Ecological farming necessity and features. Organic farming in the country
Organic farming is a smart approach to the land and plants, thanks to which stable yields are achieved at minimal cost, without the use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides. Its essence is to organize the economy like natural ecosystems, in which each creature has its own purpose and lives in harmony with others.
For hundreds of millions of years, our Earth has nourished vast forests, meadows, and steppes. No one plowed or fertilized the soil on purpose, and its fertility was inexhaustible. For more than 6,000 years of cultivated agriculture, the fertility of the land was maintained. In the twentieth century, due to active improper cultivation, the soil began to become impoverished. Over the past decades, scientists have realized many mistakes. As a result, organic farming began to develop, based on an understanding of how soil, plants, animals and the forces of nature interact. Creating his farm in harmony, a good farmer only directs all processes, and does not waste energy fighting nature. It is not for nothing that in ancient times the profession of a farmer was considered the most respected and qualified! And the basic rules of organic farming are simple.
Firstly, the soil needs to be loosened no deeper than 5 cm,
and not dig and plow.
The earth is a living organism. It is like a sponge, penetrated by many roots, saturated with a huge number of worms and microorganisms.
This is what V.V. Dokuchaev wrote in his book “Our Steppes Before and Now”:“Try to cut out a cube of soil from the virgin ancient steppe, you will see in it more roots, herbs, beetle passages, larvae than soil. All this seethes, drills, sharpens, digs the soil, and the result is a sponge incomparable to anything.”
Charles Darwin wrote about the decisive role of worms in the formation of soil fertility in his book “The Formation of the Vegetative Layer by the Activity of Earthworms”: “Long before the invention of the plow, the soil was properly cultivated by earthworms and will always be cultivated by them.”. Russian scientist Yu.A. Slashchalin, and after him many others, discovered that on 1 hectare of land not poisoned by chemicals, about 200 kg of bacteria live and about the same number of worms and other living creatures, which produce more than 500 kg of vermicompost per year. It is these “natural farmers” who fertilize and nourish the plants.
Scientists have convincingly proven that deep plowing and digging suppresses the activity of worms and microorganisms, destroys the structure of the soil, and reduces its fertility. With deep plowing and digging, the soil is saturated with oxygen, which encourages soil bacteria to convert humus into mineral elements available to plants.
This ensures high yields on plowed virgin lands. But only the first 2-3 years! And then the amount of humus rapidly drops, yields decline, plant immunity weakens, pests and diseases spread. And then fertilizers and pesticides are needed. And how much effort is spent on this!
For example, when digging up 6 acres, you have to turn over up to 200 tons of earth with a shovel! Using a Fokin cultivator or flat cutter, the same 6 acres can be easily prepared for planting in half a day. The structure of the soil is not disturbed during such treatment, but is loosened and fertilized by “natural farmers” and copes with this work better than any artificial technology! The effectiveness of flat-cut processing has been confirmed by many years of experience among farmers in many countries.
The second basic rule of organic farming is
This is mulching.
Mulch is everything that covers the soil: hay, straw, leaves, sawdust or simply weeds trimmed with a flat cutter. There is no black earth in nature; it is always covered with leaves or grass. Bare, unprotected soil overheats in the sun and evaporates moisture very quickly, after rain it turns into mud and stops breathing, it becomes supercooled during frosts, and is subject to erosion. Mulch protects the soil, creates favorable conditions for worms and microorganisms, and over time turns into humus.
Finally, the soil must be revitalized by feeding worms and soil microorganisms.
The easiest way to do this is to use “green fertilizer”, green manure plants that successfully replace manure, compost and mineral fertilizers. Preparations of effective microorganisms provide invaluable assistance in increasing soil fertility. These are beneficial microbes and fungi that, when introduced into the soil, actively multiply, utilize organic matter, process it into a form easily digestible for plants, suppress pathogenic bacteria and fungi, and fix mineral elements. This achieves the amazing effect of accelerating plant growth, increasing the weight of fruits and their shelf life. This technology was developed by Japanese scientist Higa Tera and has been successfully used in many countries around the world for more than 15 years.
Organic farming has its own subtleties and agrotechnical techniques: natural and effective ways to protect plants from diseases and pests, planning beds, crop rotation, variety renewal and much more.
History of agriculture
The history of soil-saving agriculture is very long and full of amazing and dramatic moments. In ancient Sumer (XXX century BC) They cultivated the land with a knotty stick and received 200-300 centners of barley and wheat per hectare! (S.N. Kramer “History Begins in Sumer”).
Now 50 centners is almost a record. And the secret is simple: there was nothing to plow or dig with, so they just loosened the ground. And this, as we now know, is the optimal processing method. And only ears of corn were needed for food: all the straw remained in the fields and was turned into fertilizer the next year.
Then the knotty stick was replaced by a shovel. Labor productivity, especially in virgin lands, has increased. But from that moment on, the soil began to experience “shock” at the hands of man. The plow that came after cultivated the soil without turning the layer; the soil organisms did not experience any special shocks.
More than two hundred years ago, a horse-drawn plow was invented, which cultivated the land with a layer turnover. It made it possible to develop very large tracts of virgin lands in a short time. The plow had a dramatic effect on the inhabitants of the soil. The tractor plow used later was even more productive, but the impact on the soil was catastrophic. After its invention came the most dramatic period. When plowing with a dump of the layer, the virgin soil loses its mighty turf. The top layer of soil moves down, the bottom layer moves up. Microorganisms die to a large extent. Earthworms and other soil inhabitants experience a great negative impact. The processes of water and wind erosion are intensifying.
The first harbinger of upcoming environmental disasters associated with large-scale plowing of virgin lands was intense erosion, drying out and dehumification of soils in the south of Russia in the mid-19th century. The consequences of this massive plowing of land were clearly and clearly analyzed in the book by V.V. Dokuchaev "Our steppes before and now", published in 1893.
