What Tillage Does to Soil (but why I recommend it sometimes) + The Garden Data You Need to Know

Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Welcome to Grower's Daily, your daily dose of ecological farming insight. It is Tuesday, January 21st, 2025, and today we're gonna talk about the sort of myth of history, what data you actually need to record this growing season, and what tillage does to soil and why it's important to avoid tillage, at least most of the time. So let's do it. All right, I hope everyone is having a lovely start to your week so far. We are in the midst of another fun Arctic blast with near and below zero temperatures, so negative 17 degrees Celsius and colder. So lots of indoor time at the moment. I've been using the cold as an excuse to read a lot, and specifically this week, I've been reading a lot about seafaring Polynesians, and man, I gotta say, there are few modern pieces of technology that will ever impress me as much as the fact that these tribes made canoes using bones and shells as tools and could sail them with great precision through the Pacific Ocean to very specific islands in large groups using things like stars and the sun and ocean currents, the moon, clouds, and migratory habits of birds and sea life as their guidance. Yeah, the three points on what they are called like the Polynesian Triangle, Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand are like 4,000 miles apart and more. They did that in a canoe. That's greater than the distance of driving from LA to New York City or from one side of Australia to the other. I, by contrast, get lost going to the mechanic in my own town. So yeah, many Polynesians are also horticulturalists who impressively brought trees and plants like coconut and taro root all that way on their journeys and adapted them to different climates and different growing conditions. They helped make the Polynesian islands and the waters around them incredibly rich and diverse through their hunting, fishing, and agricultural practices. Certainly, you all have no doubt picked up on the fact that I have a deep interest in understanding not only my own indigenous roots in Europe from, that would be like France, Ireland, Scotland, and England, presumably, but those all over the world. So expect me to continue to occasionally expound on these from time to time as any good nerd with a daily podcast would. Also, it's possible that tropical tribes may get a little more attention in the winter than normal, having a hard time not wanting to be somewhere tropical, if only in my brain. One thing I wanted to touch on today, though, was not just the incredible ways in which these indigenous people utilize the natural world to guide them long distances and generally create robust food-laden ecologies, but how not very long ago any of this was. Let me explain. One thing that has happened to me as I get older is that my understanding of time and how close together events are has really started to come into focus. Let me demonstrate what I'm talking about by giving you some seemingly completely random facts about my father, who was currently alive and in his 70s. My father was born in 1950. When he was born, there were still people alive who had fought in the Civil War, not many, but a few. My father was as old as his early 20s when the last known enslaved black Americans passed away. There were still only 48 states when my father was born. Black Elk, second cousin to Crazy Horse, witness to the Battle of Little Bighorn, died the year my father was born also, and I will have no idea if you will find this as interesting as I do, but notably, Crazy Horse and Mark Twain were alive on the same continent at the same time, and Twain wrote the Adventures of Tom Sawyer the same year as the Battle of Little Bighorn. That would be 1876, which was the year before Crazy Horse was killed, 1877, which is a wild fact in my brain that those things were so close together. And no doubt, some of the people who helped overthrow the Queen of Hawaii, Polynesian Island, to relate back to that thread, in 1893 were still likely alive when my father was born. But also, there were people who were born that year who were alive when I was born. All that to say, as you get older, you realize how almost nothing, especially in American history, happened all that long ago. And to be sure, you can witness this condensing of history as it happens in your own life. It makes me think of how I was born closer to the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, 14 years before I was born, and JFK, 19 years before I was born, than a child born today is from 9-11, which happened 23 and a half years ago. So all that to say, we tend to warp time with our stories about it. We tend to distort time by separating events into historical events or current ones, history class or social studies, when it's all pretty dang current. And the effects of it all are still evident and alive. So I guess what I'm thinking about today is how it wasn't, in effect, all that long ago that humans engaged with the natural world in a way that enriched it. And it wasn't all that long ago that we stopped or forced others to stop. Of course, an indigenous person, Polynesian or descendant of an enslaved American, will be like, yeah, dude, duh. But I guess I am somewhat of a testament to the fact that our educational systems lead us to believe these things happened longer ago than they actually did. Or as Einstein noted just before his death, notably only a few years after my father was born, quote, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. I love that. It is indeed, Albert, all relative. Anyway, do with that random train of thought what you will, but we're gonna take a quick break and then get to talking about crop planning and data taking, because that seems like as natural of a segue as any. Yeah, BRB. Today's episode of Growers Daily is brought to you by Peaceful Heritage Nursery. If you're looking for hardy and resilient fruit trees, berry plants, or pawpaw trees, then check out Peaceful Heritage