I’m excited to introduce Steve Szudera from North Dakota who’s going to talk to us about No-Till Farming and soil health, we talked a little bit before when he did an interview with me.
Check out Steve’s website at tabletopfarmer.com
grain farm
western North Dakota, eastern Montana on the border
going through some drought
tired of watching the soil
blow away
1981 made our first no till pass
In ’82 I bought my own drill we were doing it for wind and water erosion
In the 90’s we had created a mono culture
wheat on wheat on wheat
Our first rotation was field peas that helped tremendously!
towards the mid 90s
a little bit further
I was introduced to Dr. Dwayne Beck
he’s still on that research
similar to whats in the prairie
so we started adding a more diverse rotation, teaching us we had to add similar to what’s in the prairie. We started adding a more diverse rotation to that
warm season grasses
warm season broadleaf
cool season grass and broadleaf
get intensity up
how to use whole water profile not just the top
a lot of our nitrates were going
at some point in time goes into
Then about four years ago this month I was at a conference for a different reason
I mentioned something I was interested in doing for the last several years
teaching gardeners what I was doing.
how to take the principles I have learned and teach it to gardeners.
very little information
about no-till gardening 4 years ago
out there by myself doing a lot of things
I did some suggestions
It started out as a container situation
The first one failed miserably and I knew we had to change our
media mix
two and a half years go, three
struggle
What do you mean by container thing?
container gardening indoor
what they watered indoor
grow boxes
earth boxes
build living soil indoors
Take that environment I have growing outdoors and bring it indoors
I took a bobcat out in one of my fields, we ended up there for 3-4 days trying to figure out how are we gonna capture our soil
At that time it was 34 years of continuous no-till, every time we tried to capture a 12 foot profile it would just fall apart
so alive
and crumbly
wouldn’t stay together
soil that is
living rich soil
wants to just crumble
12 inches deep
We eventually accomplished that we built a box around it in the fired brought it indoors and it failed miserably that soil indoors
So we had to establish a media mix that will work for raised beds as well as container gardening. We were able to do that about 3 years ago and then apply the principles we use in a no-till scenario of building nutrient rich soil and doing it in a container making it so it survives
we work on a lot of testing things yet
always improving things
tabletop farmer
in that error where we can teach people how to thrive.
there was a lot of demand to take it outdoors
We started looking for people who had gardens, we could take gardens that was completely worn out
Sarah’s little angels that was so infested with weeds it was unbelievable with the weed growth. We applied our
neat part of about that whole
18 by 80 feet long
amazing part about we didn’t pull one weed all summer.
no backbreaking part to start
who’s we and what’s table top farmer?
Table Top Famer started out container on your table top
It expanded from outdoors to inside as well?
The outdoor side of it is that we can grow outdoors naturally grow nutrient dense produce and do it all naturally
I have help
Some friends that help out
My hired man that I hired on the grain farm gets stuck doing something
commercially do worm castings
The reason I did that was I wanted a consistent product. I wanted to know what I had not something someone else was making that I was shipping in. I wanted a
not something that had maybe a pesticide in int
worms will break that down but I wanted to make sure when I tell people that it’s a natural product it is
What all are you growing?
Anything in these featured gardens, what we would grow, we would go through the corns
we learned that there were certain wind loads, so we would plant corn on those outside to help break the wind
How big is your place again?
We did these featured gardens for a year or two
The property that Sarah’s Little Angels was on was sold, so we are starting Serenity Farm and Garden. That I own, on some property as part of my farm.
IDK if you are familiar with high tunnels, they’re a fabric where the sun can come through.
There’s a huge demand for those in this area
get in earlier and stay later in the fall.
It also helps keep pests out and helps you regulate your water a little as well too right?
I have a friend on a farm east of us doing it about 5 years, I’ll be a student of Jay’s as well
There are mistakes that can be made, of course lots of mistakes, he will help us avoid those. There’s a learning curve to it.
Not everybody is going to purchase a high tunnel but there small green houses people can purchase too.
There’s a program that people can utilize through the NRC I did an interview with Andrew Malucelli about the program in Episode 117. We applied but we didn’t get approved but one of these days we will.