At the end of the 19th century in the work of I.E. Ovsinsky (“New system of agriculture”, Kyiv, 1899), based on numerous experiments, it has been proven that the land should be cultivated no deeper than 2 inches (an inch is equal to 2.54 cm):
"...already 4-5 one-inch plowing destroys the network of tubules and thereby impedes root germination”;
"...small 2 one-inch plowing causes rapid improvement of the soil to a considerable depth”;
“The famous Krupp, with his shells of military destruction, did not bring as much harm to humanity as the factory of deep plows brought”.
Ovsinsky used a horse-drawn flat cutter instead of a plow and received good harvests even during the drought of 1895-1897, when there was no moisture in the plowed fields.
This is a very interesting story:
At that time, P.T. Zolotarev, an agronomist from the Poltava region, experimenting with soil cultivation, said the unheard of at a session of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Tselinograd:
“To get good grain harvests, the land does not need to be plowed, peeled, cultivated, or harrowed—you just need to sow and harvest.
There was laughter in the hall, and then ironic applause, which forced Zolotarev to leave the podium without finishing his speech. He only managed to ask the presidium a question:
— Comrade academicians, doctors of sciences! Why does it often happen like this: a wheat field is overgrown with thistle, spurge, and wild oats, but nearby on the virgin lands there is not a single sow thistle, spurge, or wild oat? The seeds of these weeds are carried tens of kilometers away. This means that they exist in virgin lands as well. So why don’t they germinate in untouched soil?!
The next day, the scandalous agronomist was removed from work and put on trial. But the matter was hushed up: the yield on the experimental plots of the “non-standard” agronomist was much higher. Since Prokopiy Tikhonovich did not plow the surface of the soil, did not disk, or peel, it means that the weeds here were not cut by the paws of the cultivators, but already in the second year there were half as many of them, and in the third there were very few left. From the fourth, they disappeared completely.
It would seem that all this can be transferred to widespread industrial practice. Not so. The seeder developed by Zolotarev was ordered to be moved with a tractor. No matter what high places Zolotarev addressed with his proposals, no matter what thresholds he knocked, he always ran into a blank wall.
Flat tillage and organic farming in general are not some super-fashionable novelty. This is a natural continuation and development of farming methods, and in many ways - reaching a qualitatively new level.
The history of the development of agriculture, as well as rational methods of small and large-scale farming, are described in detail in the book of the agronomist, graduate of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, N.I. Kurdyumov "Mastery of Fertility". This book contains all the experience of regenerative agriculture known to the author - the works of Ovsinsky, Faulkner, Fukuoka, Maltsev, Allen, the experience of domestic field farmers, as well as the classics of Russian agriculture - Timiryazev, Dokuchaev, Kostychev, Williams.
The works of field growers and naturalists convincingly show that the fertility of the soil under cultivated plants with proper farming increases, and does not decrease.
In ancient times, people lived in complete harmony with nature - they worshiped the Sun and respected the Earth. Biological balance was maintained - chlorophyll-containing plants used solar energy to increase green mass, produce seeds, fruits, wood, etc. Plant foods were eaten by various representatives of the fauna. Herbivores, in turn, served as food for predators. Various bacteria also actively took part in the biological cycle, maintaining the biosphere in working order.
Scientific and technological progress, aimed at an unlimited increase in everything that can be produced, has caused irreparable harm to agriculture. Farmers were the first to return to natural land care. Gaining popularity every year organic farming in the country.
Digging or loosening in organic farming?
The main difference between traditional tillage and soil cultivation is its deep digging. With the conventional method, a layer of earth about 30 cm thick is removed and turned over, and with the organic method, the soil is loosened in one plane to a depth of 10-15 cm.
Deep (dump) digging disrupts the natural processes that contribute to the formation of the fertile layer:
- representatives of soil fauna die;
- damaged weed roots form new growth points;
- weed seeds enter an environment favorable for germination.
At the same time, the flow of oxygen into the deep layers increases, which at the first stage leads to the formation of a large amount of minerals, ensuring a high yield.
Next, the soil becomes depleted, since the fertile layer does not have time to recover, and a large amount of minerals leads to its compaction. The deep root system of the grasses has been destroyed and can no longer support the already meager layer. The humus part of the earth is washed away and weathered. An alternative to deep digging is loosening, for which a cultivator is used.
At the same time, one cannot thinklessly approach the issue of digging and categorically deny its significance. Clayey and uncultivated soils without deep penetration will not give good harvests, therefore, for heavy and virgin lands, deep autumn digging is mandatory.
The rule remains unchanged - do not turn over the layer of earth, but move it in one plane! The fact is that many worm bugs live at different depths, so those who are used to living on the surface die under a heavy layer, and vice versa.
Methods for natural cultivation of vegetables in organic farming in the country
At organic farming in the country are guided by several principles:
1. Only animal and plant waste is used as fertilizer. For example, before autumn tillage, dry tops and grass are burned, and the resulting ash is dug up. The main organic fertilizers for growing environmentally friendly products are manure, bird droppings and humus. To produce high-quality humus, it is important to lay it correctly. Also use "" – leftovers of any food products. As a green fertilizer for organic farming in the country apply .
2. Completely abandon herbicides and fungicides. The following come to the aid of gardeners:
- yarrow has a detrimental effect on moths, gall midges and thrips;
- wormwood successfully fights cabbage cutworms, leaf rollers, aphids,;
- chamomile, celandine and nettle have an antiseptic effect;
- sow thistle is an excellent cure for powdery mildew.