Nursery. Peaceful Heritage Nursery, LLC, is a mail-order nursery shipping premium quality fruit trees and berry plants across the USA. They specialize in resilient non-GMO plant genetics for small growers. Their diverse selection includes berries, cold hardy figs, passion fruit, gumi, mulberry, and much more. They're famous for their diverse selection of premium quality grafted pawpaw trees, five-star Google ratings, and customer testimonials attest to their commitment to excellence in quality and service. Find them at peacefulheritage.com and join their mailing list. Once again, find them at peacefulheritage.com. Use the promo code NOTILL, all caps, one word, for 10% off your first order. All right, back to the show. If you, the listener, are enjoying this content, getting even a small amount of value from it, consider supporting our work over at patreon.com slash notillgrowers. I will try to get to questions from everywhere that questions come in, and I do encourage you to ask questions, their YouTube family and whomever else, but I will always get to your Patreon questions now. Today's Patreon question comes from Patreon member and friend of ours, Mr. Nate Merkle, who writes, quote, hi, Jesse. Tis the season for crop planning. Care to share your thoughts. Best approaches, structure for season review, anything that you've found works or doesn't over the years. I feel like I have an okay approach, but it's an area of farming I will always feel has room for more conversation and improvement in efficiency and thoroughness. Thanks, end quote. Totally agree. Lots of room for conversation on this one. Okay, so Nate posted this, obviously, like a month ago, I think, and I've talked a bit about crop planning since then. So, and I know Nate will forgive me for this because he's my buddy, but I'm going to alter this question slightly to say what information should we be collecting this season for review at the end of next year? So here's the thing about farming. You could make an entire job out of collecting data when you planted, what the temperature was, what the soil moisture was, the soil pH, your mood when you harvested, your Spotify playlist you were listening to, it's infinite. But in order to refine that information into something useful, an important question has to be asked of what are your goals? I know I discussed the importance of goal planning in an earlier episode, so I will link that in the show notes, but as they say, it's hard to hit what you don't aim at. So a simple way to start when it comes to figuring out what to monitor is to make a simple goal for each bed, or as it's sometimes called, rent for each bed. I have talked about this before already, but take each growing bed, or if you're growing on a broad acreage, take each acre or plot or field or whatever you call it, and divide your farm budget for the year, all the expenses, including projected labor, by the number of beds. So there are a near infinite number of ways to do this, but if I want to earn $30,000 on 60 beds, I need each bed to earn me at least $500. Now, that gives you a clue as to what information you're going to need to start. And of course, you can refine and adjust your goals as needed, but to match this, you'll need to know how much money you earned on a crop, but also how much labor was spent on each crop. The labor part isn't an obvious data point since you already calculated somewhat for labor, but let's say you make it to the end of the year, and you say, well, I hit my numbers, but I had to work till dark every day. Then you can look back at which were the more time-intensive crops and either lean them up or cull them. Perhaps replacing them with crops that made a little bit more money and or required a little less labor. In fact, there's a really good thread going in the forum at notillgrowers.com this week about identifying crop profitability that is worth checking out. And I may even do a segment on it soon because it's really good. So you need to know how much time it takes to seed, grow, and or plant a crop. Then you will need to account for any cultivation time and harvesting time, washing and packing, et cetera. Just get a rough estimate of how much labor went into this, to that crop. And you really can do this pretty loosely with just a few beds of the same crop and then get an average. Like lettuce will pretty much always take roughly the same amount of time of labor to grow. But you don't want to add too much detail here. Just how much labor, how much was harvested, how much money did that earn at market or however you sold it. Those are the three kind of most important things you need to understand. Get those and then you could start adding in other details like well, spring and fall lettuce make more sense because I get a really big second cutting. But perhaps summer lettuce doesn't make quite as much sense because yields are much lower and I can't really get a good second cutting. So can I find something else more profitable to slot into those beds or can I increase the price over the summer to account for the yield loss, et cetera. So maybe knowing when you planted and harvested will be helpful to you. Or maybe noting that there was a crop you just flat out don't enjoy growing or your crew doesn't enjoy growing or harvesting. That's also worth noting. Can you improve that experience or is it better just to call that item? Next year as you're doing your crop planning, that will help dictate what you're gonna grow and what you're not. Anyway, I think starting with that per bed budget or rent is a good place to start. And then you can decide what information will get you closer to your goal and refined your data collection as your goals or markets change. All right, I know I didn't directly answer that question Nate but maybe I sort of did. Otherwise, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we will tackle a question I often get about tillage, which is why is it so bad? And if it is so bad, why do you sometimes recommend it? Yeah, be right back. Today's episode of Growers Daily is