5-9 Vegetable Gardening is Trial and Error: Why I Gave Up on Natural Farming

Natural farming, which involves not tilling or weeding, maximizing the life force that nature inherently possesses, and growing crops while going against the environment as little as possible. I moved to the countryside and wanted to try it, but...

A producer who delivers vegetables to the shop says: "Natural farming is different from 'leave-it-alone' farming. It takes a lot of work.". Another producer says, "Natural farming is difficult. It's better to start after you've learned how to grow vegetables properly using organic farming methods."

Right after I moved to the countryside, I also thought: No animal manure! Plastic mulch is out of the question! No-till is the best! \(~o~)／

Now, I put plenty of chicken and cow manure into my fields. I try to use plastic mulch as much as possible. And I pull out as many vegetables as I can that grow from spilled seeds the following year. I practice no-till in some areas, but not everywhere.

There are three things I have learned over the past few years.

1. Fields that haven't been used for a while lack nutrients... only weak vegetables can grow.

Fields that haven't been used for a while have had their nutrients washed away and are weak. If you try to grow crops in such fields using only leaf mold gathered from the mountains or dried grass cut from the field, you will inevitably end up with weak vegetables. Because their growth is slow, large autumn vegetables like cabbage, Chinese cabbage, and daikon radish will not grow before winter arrives, even if you sow them at the same time as the neighbors. Spring crops also grow slowly, so they eventually get overwhelmed by weeds and disappear. The neighbors' fields use chemical fertilizers and hybrid seeds, so even if they sow at the same time, the growth speed is completely different. Where I live, if you don't sow Chinese cabbage by mid-August, you won't make it in time. However, if you sow too early, they will be ruined by diseases and pests.

Since last year, I have started getting cow manure from a nearby cattle farmer. (A light truck load is 2,000 yen.) The vegetables grow so well now. I truly realized that the soil must have nutrients. Of course, weeds of types I hadn't seen before have also started to spread. (There is a method of killing weed seeds in a hotbed, but I don't have the time to do it.) I plan to continue adding cow manure for a few years, and once the soil becomes somewhat rich, I will gradually return to using leaf mold and natural nutrients.

2. If you don't have time, use mulch... weeding is hard labor.

Plastic mulch is that black or white plastic film spread over the field. Since it uses a large amount of plastic, it is better not to use it for environmental reasons, if possible.

It has benefits such as raising soil temperature, maintaining appropriate humidity, and preventing diseases caused by rain splashing, but above all, it prevents weeds from spreading. In natural farming, you lay cut grass at the base of the plants as grass mulch, but since I am doing the farming alone while also working, I can't keep up with that. So, now I try to use mulch as much as possible.

The one I use most is an environmentally friendly plastic mulch called biodegradable mulch that breaks down in the soil, but this is three times more expensive than regular mulch. If a professional farmer used biodegradable mulch to grow 100-yen cabbages, it wouldn't be profitable, but since this is a hobby for me, it's more about being eco-friendly than cost. Laying mulch is hard work, but this task has made summer weed control much easier. It is now an essential item.

3. Pull out vegetables that grow from spilled seeds... no mercy just because they are heirloom varieties.

Coriander, basil, shiso, okra, cherry tomatoes... when spring comes, new sprouts emerge from the spilled seeds of vegetables grown the previous year. Since they are heirloom varieties, they will grow into fine vegetables if you let them, but unfortunately, they don't grow neatly in a row in the ridge. Growing them as they are is very inefficient, so while I transplant some, I have recently started pulling them out without hesitation, as things like parsley cannot be transplanted. By doing this, the efficiency of my field work has improved significantly. As I wrote in my previous article, heirloom seeds will produce the same vegetables the following year, but that doesn't mean you have to force yourself to save seeds or carefully grow those that sprout from spilled seeds. There is also the aspect of growing heirloom varieties as a form of crisis management.

Natural farming seems to be a method of carefully observing the growth of living things and providing the minimum necessary help so that they can grow vigorously at the most appropriate time. It seems to require many, many more years or decades, and unfortunately, I don't seem to have that much time.

This content was only understandable to some people. I'm sorry. Tomorrow is about the story of me building a guest room.