Category Archives: SARE No-Till Experiment

Our SARE funded Organic No-Till Workshop 2 – took place at Orcas Island High School as part of the San Juan Islands Ag Summit. Thanks to Candace and Peggy for inviting us and putting this huge event together.There couldn’t have been a better introduction to our workshop that keynote speaker David Montgomery who talked about the devastating effects of soil erosion caused by tillage.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this event… we think around 50 -60 people came. Its encouraging to see so much interest in organic no-till.

Doug Collins from WSU opened the workshop with presentation of research being done at Washington State University Extension. You can see more of it here: smallfarms.wsu.edu/soils-compost/research/organicnotill

In our presentation we covered the science of maintaining healthy soils without tillage and then moved on to demonstrate practical applications for those wishing to transition to no-till. We used our SARE funded experiment as a case study and talked about some of our findings and conclusions.

You can download a series of informative and visual pdfs to make up the entire powerpoint on the learn page.

“Thank You! Very beautiful and rich and generous presentation experience; very much appreciate the time and work that obviously went in. I feel enlightened.”

For the SARE funded Organic No-Till workshops, we were joined by soil scientist Andy Barry from WSU Extension Service. He presented research done by the Small Farms Team, on reduced tillage in organic vegetable production. They have worked with a variety of cover crops, special planting aids, roller/crimping and flailing and are comparing reduced till to tilled plots. Not surprisingly, the earthworm population was significantly higher in the no-tilled plots. See more about their experiments here: smallfarms.wsu.edu/soils-compost/research/organicnotill and here eorganic.info/group/4988

We then led a tour of the garden looking at our experiment beds. Gary demonstrated tools and techniques for preparing a bed for direct seeding.

Encouraging everybody to have a feel of the soil, to see for themselves the high moisture content and organic matter in a no-till bed that had not been watered all summer.

We discussed healthy soil structure and how to maintain it naturally, without the destructive practice of tilling. A purely man-made action that never occurs in nature.

Today, Larry Korn talked a bit more about the “nuts and bolts” of Fukuoka’s farming methods. But he introduced his talk with an anecdote: A soil scientist came to the farm and took samples and found there was a big phosphorous deficiency. Fukuoka responded by saying: but didn’t you see the rice growing in front of you? Wasn’t it one of the healthiest plants you have seen? Fukuoka farmed intuitively with an intimate knowledge of the ‘family’: place, plants and animals.