I just keep hearing more and more from growers who are doing No Till, whether with our custom Bed Liners or our traditional round pots. I’m going to start this method on some level myself soon but was wondering if anyone was doing it like this, and what your feedback is. No till 4 life? Yay or nay???
I do no-till in about sixty 15g fabric pots for mother plants, using a version of Clackamas Coots’ soil formula and care routine. Making the soil isn’t cheap, but once a pot’s established the labor and inputs to keep it going are minimal. The mothers stay healthy and vigorous in there indefinitely.
We also do our outdoor flowering plants with a similar system, though in the ground, and I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Flavor and smoothness are superb, labor and inputs are minimal, and the soil just keeps getting better instead of being stripped and abused every year.
IMO it’s not practical in pots smaller than 15g or so, and fabric pots are essential if a plant is spending more than a few weeks in one place
Once soil is prepared, what are you adding mid cycle. Teas? Compost? Thanks for the feedback!
The mothers get top dressed with ground malted barley about every ten days, get occasional kelp/neem seed tea, and regular compost tea applications. Prunings get returned as a mulch layer, as does cover crop (clover)
I know a few growers who haven’t changed out the soil in their bed liners for over four years doing no till. The flower seems to get better with every round!
Are there any @mastergrowers or @growopowners who have used these bed liners doing a no till garden? I’d be curious to see this applied in a commercial format.
drhemp: what is the deal with ** ground
malted barley** ? Why are you using it? What does it bring to
the soil? How available is it, and where?
Barley provides natural enzymes and hormones, namely gibberellin, abscisic acid, and indole-3-acetic acid. As I understand it, it has less to do with the grain and more to do with the associated fungus and bacteria on the grain. It can be used to aid transplant establishment and flower induction. I believe you want to malt the barley yourself in a compost tea, adding Lacto bacillus to aid ideal fermentation is a benefit. I intend to make a tea from malted barley as well as alfalfa for the triacontanol, which is said to boost performance during flowering.
Barley
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1995.tb00872.x
Alfalfa
Excellent! Thank you… It’s always good to learn
something new.
The malted barley flour also gives soil microbes a little sugar buzz =)
Microbial magic will constantly keep it munching. Long chain sugars and 1 billion different cfus added to your no till to keep it digestion. Also add volcanic ash it’ll help add silicon to the plant and oxygen in the roots zone