I’ve ran into church groups that try to do gardening, they’re interested in this approach. Naturally we have to get it up and the training to teach them how to do it but I see a big benefit for community gardens.
the one that I am familiar with turns into a big wreck with certain things that happen to it. I think high tunnels would be good for community gardens.
a lot of avenues we’re running with this
I am an expert
I’ve been good
You’re doing it on a bigger scaled then most people I have talked to.
It isn’t quite that big, a large farmer in this are is several thousand acres!
We’re not that big in this area. We’re a couple thousand acres.
We have honed in on those, We have been more niche oriented.
We raise things like garbanzo beans
We have buyers waiting, they’re calling 30 days before harvest to tell us, you know we have a bin open for you! We have space available for you!
That’s generally unknown, but they know that we are capable, depending on the weather. It’s a really good feeling.
They know we are able to produce a high quality crop and a high producing crop that they can trust!
I got a call the other day, text message from a buyer looking for white proso millet bcause he knows thats part of my warm season rotation
evolved
used to farm a lot more acres
niche orientated
quite frankly the bottom line gets better for us when we can do that
Niche oriented and more profitable on less acreage sounds good to everyone doesn’t it?! How big did you say?
It’s a couple thousand acres, but your market farmers are on 1/4 acre and they’re pushing the production side of things there as well
There’s a lot of things we can learn on that area, I have been studying that area as well to see how we can build better soil health for what they are doing.
Well that’s what I want I know to eat healthy food.
Actually my first experience was with my mother, as a little guy I watched her garden.
She had a very little garden that was fenced because of other things out there for things they were raising
she would plant into that. I do remember my mother coming in being totally exhausted from working in that garden. It was kind of therapeutic as well, but I looked at the labor that was involved. We would get out there and when we would do sometime wrong, which we did, she was very specific on the way she did things. She had a pattern on the way she had done things that was the way it was. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time out there, but I watched what she did and quite frankly that turned me away from gardening because I saw the labor she did, and I thought that’s a second job.
At least a second job if not a full time job. So then
well I actually
the no-till thing came relatively out in the field. To move it into an indoor setting was tough. Much tougher then outdoor. I can’t say we have a total no-till system but we have a system where we can renew the soil by the same methods as what the soil is built underneath our feet.
So you never have to buy new potting soil again! Outdoors it was relatively simple. I basically just started thinking about different ways the raindrop falls.
this is what they teach inside of our no-till farming
When it splashes it carries up soil up with it, those spores hit our crops and those start disease and I thought gardening has to be the same way.
In my world we have to be careful not to get too much compost on top because then we start with other issues. The armor is a layer of carbon to insulate this top layer, then we start thinking, how are we going to water it? Because we have chlorines that aren’t in rain water.
issues there
visited with other gardeners
soaker system that we actually put in the soil.
worked on and tested
put in the soil methods where we instal it so it irrigates the roots that is on a timely manor.
The interesting part bout that whole process was we able to use 70% of the water where you have drought
That makes sense.
In areas like San Diego where water, good water, is limited, even though they are surrounded by oceans, the water that is usable, the people who are saving gray water in gardens, there are systems set up for that.
I took the systems that I’ve used outdoors over 30 years and brought them full circle and used them in gardening. The neat thing about gardening is we are able to what I call put that on steroids because we can speed up the process!
We can see results in 30 days or less by applying principals of this system. The reason being is because in a farming scenario we have 4-5 months of growing and then the rest that we call
Then we have to wait for the next season where we can try again. In gardening we can speed up the process. But we can build soil health in a garden
Where would you tell listeners to start?
Fall prep is no different for farming.
Farm and ranch
on the cover with my striper header showing how I keep the residue on top of the soil.
If you think about gardening everyone is concerned with is what they look like in the fall and they haul everything off to the landfill!
They are hauling away the best part of next years garden, all that residue is filled with trace reside that is good for next years plants as well as they are nitrates tied up as well and units that plant would use as it goes down into the soil.
If I was to say anything
I love that I totally think that soil health is the way to start!
Probably our Paul scraps?