3. Plan the planting of vegetables, taking into account the three- or four-year period, as well as the suitable proximity of the plants. In a four-year period, vegetable crops are divided into groups:
- A – green (white and cauliflower cabbage, broccoli, spinach, etc.);
- B – root vegetables (carrots, onions, potatoes, beet, garlic, etc.);
- C – pumpkin and nightshade (except potatoes) – cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, peppers;
- D – legumes.
4. Hybrid varieties are not used, and the seed material is treated with biologically active natural preparations. Extracts and extracts of chamomile, horsetail, garlic, valerian, aloe, etc. are also used for dressing.
5. Be sure to mulch the soil. In nature, the ground is always covered with grass, fallen leaves or pine needles. Green organic matter rots, increasing the layer of humus. Bare soil erodes, moisture quickly evaporates, and the earth becomes compacted.
Suitable for mulching:
- any mown grass (without seeds), straw;
- and humus;
- sawdust, newsprint, cardboard;
- pine needles, cones and crushed tree bark;
- grain husks (wheat, rice, buckwheat);
- drunk tea and coffee.
Grow environmentally friendly crops using organic farming in the country It’s not difficult, but the benefits from it are enormous - your health.
The topic of organic farming is controversial. Despite this, there are more and more adherents of this method of growing crops every season. And this is not without reason - to obtain maximum yields of environmentally friendly products, you only need to create conditions as close as possible to natural ones, and the plants themselves will grow healthy, strong and resistant to pests.
How can this be achieved?
Secret 1: observe nature
Have you ever wondered why in the forest, even despite a dry or wet summer, plants do not get sick and continue to grow and turn green? And why do you have to constantly fight something in your garden: drought, excessive humidity, pests, diseases?
Take a closer look at nature. Plants, having outlived their life, remain on the ground and, decomposing, provide food to the next plants. At the same time, they are decomposed by special microorganisms, fungi and worms - they eat organic matter and transform it into forms accessible to vegetable crops.
If this is how everything happens in nature, maybe it makes sense to apply this knowledge in practice, in your garden? Tens of thousands of farmers do this, proving by personal example that with the application of the basics of organic farming, work becomes easier, product quality improves, and yields increase.
Secret 2: properly care for the soil
To increase soil fertility and reduce financial and labor costs, you need to properly care for your garden.
To do this, you need to abandon digging up the soil and replace this process by loosening the soil to a depth of 5 to 7 cm. This will be quite enough to plant seeds without disturbing the porous structure of the top layer of soil and without killing beneficial soil microorganisms.
To increase the fertile layer of soil, humus, it is necessary to add organic matter to the soil. This can be tops, grass, leaves, food waste and even weeds.
Organics can be added in several ways. The main ones are: sowing green manure, mulching, creating warm beds, composting and mulching.
This rule should not be neglected, because adding organic matter is the main condition for increasing soil fertility. Think for yourself - after all, if a plant has grown, it has accumulated all the chemical elements necessary for life and growth. Having outlived its life and decomposing naturally, the plant gives away the accumulated elements to the next plants. Thus, organic matter is an ideal complex fertilizer.
Secret 3: populate the soil with mushrooms, worms and microorganisms
Of course, in nature, organic residues accumulate over many years and it is difficult to accumulate the required amount of organic matter in your garden in a short time. To speed up this process, you can resort to the help of beneficial microorganisms, as well as fungi and worms.
With their help, organic matter decomposes faster, thereby providing plants with balanced nutrition, while at the same time creating food reserves for future plants. In other words, living organisms accelerate the process of increasing soil fertility.
Have you ever wondered why southern black soils are more fertile than northern ones? The fact is that they accumulate a lot of organic compounds and a lot of soil living organisms. Thanks to the warm climate, they live and reproduce throughout the year. This is confirmed by research by scientists who determined that in the south one hectare of chernozem contains an average of 7.5 tons of living soil microorganisms. In the north this figure is four times less.
To propagate beneficial microorganisms in the soil, you can use microbiological preparations such as Vostok EM-1 and Siyanie.
Secret 4: fighting diseases correctly
Not a single season of growing vegetables is complete without the appearance of diseases. In traditional farming, we are accustomed to using chemicals that destroy not only the disease, but also beneficial microorganisms, thereby reducing soil fertility.
Such preparations cannot be used in organic farming. Therefore, the first rule of a farmer is not to fight, but to prevent disease.
To achieve this, a system of crop rotation, mixed planting, autumn mulching and seasonal soil treatment with biological preparations is being introduced.
Typically the advertising image for organic farming looks like this. The gardener does not need to make any effort: digging the ground, weeding, watering, fertilizing, protecting plants from pests. Mother Nature will do everything herself, just don’t interfere with her. In this case, the yield will be 2-3 times higher than with standard agricultural technology, and of better quality, without nitrates and other traces of “chemicals”. There are no costs for creating greenhouses, greenhouses, or shelters. The earth will also naturally become fatter year after year.
It's a tempting picture, isn't it? Even too tempting to believe...
Indeed, working in collaboration with nature, and not mindlessly depleting its resources for one’s own purposes, leads to an improvement in the quality of both the soil and the crop grown on it. Skillful agricultural technology can prevent the processes of soil degradation, you can even revive life in the completely “killed” soil of wastelands and industrial zones, and restore biological chains.
Natural vegetables and fruits are much healthier than those grown in artificial conditions, using a large number of chemicals. They often have a completely different taste. And proper organization of labor will help to reduce the cost of money and effort to a certain extent.
I can say, as a person who uses many of the principles of organic farming in practice, this is all true. However, some of the statements of the authors who write about this system raise questions; I believe that such “myth” statements should be treated critically. 
1 . Organic farming is opposed to “conventional” farming.
