Wednesday, January 23, 2013

No-till ganening

You will see more and more of this at all levels of agriculture, whether it's in your back yard or a thousand acre farm. The basic premise is that you want to keep the soil bacteria and fungi alive at all times and that requires a live root system to feed them. There is quickly mounting evidence that this method increases yields and disease resistance while it decreases run-off and pooling - water is absorbed into the soil quicker with no-till. This requires less fertilizer and drain tile(on large farms), thus increasing a farm's profit. In a backyard garden setting, it means better veggies, less maintenance, and better soils for the next crop.