If you are looking at the farm
we’re still in a drought 2017 cycle in 2017
We didn’t have any water reserve built up in our soil
probably that stops when you hit dry
We want at least 2 feet of soil moisture when we plant in the spring that way we know we can get the crop growing. This year we were at best at 18 inches in the spring. We got some timely rains but not a lot of rain and it shut off right after the 4th of July. It was like we turned the faucet off, but in the 3rd week in July got hot. Some areas were coming on really good but when it got dry, of course it started growing backwards
We had garbanzo beans in an area that was good
lentil that were ok
durham in some areas that did well
I’m excited to get our high tunnel going! We’re actually building some soil indoors for that as we speak. Meaning I started an interesting project that started by accident through a conversation with a guy who
he threw some plants out one time in the fall. He threw them in some tires
the ones that were touching the soil filled up with worms
wondering what the attraction was?
I said, worms are always looking for living roots!
That’s the sugars and fungi that the plants emit through the exudites. That’s their natural food.
I was going by a shopping cart of expired plants that they were throwing out
lightbulb came on so I called that store, I was actually able to dig the plants of the dumpster. I asked them if I could. Itook them out, brought them in here. We started a project called the:
named it
We have a system where we vermicompost that. It took us a while to learn how to do it. There’s a certain kind of worm, it’s a fussy worm but it’s like the piranha of the composting world.
It’s amazing what you get when you ask!
I started asking for these plants that were expired, again the hired men weren’t so happy with me when I showed up with a dump trailer of plants
need to be deplaned and tops cut off and keep them in these big totes. We just bring them in and add water to them. We will have all natural soil
taken that soil
jackie
We keep planting over and over to see if we can wear it out
as long as we keep that process going and we don’t have to go to the store and buy any new potting soil.
So, what are you adding to it besides the plants? Are you adding compost or hugel culture?
we don’t have a website tied to it. We have the domain name called getsupersoil.com someday there will be something there. But we’re still in testing phases if you’ve ever heard of
I learned a lot about in my farm field from Dr. Beck.
You can do it in your garden, we’re gonna do some testing down the road where we can teach people how to build the Endomycorrhizal fungi
tillage
I have found a company that builds that organically! It’s all natural product we can add to our super soil. So we have Endomycorrhizal fungi and a micronutrient package that’s all natural we can put in with it. So if we are missing a few trace minerals we can naturally add these. These are organic products that are produc we can make a superfoil product. Sometimes we mix with this to give it a boost.
I wanted to see if we could keep using this stuff? Over and over?!
The living roots adds everything to the soil
think we have to pull something off the shelf
mother nature has been excluded
teach people it has been there all this time.
dr. beck taught me this. Take a snapshot of the prairie that’s been there for centuries. If you take a snap shot of that there are 137 different species of grass etc you will find
Each species helps to build and retired that soil to keep that plant growing
self sustaining within itself.
That’s what I’m trying to teach people to do.
The first thing was that if I take my soil out of the field, that is some 30 years old, it has to be the best thing ever born indoors! It failed miserably.
commercial heating systems
tough to keep that hydrated in the wintertime.
eventually it turned. You could keep watering it and you could all sorts of things to do to it. Looking back, there were probably things I could do to make it work.
wanted something for people that they could go to the store and buy something one time, and get 4 component stop hits media mix that we put together if they do this we can teach them how to never have to go back to the store again
things get in the way and that’s understandable, once you have the process, even if you mess up and forget to do one of them, you go on vacation.
if you get to the point where you can go away, you can come back and fix it
makes sense
Where does this happen? Hoop house? Greenhouse? Basement?
variety of ways where were teaching
ground level gardening, this spring we will have a course
hope to have it out in later November
people to understand the soil science
soil biology can be a boring topic it really can, I’ve sat through a lot of things with the extension service and everybody’s nodding off to sleep
It’s not an exciting sexy topic
We have worked to make it a little more interesting.