By “traditional,” the authors do not mean the usual old-fashioned methods, but intensive industrial farming using mechanized processing, the application of pesticides, growth regulators and other chemicals. It is unlikely that the owners of personal plots are guilty of all the sins of intensive farming.
Many people farm traditionally, like peasants: they grow a wide range of crops in small areas, do not use heavy equipment to cultivate the land, and are careful with chemicals.
2 . In nature, all plants grow on their own, together, which means that everything can also grow in the garden.
It is, of course, true. Only in a meadow or forest does anything really grow. Mixed up, a little bit of different things. Are there a lot of wild sorrel or, for example, strawberries in the meadow? Usually these are single specimens in lush forbs. A gardener wants to have many necessary plants in one place.
At times, certain plant species begin to dominate nature. It's survival of the fittest here. If you don’t make any effort, then you will have not lettuce and spinach as leafy greens, but nettles and chickweed (by the way, they are also tasty and healthy).
In addition, almost all garden plants are not native to our country. Almost all of them come from more southern ancestors, and over centuries of selection they have largely lost their resistance to natural conditions in order to enhance their commercial qualities. Therefore, leaving them to their fate next to the aborigines is very reckless.
3 . Organic farming is a self-sustaining system.
Without human intervention, the natural biosystem is truly closed - no removal from it occurs. Plants either die and decompose here, or return to the soil through animal waste products. Agriculture is impossible without removing part of the biomass from its place of growth. Wanting to regularly obtain harvests, we regularly collect organic matter. This means that it is impossible to do without introducing fertilizers from outside, even in organic form. 
4
. Mulch is a panacea; it can replace digging, weeding and watering.
This is true! But only in certain natural conditions. Mulching with grass and straw works in the zone of Central Russia and the Black Earth Region. Further to the north and northwest the sun becomes less and less, there is more moisture, and the soil becomes poorer. Soil microorganisms process organic matter more slowly. In cool, rainy summers, the soil under the mulch breathes poorly and turns sour. The grass in the garden beds is rotting. Fungi and mold develop under it, and slugs and woodlice find refuge. All this does not contribute to yield growth.
5 . There are so few pests in natural communities that they are practically safe for plants, and there is no need to fight them.
Maybe. But peaks in the number of insects or outbreaks of diseases in natural communities still occur. Invasions of locusts, meadow moths, leaf-eating caterpillars... Yes, often the root cause of these natural imbalances is human intervention, but our gardens are part of the surrounding world, so they will inevitably suffer from such outbreaks, even if we adhere to the principles of organic farming .
6
. Organic farming is cheap because you don't need to buy fertilizers and chemicals.
It may seem that the financial investment in organic farming will be reduced to the purchase of seeds. However, the same mulch will have to be brought from somewhere. To cover one hundred square meters of garden (10x10 m) with a layer of 20 cm, you need 20 cubic meters of straw cutting. That's 2 trucks! And also manure, sawdust, hay - all this will require certain costs.
7 . There is no need to dig, loosen the soil, or weed - almost no work!
I sowed the seeds directly into the meadow, covered it with straw - and after a couple of months, come back with a wheelbarrow to collect the harvest. This is how some people imagine organic farming.
But you still have to prepare the beds. Some should be loosened, others should be equipped as “warm” ridges, and for others, trenches should be dug. You just don’t need to deeply plow the entire garden, so as not to injure the soil in vain. But there is still work left to prepare compost, herbal and manure infusions for feeding, maintaining the mulch in proper condition... So there will be enough work.
THE TRUTH IS SOMEWHERE NEAR...
So where is the truth? As always, in common sense.
Perhaps you already farm almost according to organic principles: prepare composts, mulch the soil, use herbal infusions to protect against pests. And that is great!
If you see tangible benefits from using thick mulch, continue. Try different materials. In hot, dry summers, the technology is also appropriate in the northern regions.
Try new tools. The flat cutters that are loved by “organics” are really very convenient to use. It is possible that some new techniques will make your work easier.
In general, there is no one-size-fits-all recipe. Think about it, try it, choose. Get to know other people's experiences in organic farming and be sure to share yours - through the "Dacha Council"!
Deep plowing and digging reduce the activity of natural microorganisms, destroy the soil structure and reduce its fertility.
The earth needs to be loosened no deeper than five centimeters using a homemade flat cutter or Fokin flat cutter. This kind of loosening of the soil is quite enough to prepare the soil for planting vegetables, aerate it, and reduce the number of weeds.
The composition and structure of the soil created by previous plantings is not destroyed, the activity of worms and microorganisms living in the soil remains the same.
Be sure to mulch the soil
Organic mulch very well saturates the soil of the site with minerals much needed for plant growth, and also improves its composition, promotes the reproduction of earthworms and other soil organisms.
The content of vermicompost gradually increases in mulched soil. Covered soil is protected from overheating in the sun, and, accordingly, from rapid evaporation of moisture, hypothermia and erosion. Straw, leaves, sawdust, hay, etc. are suitable as mulch.
Maintain crop rotation
Crop rotation, or simply put, alternation, changing crops, helps maintain soil fertility and significantly reduces the number of diseases and pests.
All annual crops should not grow in the same place for the second year in a row - this is the simplest crop rotation scheme.
Complex systems include ten-year rotation patterns of vegetable and fruit crops.
Crop rotation can be carried out according to one of two principles: alternate families or groups of crops (leaf, fruit, root crops) with a minimum rotation plan (usually three to four years).
Make warm beds
The beds are made directly on the compost heap, while still warm - heat is released during the decomposition of organic matter. The temperature of a warm bed is two to four degrees higher than the ambient temperature. This makes it possible to plant plants ahead of schedule. Direct composting on beds with raw organic matter provides the following advantages:
- there is no need to spread ready-made compost over the beds
- carbon dioxide is used completely by plants, while in finished compost its share is significantly lost
- mulch function is performed
- humidity and temperature of the beds are regulated
Note to the gardener:
Green manures are divided into families: legumes, cruciferous and cereals. Legumes enrich the soil with nitrogen.
