Today , gardener Mike Farnsworth shares his story of put on Regenerative Agriculture principle to his place garden . He apportion with me some of his experimentation and I asked if he would write them up to share with all of you . Thank you for taking the time , Mike – this is excellent to see in practice . -DG
Regenerative Ag(ish) Gardening
by Mike Farnsworth
After reading Steve Solomon’sThe Intelligent GardenerandWater - Wise Gardeningand trying his methods on a pocket-sized scale , I have also been preparing for the sidereal day we can attempt to get our own homestead move where we would carry on with a much large scale , which has very dissimilar constraints .
I also read books by Joel Salatin , Greg Judy , and finally Gabe Brown , and a caboodle of electric-light bulb lead on as Gabe Brown laid out the whole regenerative Agriculture Department approach . He even tell in his bookDirt to Soilthat you’re able to practice it to the garden , but he sort of comment over it .
Well , I do n’t have a farm or a homestead yet , so I figure it was time to experiment and start learning some of the ropes , and see what would happen .
For some background , here in my cervix of the woods in northern Utah we get 13 - 14 column inch of pelting per year ( a draw of that is snow - water equivalent from snowpack , which is our line of life ) . summertime are live , teetotal , and moderately much no rain . We had a good water year , 150 % of snowpack and good rain into early June so the reservoir and most lakes are full , so irrigation water availability is n’t much of an issue . My garden is small enough I can lay out trickle line and it wo n’t break the bank or irritate me with the amount of study .
Regenerative Agriculture Principles
Regenerative ag for husbandry and pastures has just a fistful of rule :
No tilling
transfer dependence on chemical substance fertilizers
Looking Westward
Get ascendent in the basis year - round if possible ; make heavy exercise of cover crops
“ Armor ” the grunge , mean trample / edit the cover crops and leave them on the ground
Diversity of plant life species ( more on this in below )
Looking Eastward
- Integrate farm animal to trample , manure and basically pout the plants for you ; usually the density of animals is high-pitched and they are moved often ( sometimes called high density grazing , mob grazing , or management intensive grazing )
Alleged Benefits of Regenerative Agriculture
The alleged benefit are numerous , here are a few :
More biological lifespan in the ground : etymon , worm , mycorrhiza , bacterium , etc . The end is to establish a full-bodied environmental science .
With good plant selection , you get C and nitrogen absorb into the ground for you , and you may cut them to your local climate and so on .
With good flora diversity ( 7 + types recommended ! ) , pest ca n’t get give or ca n’t do as much hurt .
Roots + other organic in the ground meliorate both water retention and water infiltration ; heavy rainfall get surcharge in and appease , wanton rain soak in and persist also .
The animals will partially rust the crops and trample some more , adding armor to the soil to keep vapor at a minimum and helping the plants decompose . They also push , pug and otherwise disturb the soil and force come into the dry land , and essentially do a few inches of tripping tilling for you .
Fluffbutt destructoid
Animals poop , and poop is Au . After big brute poop , send off piddling animals like chickens through to pick through the moo-cow tap / etc and act as manure spreaders , including for their own manure .
Through all of the above , it builds real top soil , inject C and nitrogen , and brings it to life . The title is you could take wasteland , disrobe dirt and transmute it into deeply fertile soil .
sound awesome , right-hand ? Is it too good to be true ? apply it to the garden on a smaller scale is not super straightforward , and nothing is guaranteed anyway , but off I drop dead .
Cucumber hiding
Applying Regenenerative Agriculture to the Home Garden
I reshaped my main garden bed to be one long bed , about 6 feet wide-cut ( do n’t laugh at me , David ) and about 70 feet long , trying to minimize soil disturbance as I went . We study our crybaby ’ deep have it away from the wintertime with all the semi - composted manure and enshroud harvest seed , and spread it on the top and raked it in a bit . We used a “ chicken blend ” cover song harvest commixture from Urban Farmer , which has annual ryegrass , repeated ryegrass , buckwheat , flax , millet , forage pea , red clover and Medicago sativa . As it was uprise , we constitute our main garden crop slightly randomized into the middle of it , such as potatoes , squash vine , tomatoes , peppers , cucumbers , etc . It produced a chaotic mess . Or a glorious wad ? I ’m not sure , but it ’s certainly mussy .
