Natural Farming Course

A group of us volunteers did a 2 day course on Natural farming in Nov 2023 by Kutluhan and Rubina from //www.naturalfarmshizen.org/ @natural.farm.shizen in Italy and who travel to many different places to teach this simple, hands off approach to growing.

Natural Farming methods are based upon the philosophy and work of Masanobu Fukuoka (1915-2008) a Japanese farmer and philosopher celebrated for his natural farming and re-vegetation of desertified lands. He was a proponent of no-till, herbicide and pesticide free cultivation methods from which he created a particular method of agriculture, commonly referred to as “natural farming” or “do-nothing farming”. He realised our disconnect from nature was causing destruction and dedicated his life to showing ways to let nature lead the way. Read his book The One-Straw Revolution.

The course held at the Ecopark and @communityroots.cornwall focused on methods to awaken the soil which involves sowing green manure seeds and lots of mulching. The aim of this type of growing is to end up not ever having to weed, fertilise or even water the vegetables and get an abundance of crops. The earth cultivates itself naturally by means of the penetration of plant roots and the activity of microorganisms, small animals, and earthworms. We made 100s of seedballs from clay with a big mix of green manure seeds; alfalfa, vetch, rye, radish, clover & mustard and have already thrown these in a patch in the orchard as the first step.

We also learnt to look at growing fruit trees in a totally new way and learnt about the benefits of planting fruit trees from seed and benefits of not pruning at all! Orchards like ours generally always clone successful fruit trees via grafting onto rootstock. This produces great crops and preserves wonderful heritage varieties but there are a lot of advantages to planting some trees naturally by seed. We may not know what type of apple we may get but creating a completely new variety brings more biodiversity rather than always cloning existing fruit trees.

Kutluhan explained that we manipulate our fruit trees in so many ways; grafting, pruning and even cloning the rootstocks via micro propogation to manipulate the size of the tree. A tree grown from seed develops a strong taproot and can live to over a 100 years whereas a grafted, pruned apple tree often only lives to half that age.

Big thank you to Jo Riley @growingandthrowing who arranged the whole course. Was lovely to spend time with a great group of people working on many different growing projects in Cornwall and the potluck lunches we shared were amazing!!

When we got back to the orchard, we decided where to test out the natural farming methods and chose a grassed area alongside our veggie garden. We cut the grass short, forked the entire area with normal forks and a broadfork (this is only necessary if land is very compacted), covered with some compost & horse manure, threw our seed balls and covered them over again with the cut grass and some bracken. The green manure seeds used in the seed balls were a mix of Alfalfa, Crimson Clover, Fodder Radish, Grazing Rye, Italian Rye grass, Mustard, Red Clover, Vetches, Radish dalkon, Scorzonera Enorma and Broad beans Super Aquadulce, all mixed together with clay and rolled to the size of an olive.  This green manure grows up, aerates the soil and fixes nitrogen. In the spring if we want to plant vegetables in this area, we would then cut it down, leave it on the ground to become rich mulch and would add an extra mulch of straw, hay & bracken (aprox 20cm deep). Vegetables are then planted within this mulch.

Once your land is fertile, no organic material or compost should need to be brought in.
Constantly bringing in compost is unnecessary but in the first years we are stimulating the process of bringing the soil back to life, adding fertility so micro-organisms can do their thing.

Here are some of the notes from the course.

Green Manure: 

  • Green manure seeds are usually cereals like rye, barley; Brassica family – radish, beet, horseradish; Nitrogen fixing family – lupin,
    broad beans, clover, alfalfa, caliente mustard seed
  • These plants will grow 1.5-10m depth of roots, creating aeration in the soil and are nitrogen fixing.
  • Alfalfa doesn’t need water as can grow very deep roots. 25-30m, deeper than some trees. Lives 30-40 years if left alone. It’s a nitrogen fixing and edible plant, very nutritious, flowers in Summer (bees love them) and makes water available for the other plants. In an orchard it can be a very important plant in between trees to help bring water upwards.
  • Vetch grows after Winter, produces seeds, dies before summer and leaves a mulch.

Why Natural Farming / Regenerative Farming / No Ploughing / no Fertilising / no chemicals / no weedkiller is so important

  • The use of fertilisers brings the need for pesticides, irrigation and fungicides. A cycle of destruction.
  • 90,000 millions of topsoil lost to ploughing every year, 15T per person per year
  • Rain washes away the soil from the ploughed fields and ends up in the ocean.
  • 1 plough – takes the soil back 50 years in fertility.
  • Soil is made up of sand, clay, stones and hummus.
  • Ploughing…the lighter materials are washed away, leaving the heavier stuff. Stoney soil and clay soil, which is not good for drainage. Water runs off. No air. No life!

Compost

  • Once your land is fertile, no organic material or compost should need to be brought in.
  • Constantly bringing in compost is unnecessary, soil is like a society / community – closed cycle.
  • In the first years we are stimulating the process of bring the soil back to life, adding fertility so micro-organisms can do their thing.
  • Add up to 4kg of compost per square meter, depending on where you are.  2nd year 50%, 3rd year 25%, 4th year 25%
  • For every 1% increase in soil fertility each 1000sqm of land will hold an extra 10,000 litres of rainwater. This equates to 100,000 litres of water for a hectare.