far and wide . Tilled ground is easy to work and plant and looks fine but weed growth is encouraged .
Another disadvantage of tilling is that you can ’ t till after a rain and a whole row must be tilled at one time . Regenerative farming with handtools , however , is made easier after a good rain and you can prepare part of a row for a new crop while the old crop still occupies other parts of the row .
A practice common to both organic and regenerative farming is the addition of organic matter to the soil . Decayed , composted , organic material in the soil retains moisture , gives the untold number of living creatures a good environment , and is easy for crop roots to penetrate . As organic matter decays further underground , the acids make available to the plants the nutrients in the soil . Soil scientists say that composted organic matter carries CO2 down into the soil where it stays for a long time . Unfortunately , tilling releases the CO2 into the air with known effect .
In the later years of my organic farming I used woven soil fabric
on top of the ground with holes burned into the cloth for the plants . This technique has some effect in suppressing weeds , but except for the planting holes it does nothing to improve the soil underneath . The fabric is black and raises the soil heat which has become an increasing problem these years . Recently I have been pulling up the fabric , and the ground underneath is the hard , tan , Maryland clay lacking organic content . I think ground fabric can be beneficial but it has to be removed almost every year and compost spread on the soil .
To help improve the soil , my main source of organic material is very large piles of wood chips with leaves and needles that the tree services have in abundance from caring for the increased growth of trees , shrubs , and weeds produced by climate change . Plants eat CO2 and there is more of it in the air .
When I plant seeds or plants started in flats I incorporate large amounts of composted chips and then mulch heavily on top of the soil . Weeds are not eliminated but it is a lot easier to pull them than it is to remove healthy native weeds from unimproved soil .
The first year of regenerative farming , after decades of traditional organic farming with tilling , takes longer , is slower , but the impact looks good . The fauna population in the soil seems higher , richer . I see a greater variety of worms . It is hard to measure exactly though because the answer to the question , “ How is the garden ” is always the same : “ mixed .” And the impact is hard to measure as well because changing weather patterns affect a lot of things in the fields like rates of growth , disease prevalence , and production outcomes .
Basically , for farmers what we used to know is no longer true ... and ever changing .
When Mark Israel bought his farm , he was taught by his father . His father , an immigrant from Ukraine said , “ In Russia our people could not own land . So you , second son , go learn farming .” Mark practices regenerative farming and his customers are all CSA members .
40 plenty I autumn harvest 2022