Jim Cronin - "Combining Green Manures with Compost" - Biological Farming Conference 2018

: and I've been involved in farming and horticulture of my own life and second or third-generation farmer and second generation market gardener so his farm on a very small acreage farm with 15 acres of land and grow 2 acres of vegetables intensively and what I want to talk about is open to everybody it's open to organic non organic whatever type of farmer and I think what I want to talk about is that it can be used in any system it's kind of a mindset it's about biological farming and it can be used in any system and what I'm going to focus on hearty culture because that's my specialty but any kind of adamant that you can carry it true into grassland and into cereals and into other areas but it's hard to culture that I've worked on so basically what happened was to tell the story the I was trained in conventional hearty culture what in conventional hearty culture on various farms and became quite disillusioned with the system and how it was working and how we were treating the land and then I switched over to organics a lot of years ago switched over to organics another years ago and basically I had trained in conventional horticulture and I had a reasonably good understanding of the use of fungicides and insecticides and herbicides and I moved over to organic and because I had trained in conventional horticulture when I looked at what was going on in organic I thought this isn't work organically I thought this isn't working so basically what happened and I'm talking about the early issues what happened was there was a group of us got into organic horticulture in the early eighties environment and we had a huge issue with weeds for instance so what we did was we covered most of our home things with plastic and we grew through plastic now okay it was on a small scale but the same thing is happening today on a larger area in organic farming last day the fields have been covered in bio starch so it's the same kind of issues you can multiply it yourself it doesn't mean arts as Molly acreage it doesn't matter you can multiply up all the causes and effects so we came along we covered it in plastic and I so there was kind of a whole key of issues that developed over the years and basically and with my slides will show that bush basically you know we covered in plastic were going through plastic and I thought this is the most goddamn awful job I'm not a cat that layer I'm a gardener on the farmer and pulling in and pulling out sheets of plastic out of Polly tunnels is like covering as a silage stamp on a windy day so I just thought this is not from me just doesn't work and then also I was quite disappointed with the flavor of the food I was producing I was quite disappointed with the flavor of the food that I was producing I almost felt that it had a kind of a plastic like residue taste to it and I thought oh god that's not what I want to be then I progressed along and what happened was I noticed that with various methods of farming that I was using my perennial weed population was increasing and you know kind of the thing was then artists it's gone out of control put it back into red clover for a couple years and give it a rest give it a food whatever I come back into production but of course the seeds of the premium wheels were in the ground so when we came back into production again the perennial wheat came back and so there was kind of a a whole range of developments that happened or kind of light bulb moments and I began to kind of really look at this and then I began to I began to read I began to read all about different guys like re simmer and people like this and about what they were doing and their approach to biological family and I thought okay that's good that makes sense I'm going to try it out I got I got to wean myself off to plastic I'm going to get it I'm going to get my hand I gotta get a handle on this week control thing because I'm not going to lie on my belly or expect somebody else to do it on a machine behind the tractor hand reading so I got to get the other thing I thought is I'm not going to cultivate the hell out of my style in order to control the weed now I could give you twenty trains of toss that went down around this that brought me to biological family so that was all that and then the other thing was that I have to say there's always kind of a fun element in my family and a fun element in my way of thinking and as somebody as Nick McHugh said I firm on a very wet piece of acidic land in East here and you know I drive down through Blackwater Valley I Drive over to Carroll or drive all these places and I'd see all these guys powering on with tractors and I thought I want to be one of them I want to do that type of farming but still I want to leave a nice layer and in a way that kind of introduced me to green manures it's a very kind of a silly way for it to happen but it introduced me to green manures because most of our work is sewing stuff precision ly in plug trays or directly into the ground or whatever and certainly I could get 25 kilos a buck wish I could go out I could broadcast it I could get my horses and I could go for it with an 8-foot Harrow okay there's only half an acre for at least I could have a go at that type of farming so that's kind of what got me into green manures so it's not all other stuff too like heavy-duty stuff you know and so basically so I began this whole journey and I found a whole range of and I'm still learning the whole process but basically what I found out the first thing that I found out is that our time is here in Ireland our sight type is very different to anywhere else in the world we have our own climate and what works well in the States what works well in England what works well in Germany might initially work in Ireland that was one thing I found out the second thing I found out was that they for instance is that with green manures that de-seeding the seeding rate that's recommended in England is suitable for fields Gill cover crops green