brought to you by Harnois Greenhouses. Harnois Greenhouses has pioneered controlled environment agriculture since 1965, partnering with market gardeners and farmers across North America to deliver turnkey greenhouse solutions. Their unwavering mission is to support growers success through innovation and expertise in design, manufacturing and installation. Harnois Greenhouses are engineered to withstand high wind and snow loads, providing optimal brightness, increased yields, rapid ROI and long lasting durability. With over 20,000 projects completed, they are more than a manufacturer. They are a trusted partner. Their structures foster sustainable, energy efficient ecosystems that drive profitable, resilient agriculture. In 2025, Harnois is introducing a new low-tech high tunnel model starting at just $2 per square foot, offering open field growers an accessible entry into controlled environment agriculture. Harnois Greenhouses, leading the way in turnkey solutions for local growers. Learn more at harnois.com. That's H-A-R-N-O-I-S.com. All right, back to the show. All right, so briefly, here's what happens to a garden when you repeatedly till the soil. First, the tiller, depending on the speed it's traveling, breaks apart aggregates in the soil. Soil aggregates are incredibly tiny clusters of soil particles wrapped around organic matter created by microbes in the soil just doing their thing. These aggregates store organic matter in the soil for long and short periods of time and are important not only for plant nutrition, but air, for microbial habitat, for microbial food, water movement, basically everything the soil needs to be healthy and sustain plant life requires soil aggregation. So when you crush those with a tiller, it rapidly releases much of that soil organic matter. At the same time, the tiller is heating up the soil and whipping in a lot of oxygen. Enlivened by newly freed food and lots of oxygen, oxygen-loving bacteria go bananas and start to consume the soil organic matter, releasing it as CO2. Now, the earth is constantly releasing CO2. It's the breathing and gas passing of microbes and other soil-dwelling organisms. In fact, good soil respiration is a sign of healthy soil. However, in healthy ecosystems, plants are usually above the soil to recapture much of the escaping CO2 and turn it into more food for microbes or more plant tissue or whatever needs to happen in that moment. This is, as we all know, it's called the carbon cycle. It's a function of photosynthesis, which itself is arguably and by arguably, I mean, pretty much inarguably, the most important biological process on the planet. But in a tillage scenario, a lot of the carbon just escapes into the atmosphere because there are no plants there to immediately recapture it, thus losing a lot of the hard work put in by those microbes and plants, not to mention exposing the soil to erosion and killing a lot of soil life and encouraging weeds. So although I occasionally recommend tillage in the beginning of a garden when there is not a lot of organic matter there or soil aggregates to lose, I don't recommend it through the life of a garden, i.e. once the garden is established because it undoes so much of what the soil needs to succeed and so much of what your plants do when you're growing them. When I am recommending tillage, it's because I want to lay a good foundation for never having to till again. Like when your soil is heavily compacted and has almost no soil organic matter, that is the time to get some compost and amendments like activated biochar down and then break up that compaction and give yourself something worth protecting by reducing and or eliminating your regular tillage over time. Like you create a good foundation and then you can build on that. If your soil is in good shape, not compacted, and has decent soil organic matter, I might recommend no tillage to start. It may not be necessary. Also, I'm not precious about the top two inches of the soil. Like if you want to use a tilter to prepare your seedbeds, I'm pretty much good with that. I use a rake and a hoe and it more or less has the same effect at the same depth, just moves a little bit more slowly. It's that area around the rhizosphere at four to eight inches down that we really need to be more precious about because that is where the bulk of the microbes and aggregates reside. So we don't want to disturb that too much. Anyway, I know some people get highly dogmatic about these things, but my point is always that if you just dumped a bunch of compost over heavily depleted and compacted soils, you are not guaranteed anything for a year or two in terms of production. Maybe it works out, but more than likely, and I'm not just talking from my own experience, but the experience of lots of other growers, you will run into a full year of poor photosynthesis, meaning the soil is not being fed and built, which is good for neither you nor your soil. Anyway, that's good enough for today, I think. Let me know your thoughts on anything I discussed in this episode. Huge shouts to Willie Breeding for the theme music and the team at No-Till Growers. Also shouts to Epidemic Sound for the background music. Pick up a copy of the Living Soil Handbook or the Seed Farmer at notillgrowers.com to support our work. Big, big thank you to everyone over at patreon.com slash notillgrowers where at a certain level, or if you just bump up from one level to another, or you sign up in the month of January, you get a shout-out on the show. So big shout-outs today to, oh, some of our weeklies. We have Mayna, Byron Green, and Steven Smith. This week, the weeklies have founded a support group for millennials and middle-aged people who are coming to terms with the heart-wrenching fact that some of the music that they listened to when they were growing up is now considered classic rock. Like, no doubt, Nirvana. All right, thanks for listening and or watching. We will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow's Wednesday. Yeah, tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye.