THE SIX KEY TENETS TO NO-TILL MARKET GARDENING.

VIDEO HERE.

When Rough Draft Farmstead first started out, we wanted it to be an entirely “no-till” farm which we theretofore defined rather simply as mulching the garden with hay or straw and not tilling it. Period. So several years ago, that is what we attempted to do. We bought or traded for hay from a neighbor—usually impossibly giant, rotten round bales—and spread it over our gardens laboriously. Every fall it was battle to get it spread then in the Spring we would transplant or sow crops into it. This of course worked fine... to an extent.The soil did become more pliable and healthier below the mulch, but it also resulted in a lot of added weed seed (ergo a lot of added hand-weeding); in soil that was too cool for early tomatoes; in a lot of difficulty direct seeding; and in whole days or even weeks spent simply adding mulch. It was, in short, not sustainable on a market scale. Now, however, we have come to see the folly in our thinking. The mulch was fine, and certainly a bonafide no-till practice. Where we failed was in our own myopathy—that we saw no-till as a single thing (mulch) and not a nuanced set of principles that could be easily be adapted to any situation and many materials. So in today’s video I have laid out these new set of principles we are following to get our current minimal tillage farm turned entirely into a no-tillage farm. Oh and while you’re watching, don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube, especially if you’re interested in no-till gardening but even if not! I mean, who doesn’t love watching nerdy farm videos? Lots of content to come all year long (because fortuitously, growing year-round has an important place in no-till farming), so stay tuned. -Jesse