Project Overview
Information Products
Commodities
Practices
- Crop Production: cropping systems, no-till
- Education and Training: demonstration, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research
- Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns, community-supported agriculture
- Pest Management: mulches - general
- Production Systems: organic agriculture
- Soil Management: composting, organic matter, soil analysis, soil quality/health
- Sustainable Communities: quality of life
Summary:
Organic vegetable farmers in the Midwest are typically reliant on dry soil and tillage to prepare soil for planting. Increasingly wet, erratic springs are making initial soil preparation by rototiller more difficult. Both Humble Hands Harvest and Middle Way Farm have observed that beds raised by tillage prepared in advance of planting have allowed them to plant sooner in the spring and improved drainage during heavy rainfall. Pairing the practice of raised beds with a no-till approach combines the advantages of both systems. Raising the bed facilitates better drainage for quicker access after rain, while no-till creates a more stable, aggregated soil that is less prone to erosion during heavy rain. Both farms would like to explore the feasibility of transitioning their vegetable farms into raised no-till beds over time. The most important question we will explore is how much more labor and resources it takes to create, cultivate, and maintain no-till beds versus our current tractor-tillage systems. We also want to track production and soil quality characteristics between tilled versus no-till beds to see if there is a difference over time. Finally, we will record our qualitative observations of the work involved and problems encountered in each system.
Project objectives:
Original Objectives
- Develop no-till systems on each of our farms that enables us to build and maintain beds without a tractor.
- Compare inputs and labor, quantitatively and qualitatively, between no-till and tillage systems.
- Observe production, plant health, and soil health differences between no-till and tillage systems.
- Share results with other vegetable farmers, our customers, and our community.
Year 2 Objectives:
- MWF will maintain the three experimental 5 bed sections (no-till, tilled with compost, and tilled with no compost) using the same practices as 2020, but will begin replicating crops between treatments. For example, a bed of spinach will be planted in each experimental section, for a total of 3 beds of spinach. This will allow for direct comparisons of yield, crop quality, and labor time, which was not possible in 2020 when crops were not replicated between treatments. HHH will continue three crop comparisons from 2020: tilled vs. no-tilled for carrots, kale, and zucchini, measuring yield and labor input between treatments and crops. HHH will discontinue using a paper mulch underneath
- Each farm will evaluate soil health differences between treatments through testing at the end of 2021 and compare with end of 2020 soil test results. Soil testing will include farmer led testing via Midwest Laboratories as well as soil analysis by staff at the Midwest Rodale Institute.
- Outreach activities in 2021 will include Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) field days on each farm (virtual or in-person depending on COVID situation), a planned No-Till virtual convergence this summer organized by PFI, and presentations at the PFI conference in January 2022. Both farms will continue to post about their no-till experiments on their social media accounts throughout the season.