manures but it doesn't actually work for intensive horticulture because in intensive horticulture we have a lot of available nutrients available very quickly post crap are we have been hanging around and we need to mock them off with a cover crop because if we don't mark them up with proper cup a weed will pass out the cover crop then they cover the cover crop that will succeed given in the nutrient that's most dominant or available a cover a weed will pass it out and that's totally a waste of space if you have your ground becoming more weedy so in a horticulturist situation and now this is recognized around the world that our seeding way it needs to be double the recommended rate for field race is that clear okay so then so then I went on and and I found out that it's a very particular group of species of of green manures that grow very well in Ireland and like we'd love to be we'd all love to be grown alfalfa okay alfalfa will grow here in certain size and in certain years push alfalfa won't grow everywhere in Ireland because of our pH because of our size type so it's a very unique group the next thing about it was that they they always talked about this winter killed and we you know interstates in Europe and you get this fantastic winter tale where the cover crop is killed over the winter and basically in the springtime you get a tree in seed bed we don't get that type of winter killer in Ireland most pieces what we get what we get is we get a damp year a damn a lot of growth in the winter our growth doesn't shut down for a long time to bring in your keeps growing and basically what happens is that the green manure then dies out in big patches in the field and that large patch in the field in turn soaks quite a lot of water a lot of rain that can fall in january/february to year and as a consequence of that we get perennial weeds so we are very the reason I'm just picking up on those couple of pints I could actually talk for three days about cover crops Bush it's a very unique it's a very unique climate we have it's a very unique range of copper crops that grow and even in relation to the establishment of the green manures on the cover crops it's unique how we have to incorporate them how we have to tell the syle all those type of issues you know you'd see you'll see videos or whatever up to states where they kind of plow on very often we can't plow on we just have to slow down and make sure we get that seed well covered it's a very very different circumstances okay so I just have it and like the thing about it is so my question is like my question is does biological farming work does biological farm farming work okay and so I've been working on this now for a good few years and I would say it does I would say it does and basically here's a cover crop and the cover crop here is a very a very diverse species and and it's true for what all the specialists say how much of all the research say is that the higher the diversity the healthier the silo underneath I found that firsthand and I've seen the result first hand because how I can see the result firsthand is that I have a cover crop and then I grow a bed of rocket for example I know that that top t square little bed of rocket can yield 232 kilos in a season and if it only if it only yields a hundred kilos well then something is wrong my my information is very quickly available from what I do it's very very quick turnaround so so here's a cover crop and it's true that a diverse species builds good sign ok that's one thing the other thing that's interesting about cover crops is that you can actually separate out the cover crops and you can use various crops to remedy the ills on your side you can use various crops to remedy the ills you can also use various cover crops to mop up nutrients so they are like an incredible interesting crop to grow so in that in that regard and we have used them very successfully on a programming karke where the ground was infested with perennial weeds and we did a cover cropping see grunts primarily buckwheat and cereal ride for a season and we eliminated the perennial weeds and this was observed by non organic farmers as well so so they have a very very clear role to play in the control of weeds and in the balancing of nutrients that's my experience and when I go when I go to a farm and I see somebody saying I have a big problem with scotch and I'm going to I'm going to just get in with a Harrow I got to plow it up I'm going to get in with a springtime Harrow and I physically going to wake it all to the headland and burnish I'm thinking you're burning your fertility you're burning your miner nutrients why don't you harvest the potential of the Scotch in situ and leave the minerals leave the nutrients leave whatever biology it has there in seat you and harvest and change the metabolism of the soil in order that it doesn't grow perennial wheat that is the basic wooded basic piece of biological farming in my opinion you've changed the biological status of the sign and the weed will fade away okay so that's that's my diverse mix okay the interesting thing is the slice that I'm showing most of them are from a bitter land that I rented and over the road just two years ago so basically what happened was a bishop it was a bitter land it was a tree or a field and it was idle for 17 years it had it had briars nettles ducks you name a dis height no animal had stood in it and it had no input for 17 years it's very it's very valuable land for development and basically the people gathered to me and I spent one year cleaning it up and harvesting the fertility that was in the darks the nettles the whatever and trying to maintain the biology that was in decide that's what I spent one year doing and I thought okay when they get me the three acres I thought bingo this is going to test almighty Rees okay so that's the cover crop and that was and I grew many different types of cover crops at many different and rates to see the impact it had on the soil and on the weeds that's the cover crop a really dirty piece of ground there's