To Till or Not to Till: an experiment

Tillage is a very useful farming technique that mechanically integrates plants into the ground. It is like a very aggressive eraser that deletes the previous crop or cover crop (see cover cropping post below), making a smooth bed for planting. Long term soil health and carbon holding capacity has been shown to suffer from tillage, so we have done our best to find practices to fill the same erasure needs on the farm while easing off tillage as much as possible. All of our research into the potential benefits and drawbacks of notill farming has been anecdotal up until this point. 

This year we received a grant from a federal program called SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) to do a more careful study. This program is so useful to farmers because it allows us to receive compensation for the constant experimentation we all do every year, to receive technical assistance from research advisors, and to access a treasure trove of other farmers' data and conclusions.

We approached the 2024 zucchini beds in May when they still contained the cover crop of rye, crimson clover, and vetch planted in the fall of 2023. The plants were four feet high and lush. We tilled half of the plot in a checkerboard pattern with a rototiller twice a week apart. This resulted in a smooth fluffy planting bed. For the no-till zucchini, we flail mowed the cover crop twice a week apart (same timing as the tillage), and planted into the cover crop stubble. We will be measuring yield in each plot to compare as well as labor required to prepare and weed the beds, and long term soil health indicators. Stay tuned for results!