These include lupine, vetch, peas, soybeans, lentils, sweet clover, sainfoin, clover, and alfalfa.
Cruciferous vegetables (mustard, oilseed radish, rapeseed, rapeseed) saturate it with sulfur and phosphorus.
Grain green manures sprout quickly: wheat, rye, barley, oats, granary. They enrich the soil with potassium and suppress the growth of weeds.
When sowing green manure, observe crop rotation, this way you will saturate the soil with different microelements.
Organic farming – reader responses (transferred from comments)
Over the past 3 years, I have been learning natural farming with interest. We have a training center in Voronezh, where I go to lectures on this topic - very informative! I put a lot of knowledge into practice at my summer cottage.
Soil blanket
Our dacha is located on sandy soil with high acidity, so we have to reduce it. I add humus and chemicals – the bare minimum. My natural farming started with mulching. As soon as the first grass grows in the area in April-May, I begin to create a blanket. Any herb can be used as mulch, but medicinal herbs are preferable.
Around the holiday village there are a lot of nettles, yarrow, wormwood, tansy, celandine, dandelions, burdocks, etc. And there are all sorts of weeds growing in the garden. In the evening I go out on my bike to pick up grass. I cut it with scissors, pack it into large bags, my husband and granddaughter help me. I bring it to the site, lay it out along the edges and between the rows of the strawberry beds, then along the garlic “plantation.”
After a day or two, the mulch dries out and settles. I add a new layer, and so on several times. As a result, the mulch layer reaches 5 cm or more. There is no need to weed - weeds do not grow through the mulch, moisture is retained. Then I mulch other beds with grown plantings. And so all summer. The main thing is to use herbs before they bloom.
The benefits of mulching are obvious. Over the summer, the mulch layer dries out, rots and useful humus is formed. There are much more worms in the ground. The soil does not dry out and does not overheat from the heat. In the fall, I work the remaining mulch into the soil, preparing it for winter sowing.
Natural fertilizers
I use mustard as green manure. She especially loves her potato beds. But we need to try other green manure plants. Oil radish, a plant of the legume family, is highly praised. The main thing is that the earth does not remain bare! After all, in nature something always grows on it, which means that in the garden it needs to be provided with approximately the same conditions.
Spring is early today. Already on March 28th I sowed some carrots. When I was preparing the bed, I noticed that there were a lot of worms in the soil. So my land is alive!
And now a little about feeding plants. I chop up medicinal herbs (and just any weeds) and fill buckets and old flasks with it. I add humus, mullein, ash, add water, cover with lids and put in a cool place for a week. The proportions are all by eye.
When the composition begins to ferment, the smell is very strong and unpleasant, so I put the containers with fertilizer away. And after a week, I filter the infusion and throw the plant residues into the compost. After this, I dilute the fertilizer - 1 liter per 10 liters of water. I water all the plantings with this solution. I do this once every 2 weeks. When you first feed, you can also add 1 tbsp. l. urea per bucket of water for green mass growth. And then you won’t need any artificial additives - only everything natural. Effective - proven!
On high
We fell in love with the raised beds. Every spring we make more and more of them. We have them fenced with boards and slate. There is a lot of information on how to make them. I have been preparing material for these beds all winter. These are cardboard boxes from pizza and pies, newspapers (modern printing inks are less toxic than before). I have plastic trays on the radiator under the kitchen window. In them I dry coffee, tea, egg shells, onion and garlic peels, and citrus peels. I compact the dried material into boxes and take it out to the dacha, so as not to clutter the apartment. And in the spring I put it all in a compost container or on high beds, which will also be warm in the first year (due to the active process of rotting). I use these beds for planting cucumbers, green crops, Chinese cabbage, early tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.
Little tricks
I even learned to dry potato peelings in my apartment in a shoe box under the kitchen radiator. In the spring, I dig dry potato peelings around the currant bushes. Productivity increases noticeably, and pests decrease. But cucumbers, onions and carrots are very fond of tea and coffee. I pour them into the furrow and then sow the seeds.
It is often written that beds for spring sowing and planting are prepared in the fall. I’m not particularly smart about this. In the fall, I scatter humus around the garden. I add mature compost under bushes, flowers and trees. And I do this as late as possible, after the onset of cold weather. I pour it directly onto the grown green manure. So our earth, insulated, goes into winter. And in the spring I loosen the soil early and retain moisture. This is my natural farming.
Organic eco-farming – summer residents share their experience
"Vulgar" summer resident
Everyone always called my site ideal. And I was proud of it. Kept it almost sterile clean. Weeds, waste - everything goes into compost. She dug up the earth both in spring and autumn, removing everything down to the last speck. Beauty. And suddenly I began to notice that my land was slowly beginning to resemble asphalt - after watering and rain, it began to float and crack (photo 1), the harvests were not encouraging. And what surprised me most was the disappearance of the worms: the main thing is that the neighbors have them, but I don’t have a single one. And until then I was at a loss until I came across a book about organic farming. This is where my eyes opened - by removing all the organic matter from the site, I simply starved my worms to death. And by digging up the soil with manic persistence in spring and autumn, I also destroyed beneficial microorganisms living in its different layers.
Dear summer residents, don’t do like me! There is only one harm from such purity. For my own wet nurse, the earth, I was worse than a fierce stepmother.