They need to have that so when they go out in the garden they know this is why we need to do this
some people will need this and others wont
If they want to grow
We have some people doing some of that now but the key is learning how to keep that soil intact so don’t have to keep replacing it with new stuff, and when their plants aren’t growing.
outdoor ground level thing
raised bed gardening
take a garden people have tilled for years teach them how to make it a no-till
We’re not there yet, we do know a little bit about it, we know what we need to do with soil in there. There will be a variety of things.
The Organic Gardner Podcast is sponsored by Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people like runners, cyclists, weightlifters and vegetarians get lower rates on their life insurance. Go to healthiq.com/OGP to support the show and see if you qualify.
Over half of Health IQ customers save between 4-33% on their life insurance.
To see if you qualify, get your free quote today at healthiq.com/OGP or mention the promo code OGP when you talk to a Health IQ agent
I can’t say there is, I love growing things. I love installing things. Gardening really excites me today because I know the end result!
I think that will be inspiring for listeners. I am all about convenience and this sounds like you are making it convenient for people, because my husband spoils me and mostly what I have to do is just go down with my seed packets after he has all the work done and the beds made I mean I do like the composting thing.
Actually I love moving residue out of the way, and seeing what’s going on below the surface. That’s what really excites me! To see that soil change!
For me as a soils person that is probably as exciting I could look at what it does to the plants. We had 4 1/2 foot tomatoes after just 7 weeks, after the hail storms let up
had 4 hail storms
19th of July
we’re not gonna make it beef the frost hits and in 7 weeks they were 4 1/2 feet tall! It was crazy! They did very well in that soil!
probably IDK I’d have to think about that
intersting
Probably my watering, my that’s the key. I need to have my lines for my watering because that’s what makes it work.
So are there any special techniques for what makes that work, you’re talking bout burying them in the soil?
we put them in the soil
We have a process that we teach of how and we put our super soil in with that so that plant gets off to a good start.
We work a lot with soil that is completely worn out
We
Depends on what you want to grow
The biggest issue is finding good seed, we recently uncovered some things I think in that seed development thing.
We’re in the beginning stages of that
just got our channel
tabletop farmer
working on a facebook page
I love oregano in the winter time in chicken and rice soup.
That oregano, take naturally grown oregano that adds a flavor like nothing else.
I love oregano, as an Italian basil and oregano are two of my essnetila.s
the other thing is
garlic powder
if I raise the garlic in the garden with the little green stem onions. Make natural garlic chives that just seems like I don’t have any issues eating that.
I mostly find myself searching for people that are testing, I am interested in a lot with what they’re doing with composting.
I don’t use a compost on the side, although it’s important, it’s part of the process of getting this going, it’s essential for getting it going. Especially in raised beds.
You can kind of park that theory composter
unless you have things that can get it going.
Have we talked about Patti Armbrister, she’s on the East side probably closer to you, she’s in Hinsdale, and she talks a lot about the things you’re taking about.
Dave Montgomery who wrote Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life who I interviewed in episode 186 and his wife Anne Bickle in episode 185 where we talked about the The Hidden Half of Nature.
I have a close friend John Sticka who has wrote a soil book as well.
no-till when you till you kill
That’s the simplest I can get. It sounds so simple but that urge to till is always there.
You’re certainly not the first one to say that, actually it was Jon Moore and I was so nervous I was like what did you just say no-till but I have learned a lot since then. Sorry, I have to go I have another call.
You can connect with Steve at tabletopfarmer.com
Please support us on Patreon so we can keep the show up on the internet. It cost close to $100 a month just to keep it up on the internet for the website etc so if you could help by supporting it with an $8/month contribution or $10/month to join the Green Future Growers Book Club where we can delve deep into some of the best gardening books that have been recommended on the show! GoDaddy even is bugging me for dollars just to have the domain name…
https://www.patreon.com/OrganicGardenerPodcast
The Organic Gardner Podcast is sponsored by Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people like runners, cyclists, weightlifters and vegetarians get lower rates on their life insurance. Go to healthiq.com/OGP to support the show and see if you qualify.
Over half of Health IQ customers save between 4-33% on their life insurance.
The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.
and don’t forget if you need help getting started check out our new
Remember you can get the 2018 Garden Journal and Data Keeper to record your garden goals in our
If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.