No Till Setup

[steve37341]

I can understand how planting directly in the manure would be difficult until in broke down significantly, especially for smaller seeded items such as lettuce, etc. I wanted to try no-till last year, and before I discovered your website and books, I did my own little experiment that worked out quite well but is similar to your methods but somewhat reversed. I live in an area which is fairly hot and humid in the summer so I was concerned about a way to deal with the heat on the soil, at least until the plants got started well. And I also wanted to use a no-till method. So, I took a small potato chip bag with a reflective Mylar interior. I cut nine holes in each of the four bags I used. Eight of the holes were for plants(seeds) and the ninth hole in the center was for a small drip irrigation bottle I created. I used a weed eater to cut the grass to the dirt in each of the four squares. I put each bag with the mylar side up, on the ground and put some small bricks around the edges(at first) to keep the bags in place. I made a small indention into the soil in each hole, planted the seeds with some fine vermiculite, and waited to see if they would come up. They all came up and the reflective Mylar helped keep the ground cooler and gave the plants extra light. After the plants got about four inches high, I piled the manure/compost that I had on top of each Mylar bag. When it rained or I watered the plants, the composted manure essentially drip fed (like manure tea) the plants. I planted one square each of cowpeas, radishes, chard, and lettuce. They all did excellent. After the plants were all harvested, I pulled out each bag from between the layer of compost and the dirt and I am now using the bags again on top of the now taller layer of dirt/compost. I will put compost and manure on top of the bags again just like last year. One thing that surprised me was that some of the worms in the soil migrated into the compost layer even though the bags were in place. They just went through the holes in the bags. And best of all…NO WEEDS.