And for five years now I have been behaving exactly the opposite. Now, from all the nearby landfills, I bring weeded weeds, mown lawn grass, and vegetable waste to my site (I don’t take only tomato and potato tops). I cover the beds and the passages between them with all this goodness. I periodically water them with a solution of fertilizer based on humus and a diluted tincture of fermented grass (1 liter per 1 bucket of water). These tools perform a dual function. Firstly, it provides good feeding, and secondly, the process of biomass decomposition is accelerated. My vegetables really like this mulch, and the underground inhabitants are happy and well-fed.
Since about August, I haven’t laid anything out on the beds - it won’t have time to rot. Instead, I start filling the compost pile.
Actually, I have two of them, I use them in turn: I hammer one, and “unpack” the other, ready from last year. We have a large park area next to our dachas, so I put a large amount of leaves in the compost, sprinkled with earth and vegetable waste; there are also a lot of them in landfills in the fall.
One day, a summer resident I knew, seeing me carrying this “product,” snorted: “Ugh, how vulgar!” And I want to shout: “Long live landfills!” Well, where else can you get so much organic matter? Your own is a drop in the sea. Don't judge me, I actually benefit from them.
Organic cycle
The second cure for my depleted soil was green manure. I don’t dig up the earth anymore. As soon as some bed is free, without removing the half-rotted mulch, I scatter the plant seeds and cover them with a hoe. If it’s dry, I make sure to water it – this way the grass will sprout faster and grow more green mass. Once I sowed rapeseed in two plots: in the one near me I watered the seeds, in the one farther away I was lazy. As a result, on the first everything was thickly overgrown, on the second - barely. And if it weren’t for such a comparison, I would already be screaming that they sold me low-quality seed.
I sow the garlic bed with mustard, and when the time comes to plant its neighbor, it has already grown by 10-15 cm. Then I make holes right along it with a peg and throw garlic cloves into them, covering them with compost. With such planting, 80% of the mustard continues to grow (as can be seen in photo 2). With the onset of cold weather, I fill this bed with leaves. In early spring, I leave everything in the same form: under the weight of snow, the foliage will settle, and the garlic will easily pass through it. But since the ground under the leaves does not warm up immediately, the plants sprout a little later than their neighbors. True, this does not affect the harvest, but weeds do not grow under such mulch. Sometimes I water it, and by autumn almost all the foliage is rotted, and my garlic is beautiful (photo 3)!
After harvesting it (in mid-July), I plant sprouted potatoes in this bed. Last year, on October 19, frost hit and killed the tops. But I dug almost a bucket of potatoes the size of a chicken egg. Such “youth” are good for planting - the variety rejuvenates.
After harvesting the main potatoes, I cut shallow grooves and sow them with rye. Having harrowed it with a rake, I water it. In winter, the area becomes a green carpet (photo 4).
Another secret: after harvesting early vegetables, I sow the plots twice. First I sow fast-growing phacelia and mustard. In September, I chop their juicy greens with a shovel right on the spot, kicking them to the ground. After this, I trim the “pancake” of earth with chopped grass and turn it over. And after that I sow winter rapeseed or rye there and close it up with a hoe. I definitely water it if it's dry. And the grown greenery holds back the snow.
In spring, rapeseed and rye continue to increase their green mass. A week before planting any crop, I again chop the greens and turn over the earthen “pancake”. And where the phacelia and mustard have gone into the winter, as soon as the snow melts, I scatter mustard over the phacelia, and phacelia over the mustard. The soil at this time is still damp, and green manure has time to grow before the main plantings. I cut furrows for onions right along them, dig holes for tomatoes and peppers and pour compost and ash into them.
Green manure and vegetables grow together until there is waste in landfills. Then I trim the green manure, leaving it in place, and fill it with waste. And then read it first. This is the cycle I have in my garden. The main thing is not to pull out the green manure with its roots. The more dead roots left in the soil, the more porous it becomes. I even leave the root systems of tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and flowers before winter. The beard of small roots is processed by worms over the winter, and the large part is easy to pull out of the ground in the spring. Now let me sum it up.
You won't be able to beat your head
- Mustard. It sprouts and grows quickly, heals the soil, wireworms don’t like it, it attracts bees, but you don’t need to sow it thickly, otherwise there won’t be fluffy green mass.
- Winter rapeseed. It increases fertility as well as manure, prevents the growth of weeds, and enriches the soil with phosphorus and sulfur. You need to chop it before flowering, otherwise it will become very tough.
- Rye. It fluffs up the soil very well, enriches it with potassium and nitrogen, and suppresses weeds. It is not worth planting in one place every year, because wireworms may appear.
- Phacelia. It is unpretentious, grows quickly and decomposes in the soil, suppresses weeds best of all, expels wireworms, and withstands frosts down to -7°. It blooms for almost a month, the aroma is honey. The bees are simply crazy about it, which is important for all crops blooming in the country. When seeds begin to form, I sometimes cut it off and put it in the place I need, where it crumbles and begins to grow again.
- Beans and peas. I also sow the excess of these legumes as green manure. They enrich the soil with nitrogen. Peas can be sown immediately after the snow melts, and beans are heat-loving.
These are my observations. And since I carry out all the work at an accelerated pace (thanks to the same landfills and park area), I can brag. Now I have a lot of worms - large, fat ones, my soul rejoices looking at them. The land has improved noticeably. The top layer is coarse, the color has even become darker. And the harvests are encouraging.
By the way, I do not agree with those who consider organic farming to be easy work. Not digging is only a quarter of the battle.
A large amount of mulch is needed. You need to sow green manure, incorporate them into the soil, etc. It seems to me that someone who doesn’t actually do it speaks about ease. I wish everyone great harvests.
Organic harvests
We are for organic farming, and our goal is to obtain an environmentally friendly harvest. Therefore, we try to select natural fertilizers and means of protection against pests and diseases.