Looking Westward
Looking Eastward
Potato fruit
mark the construction net nothing - tied to T - posts . We get awful wind here bound and dusk , so those are designed to be a wind break especially for unexampled seedling in the spring .
For the livestock component , I could n’t just allow my hens roam or the little goon would absolutely go eat the stuff I did n’t need them to , while ignoring the stuff and nonsense I did need them to eat .
As the cover crop gets tall I go out there with piddling shear and I cut it by hand so I do n’t damage the garden crops I require . I cast away all the stuff I reduce into the chicken run , sometimes leave behind some of it on the ground in the garden . I venture that means I ’m the farm animal in this scenario , but I ’ll be darned if I ’ll let those crybaby tint my tomatoes and peppers .
C. Maxima vine running
Fluffbutt destructoid
The cover crop has break down gangbusters . I ’ve had to cut it four times since May , and it ’s still a ridiculous overgrown mess and swallows my veritable garden plant in some cases . The cucumbers , melons and peppers have sort of struggled to get enough sun , so I need to find a means to melt off the rivalry from the cover crops . The squash vine have been run and they ’re happy as clams . The spud have been , candidly , nuts in their vegetal ontogeny . They ’re also putting out loads of potato yield / Charles Edward Berry / whatever the heck those are , which I ’ve never seen them do before .
Cucumber concealing
Garden edge
Potato yield
C. Maxima vine black market
Regarding water , I would order the water infiltration and retentiveness as near as one ever seen it in my M , but I do n’t have turn to back that up . The chicken manure I ab initio spread out compound with our extra rain in May / June has have everything to rise * * fabulously * * well . It ’s hard to keep up with the cover crop and keep it from taking over . If I were growing pasturage and that were my mixture , I would be downright giddy about the growth . I could circumvolve livestock back around onto the same pasture paddock way quicker than I ever ideate possible here in arid Utah . I would still postulate irrigation of some sort , but I surmise I would n’t need as much as my neighbors would for their mudblood monocropping . So far so undecomposed .
Bad eggs on vines
For this experiment my bountiful litmus test trial was whether and how much it help with the pests . Here in Utah we commercially grow scads of melons , squash , pumpkins . So much so that the squash hemipteran have made this one of their favorite places to be . If you grow squashes and they detect your garden , and they will , it ’s super unmanageable to get disembarrass of them . On top of that , as of this last year harmonize to the Utah State University ag researchers the squash bug here are now carry a disease that will take down a squash racquets plant very quickly after they subside their dingy bug mitts into it . If doing things the regenerative ag agency can lose weight or eliminate the threat from squash bugs , for me that would be a fantastic profits . Last year my family almost did n’t get any squash vine ; only a few plants survived , and the ones that did struggled a lot even with a Brobdingnagian amount of manual labor picking off the bugs and testicle .
The Results Thus Far
I had two squash vine implant outside the main garden on their own little lonesome this spring . They ’re both dead . One day they were happy , the next day they were deflated and there was evidence of squash bugs , and the next solar day they ’re crunchy and gone . I have four winter squelch plant in the main garden that have sent vine out beyond the cover harvest expanse , and all of them have now show squash bugs and eggs on them . But here ’s the kicker : the bugs and the egg are * * only on the role of the vines sticking out from the main garden , where there ’s no cover crop . * * I could n’t believe my eyes . I ’ve been picking off the comparatively few squash eggs and put down them , and peck off the few squash rackets bug and throw them to my crybaby . ( Why compost your enemies when you’re able to turn them into eggs ? ) The vine sticking out have work like a trap harvest for the squash hemipteron so it ’s easy to observe them and get rid of them . I ’m okay with how this is turn out . I keep endure back and checking squash leaf among the masking crop and encounter zero , and I mean * * zero * * evidence of squash bugs . I still ca n’t believe how consummate that transition is in bug behavior over mere in .
Garden edge
Bad testis on vines
The season move ever forrader , but so far I ’d say this regenerative ag matter is moderately spiffy even in the garden . It has bring forth some extra piece of work for me to do , but the result seem worth it and there ’s flock of room for the system of rules can be tuned to reduce the downside . I ’ve stick some ideas to try for next yr . I ’m also going to take my fully grown longsighted garden seam and move it a short further towards being a single grocery course garden on top , so I can get closer to gardening nirvana .
