is the best for no-till, I'll give him that, it's just not a very good system, in general. The worms sure do seem to be happy in my 25 no-till beds, but I still have to use copious amounts of expensive chicken manure to get a yield. No-till works, it just doesn't work as well as conventional agriculture or hydroponics. It's actually quite a lot MORE WORK, too. No-till is better for the environment, and if that's why we're really promoting it, then it's actually doing what it was designed to do. It is not designed to help farmers, I can tell you that. And as a farmer, if you guys were just honest and told me that this system may lower yields, but in the long run will save the planet, and give me the OPTION and some financial incentive, I would go completely no-till. I just don't fancy being lied to. Lets have a constructive conservation about this. My premise is that no-till is much like communism, it looks good on paper, it kind of works in practice, but in the long run....it's really not worth it. Bad old democracy (conventional farming) has problems, but that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water.

[@bradical2723]

Not needing to buy chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, amd a bunch of huge overpriced equipment isn't enough of a financial incentive for you? 😂😂

[@bradical2723]

I hear ya, I don't like communism either. But imagine if every community that possibly could had no till gardens. There wouldn't be any need for huge industrial agriculture. We don't need wheat and corn, they're unhealthy for us amd the planet. And im not a hippy either 😂 im proudly conservative and hoping to start an operation like this or something like what will harris of white oak pastures does.

[@AnenLaylle]

​@@bradical2723 It takes about 1.2 acres to feed a single person for a year. My town has 40,000 people. I don't think a 48,000 acre organic farm to feed one city is very practical, brad. That means everyone in the city is tending a little over an acre by themselves. I hope they don't plan on having a day job in bradtopia, LOL. And we can only eat what is in season. And how the hell am I going to get kiwis? I love kiwis!

[@nickjohnson2367]

​@@AnenLaylleI think you answered your own question here. These methods are not going to save our world as we know it, because what's not practical is the sheer number of people and how we live. We didn't reach a billion humans until about 1800 and we're over 8 billion now. In the last 0.1% of the history of our species, we have octupled our numbers. This is the growth pattern of cancer, not a sustainable metabolism. We need to aim for a small scale, low consumption society with a more sober set of values, something not based on converting trillions of gallons of ancient sunlight into microliters of dopamine to satisfy our obsolete evolutionary impulses.

[@AnenLaylle]

@@nickjohnson2367 Agreed. Thanks for your input, Nick.

[@SgtSnausages]

LOL Religious Wars ...

[@robertcharles4713]

Guys you are all missing it! We have to change the crop DNA we grow to defeat the weeds its easier to develop an entirely unique plant than it is to keep weeds out so vote for science

[@JaHe-u3w]

I find the phrase "No Till" really annoying and misleading

[@dinomiles7999]

Dr. Zack Bush says HE IS WRONG ❤ !

[@GlynDomingue]

Just do what Dr says.

[@kenmcrae8591]

In the Christian Bible, it clearly states that we are to till the earth: Genesis 2:15 - "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." Genesis 3:23 - "The LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken." So, tilling the earth is definitely a good thing, according to Scripture. Hard to be dogmatic about "No-till" when God himself is "Pro-till".

[@danphillips4590]

God should have added one more Genesis verse, man go forth, till and pull lots weeds.

[@birdman1174]

In the beginning no soil was tilled, then came time to plant. Question? Is inserting a seed in the soil tillage? Probably so. How much tillage for one plant? Jessie is not saying not to turn the soil as much as hes saying that to better conserve the benefits of the rhizosphere that nurtures the roots which are the stomach of the plant, tillage should be minimal. You should do a word search in a concordance to understand what God is saying to you.

[@danphillips4590]

@@birdman1174 stop preaching

[@davidstick9207]

I have NO ISSUE with religion...until they tell me what I can cannot do. At that point...I am very dogmatic with a resounding fuck you. I try not to tell you how to live. Can't I get the same respect back? So yea...

[@kenmcrae8591]

@@davidstick9207 Didn't your mommy ever teach you, little Davey, that respect is something you have to earn? I don't see anything "respectful" about your reply. Contrary to your hateful spin, I didn't tell you how to live your life. I merely pointed out that tilling soil has been around since the beginning; or since the Garden of Eden, at least. So, a "hybrid" approach seems closer to the truth. I said absolutely NOTHING "dogmatic" or negative about "no till", in my opinion; and I certainly didn't think what I said was disrespectful or offensive. So, maybe you need to ease off on the caffeine, little Davey!

[@davidhoy2250]

Thanks!

[@notillgrowers]

amazing, thank you!