Zucchini abundance
We do preventive treatments against diseases at least twice a month. We alternate between different drugs. We use exclusively biological fungicides: Fitosporin, Fitop-Florz-S, Alirin, Gamair (the last two are mixed after dilution according to the instructions). They contain beneficial bacteria that prevent the development of pathogenic microflora. We use it immediately, because working solutions prepared on the basis of beneficial bacteria cannot be stored. If it rains, repeat spraying. We feed the plants with a “cocktail”: add soft humine potassium fertilizer diluted according to the instructions to a solution of chicken manure (1:20) or vermicompost (zucchini especially needs potassium at the time of fruiting).
Despite all efforts, at the end of July, initial signs of powdery mildew were noticed on the bush of the new variety Patio Star. To prevent its further development, the plant was sprayed with the anti-stress drug Stimul and treated with fungicides every 10 days for prevention.
Of the new products this year, I especially liked the portioned zucchini. Many people are familiar with the situation when, during cooking, large zucchini fruits are not completely removed and then often wither in the refrigerator. But Portioned zucchini got its name for its compact size - it is a one-time fruit. In addition, it is very productive and disease resistant. In our opinion, it still has a drawback - it shoots long lashes, but we did not pinch them.
And not only the little blue ones
We grow eggplants of different varieties and hybrids - it’s much more interesting.
We feed them (usually at least twice a month) with the same “cocktail”, spray them with any anti-stress drug (Ecogel, Zircon, Narcissus, Stimul, Eco-pin - they can be used on all crops twice a month, alternating root and foliar processing) and add Fitoverm for prevention, because Eggplants are often damaged by spider mites. Such feeding is especially important during the fruiting period. We regularly carry out “green” operations: we clear the stems from the stepsons, we form the plants into three stems. We don’t delay harvesting, because the more often you pick the fruits, the more fruits will set. Now, at the end of August,
when the nights become cold and excess moisture promotes the development of fungi and bacteria, we intensify care, because if measures are not taken, the eggplants will begin to get sick. Spraying with biological fungicides began to be done weekly, and the beds with plants were covered with white non-woven material.
Tomatoes until autumn
When tomatoes ripen en masse in a greenhouse, many summer residents lose their vigilance, because here it is, the treasured harvest, just have time to collect it. But, if you want to extend fruiting until late autumn, continue to regularly care for your plants. Since August, we have been treating the bushes weekly against diseases with any biological fungicide, alternating root and foliar treatments. Twice a month we spray tomatoes with an anti-stress preparation. During fruit ripening, the need for potassium increases sharply. Therefore, once at the root, water the tomatoes with infusion of ash. Once a week we fertilize the plants with the already well-known “cocktail”, but at this time, instead of 1:20, we dilute the chicken manure to 1:60 in order to reduce the nitrogen rate to a minimum, but we give potassium according to the instructions for the preparation.
Marina RYKALINA and Vitaly DEKABREV
Transforming the earth through organic methods
I also want to tell you how I came to organic farming and how my land was completely transformed in three years. I live in a village - a house and 27 acres of land: 24 next to the house (the land here is light, sod-podzolic), and 3 acres separately, 300 meters away, under a steep hill, where there is heavy loam. Previously, when they plowed with a horse, they made the beds right away, and the soil did not have time to dry out. Four years ago I asked to plow the garden and cut the ridges by Saturday (by connecting two ridges together, we get a garden bed).
Due to circumstances, the owner of the tractor plowed on Tuesday. With clear weather and temperatures of 20°, by Saturday all the ridges had turned into large, hard clay blocks. How to break them? It’s a pity to break the flat cutter; the teeth of the garden fork broke off. There’s nothing to say about the arms and back... It would be much easier to dig with a shovel, but what’s done is done. Remembering all the obscene words I knew, I said that the tractor would not enter my garden again.
Wheatgrass, nettles, and euphorbia climb from the boundary through the furrow into the beds. It is much easier to remove them with a hand cultivator than with a flat cutter or fork. I used a shovel only to compact the edges of the ridges, but now I’ve stopped doing that too. I form the beds with a flat cutter, raking the soil from the furrows, and leave the edges loose. Somehow, while working, I didn’t even notice, but as I climbed the hill, I felt that my back didn’t hurt! My forearms were tired from unaccustomed use, and only because the soil was very dense in the first year. I immediately advertised the manual cultivator to everyone I knew: for a bad back, it’s just a godsend! You only need to bend down to pick up the roots of the weeds, but there are fewer and fewer of them every year.
In general, I made a garden bed and planted everything. In August, after removing the onions, I sowed mustard and oats. And having removed the carrots, beets, radishes and cabbage, I left the entire leaf in place - and so everything went under the snow. In the spring, there was a little mustard straw and cuttings from cabbage leaves lying on the garden bed, everything else was eaten. When I pulled out the cabbage stalks (and in the spring they come out easily), earthworms swarmed on the roots, not one at a time, but in groups of several.
I loosened the bed directly with the straw using a cultivator. The ground became softer, the teeth easily entered the soil without much effort, and I did it much faster than the previous year. In the summer I sowed oats and mustard again and again left everything under the snow. And by the third spring the soil was already so soft and loose that there was no point in loosening it! Using a flat cutter, like a hoe, I lightly chopped the mustard straw, cut off the weeds in the furrows - and that’s it, the bed was ready.
The soil when cut resembles a sponge, porous. I have never seen so many worms in the beds, except perhaps under a pile of manure. There is no crust, no floating earth. The area dried out very quickly, although there is a swamp nearby. I haven’t applied manure for more than three years, but the soil fertility is not decreasing – on the contrary! From a planted bucket of onions (family) 8-10 (!) buckets grow, and carrots and beets have only one drawback - they are too large. This year the cabbage heads didn’t fit into the bag, but it was quite big – it was from a feed bag.