no docks there's no docks does no there's no Nettles there's no other weeds coming the cover crop has out completely now I went on and followed me turnover of a cover crop but my argument is I changed the biology at the side I changed the biology decide so that was that's one of the things then this is just so simple this is just so simple of a concept and the concept is that they the manure the manure the manure the compost the fertility source you put onto your ground should be biologically enhanced and if it's biologically enhanced it will not grow weeds between if it's biologically balanced by logically enhanced it will grow crop and it will not grow weeds that's a theory and this is me trying to figure it out does it work and this was a very simple slide this is a crop of spinach it was planted and they they they basically the side was fertilized with an own compost raw manure so it wasn't mean you're 50 percent straw 50 percent animal and laughter nitrogen in it a lot of nitrogen freely available and the concept of biological farming is the soil has to work too hard to swallow that manure okay so very very simple concept and like when you think in organics what did we do what did we do forever what we did forever was we got 25-ton a family of manure on composter out of the shed with we treat Roo it onto ploughed ground our make whatever type of ground we flew it onto plowed ground and we plowed it down and made it an aerobic biological farming is all about or 202 so here's one composter same crop planted the same day same bed look at the difference isn't that mad that mad so simple so simple okay there was a bit of energy expanded in in preparing the compost with colors how many okay I was very young so that isn't that mad and and and like I mean I too that I cook one in a hole in a whole series of things about which spinach tastes better than all that okay here's here's my next slide and that's just a green manure again showing the diverse species okay I once I spoke about that this is interesting okay so I want to try out this biological farming okay so this is a polytunnel and this is at home it was taken last week and the polytunnel the planet on earth was only covered there about a month ago okay and so basically the mighty rehear is and this comes from a lot of people so what they were to put forward to us all the experts is the most of the nutrition is in decide 95% of the nutrition is in this aisle it's being spoken about here over the last day and a half 95% is undecided and if you get the biology active the crop will grow the weeds won't grow okay so I had to try that out so what did I do what did we do we were a team what we did was we got a feat we got a field we were going to put up a new polytunnel it was virgin land we called her was grassland and we got a couple of billions of old silage so we got an acidic product and all silage that was punctured that was damaged and we ruled out to be in the silage onto the grassland okay on to that old silage we added a couple of wheelbarrows of compost activation well it's compost from our own compost heaps that was an activator onto the silage and we put on a little bit of seaweed meal very unscientific and into that into that area din we brew a fine crop of pumpkins okay we came out of the pumpkins we took after pumpkins and I lightly tilled the land I erase at the land the one thing I thought after the pumpkins and just virtue by virtue of the growing season the missing ingredient was oxygen I lightly activated the land and my two interns made it up into a series of 50-inch beds nine beds in the polytunnel and this is the crop taken last week these are the plants the plants were in are only in the ground 15 16 days the interesting thing I'm interested in what's above the ground but I'm more interested in what's in the root ball so what does that tell us that tells us that we're expending a lot of energy spread and a lot of fertilizer and a lot of what we need is actually in the silo already but we have to be able to harvest okay and so is it biologically balanced a tunnel I'd without testing it I would hazard the guess the crop is uniform it tastes good and there's no weeds there's no weeds out completely just no chickweed so there is sometimes a nitrogen floating around you know this is the field the same field that we took over okay and I'll put my hat on us this is the standard of this might sound a bit big-headed this is the standard of organic horticulture vegetable production that we have to achieve in Ireland this is the standard this and it can be done with biological family and does and most most of the research around this type of farming has been done in the States by these guys so in Europe but a hell of a lot of it has been done in the States and the basic like there's a family called the nard else who have done a pilot work around this for 25 years and our basic principle is weed we decide not the crop build the biology that weeding the crop is a waste of space this field of one and a half acres got incidental hand weeding we walk through it a few times during the year chatting and spending maybe 20 or 30 minutes pulling out an odd duck why why is it why is it clean it's teeny because it's biologically balanced that's why it's chicken it's sorry Gary I just written okay and my final slide okay that's my son he's six foot five okay and he's standing amongst a crowd of sunflowers the only the only amendment that that sunflower got to grow was the sod the sod no fertilizer no nothing so the purpose of this experiment was is there very often enough fertility in the soil to grow a crop or is there are we are we not happen into the full potential of our site about [Applause] very good I think you got you

Channel: National Organic Training Skillnet

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Keywords: biological farming conference, farming conference tullamore 2018, jim cronin, national organic training skillnet, farming conference ireland

Id: wQTXdm98NW0

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019