I’ll admit right away: I don’t pamper my plants with special care. I never water onions, carrots, or beets. Cabbage - only in the holes when planting, and I cover it with dry soil on top.
Only tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse receive liquid fertilizing. In the open ground, I water only cucumbers (the bed is covered on top of the soil with film or black spunbond) and young apple trees. The rest all survives on its own. I cover tomatoes and zucchini with mown grass, strawberries with newspapers and a thin layer of sawdust on top. By the way, this is what saved it from freezing in the snowless autumn of 2014, when frosts hit -17°. The neighbors' strawberries were all frozen.
Compost maturation is a long process. In addition, during the winter the contents of the box or pit freeze and thaw quite late - somewhere around mid-May. To speed things up, pour plenty of warm water over the compost, but never boiling water! If you urgently need to defrost the compost, sprinkle ash on top and water it with hot water three times a day. Cover with film or burlap at night.
Neither thick nor empty
I would also like to tell you how I grow vegetables. The bed is long, more than 30 m. After loosening it with a flat cutter or cultivator, it is smooth and loose. I don’t level it with a rake; I use a flat cutter or a slate to make furrows along the ridge. The first one is closer to the edge, retreating 3-4 cm. I sow carrots into it, not densely, with a seeder, after 3-4 cm. If two seeds fall somewhere, I leave them: they won’t grow so huge. Having retreated 30 cm, I make the next furrow, then two more after 25-30 cm. I add a little ash into them and plant onions.
The distance between the bulbs is 15 cm if small, and 20-25 cm if large. I plant the seedlings in the outer furrow. The bed is wide, but I weed it, loosening it with a small flat cutter on a long handle. I leave the grass in place: it dries out very quickly, single stems take root (I will remove them during the next weeding before lodging the feather). When the onions begin to turn yellow, somewhere in the first ten days of June, in rainy weather I sprinkle salt (not thickly). If the tips of the feathers turn very yellow, you can add a little urea to the salt - the feathers begin to actively grow.
I harvest when the neck dries, and the sets when they fall down. And immediately I sow mustard and oats. I make furrows with a flat cutter, scatter the seeds, level them: if you sow on top and harrow them with a rake, the birds will peck. I pre-soak the oats. Carrots and seedlings remain in the garden. I throw mustard seeds between the onion bulbs, they sprout, grow and by the time the onions are harvested they reach a height of 15-20 cm. They grow even more in September.
In the furrow where the seedlings grow, I sow beets with seeds. It’s also not a lot: where two or three sprout, I leave it - the root crops will not be so large. I prefer varieties with small tops, such as Detroit, Pablo - they have thin skin, without ringing, sweet, juicy. I also sow radishes in the furrow - they grow better than in the garden. I plant cabbage at one end of the bed, alternating with onions every other year, and swap carrots with onions.
Where green manure is not sown, I leave vegetable tops there for the winter. Under the cabbage in the holes I put half a handful of dolomite flour, a pinch of superphosphate, and a little ash. I water and plant seedlings in the dirt. I sprinkle dry soil on top, and that’s it - there will be no more watering. But you will have to treat the cruciferous flea beetle. Moreover, any of the chemicals: ash does not help. Countless hordes attack and instantly suck the juices from the tender leaves of the core.
Salad onions, no problem
This is how I grow my garden. The longest job is weeding in a carrot row, where I pick out blades of grass with my hands. I don’t go close to plants with a flat cutter so that...
I don’t treat carrot and onion flies with anything, there are no wormy carrots, and several nests on onions may be affected, but this is a drop in the ocean.
In addition to family onions and sets, I have been planting seeds for several years now. I sow the seeds on March 8-12 in half-liter tall plastic containers or 0.5 liter plastic cups. I sow them 1-2 cm apart from each other, so they can be seen better in the snow, and sprinkle them with earth. Before germination I put it in a dark place. When loops appear, I remove the lid from the container and place it on the windowsill. I plant it in the garden around May 9th. I look at the forecast so that there are no frosts in the coming days - then they are no longer scary.
I make furrows, water generously and lay out the roots in the mud. I try not to bury the onions, which are the size of a match head, too deep. If the weather is hot, I water it several times. The care is usual - weeding, loosening, the bed is well fertilized, so I don’t feed it with anything. I remove it in September, when the neck becomes soft and the feathers fall down.
The bulbs grow weighing up to 600 g. There is only one drawback: you need to eat everything within three months - the onions are so juicy that they cannot be stored for a long time. What we don’t have time to eat, I give to friends. Even his grandson, when he was three years old, asked: “Yuba, give me Yuka!” (He hasn’t pronounced the letter “L” yet). And he ate it raw, to the horror of his mother, who doesn’t eat onions at all.
I highly recommend that all summer residents grow Exhibition. The fly doesn’t touch it, there’s no hassle with it, you just need to spend a little more time on planting than on sowing, and that’s all.
Please note: the container for onion seedlings should not be too shallow, the depth should be at least 10-12 cm. When planting, you can trim the roots and feathers, although you don’t have to do this, it still grows well. But it’s better to buy good seeds. Over the years I have bought Dutch ones: germination is excellent. But this year I was somehow on the lookout and bought it in a simple white bag. It hasn't grown at all! It seems to taste similar, but the onion itself is not so large, and the color of the outer scales is darker.
And now my wish to all summer residents: do not be afraid to part with a shovel! You don’t have to waste tons of land; spare the land, your hands, and your back. I only use a shovel to dig planting holes for trees, and, as you can see, nothing bad has happened: the yields are not decreasing.
Vera KNYAZEVA, Voronezh and Nadezhda Nikolaevna Teplyakova, Tambov
: Crop rotation and cucumbers So, your story...
