A balmy October is giving way to chillier mornings and shorter days. With less than a week until November, rows of summer squash still keep their heads held high — but not for much longer.
On the last Saturday of October on the Petaluma Bounty Community Farm, a thicket of tomato plants bid adieu and slumped into compost piles. The space they vacated will be turned into stale seed beds.
From tomato field to stale seed beds
A stale seed bed is a weed control technique that involves allowing weed seeds to germinate and then killing them before planting a crop.
“We’re going to pull beds, shape beds with the tiller, and then we’re going to water them with the overhead sprinkler and get the whole thing saturated. Then we’re going to cover it with the huge silage tarps,” Farm Manager Shanee Barner says.
(Blog post continues below photo.)
After about two to three weeks with the silage tarp, the weed seeds in the soil will germinate with the moisture — but swiftly die because they won’t get any sunlight.
“When we take the tarp off, most of the weeds will have sprouted and died, and that’ll be our starting point. And then, we’re going to go in with garlic and strawberries in those fields.”
The process will result in a diminished need for weeding, cultivation and more volunteer engagement in other farm activities, Barner projects. It also reinforces our ability to commit to using no herbicides.
Burt Field is first no-till area on Bounty Farm
Near the entrance to the Bounty Community Farm is the Burt Field, which is going through its own transformation. The field sits between the farm stand and the outdoor classroom, not far from the farm entrance.
Burt Field is the farm’s first no-till area, Barner says.
“We put cardboard and woodchips in the footpath. The bed tops received a couple of inches of compost. And again, the whole idea is to trap the weed seeds far, far below.”
Rows of young broccolini, cauliflower and lettuces are growing up in neat rows striped with woodchips. When the crops are harvested, a tarp will be placed on the field. Then, when it’s ready, the field will be replanted.
(Blog post continues below photos.)
“No tractor will go back in there because it’s got woodchips. Eventually the cardboard will disappear from underneath the woodchips and then we just keep adding woodchips and compost which will continue to break down from the top down and essentially feed the soil and keep burying the weed seeds.”
“Ideally we’ll start working towards less and less weeding in some of these beds, and be able to utilize the volunteers to just be working year round even in the dead of winter, because woodchips and compost…” will help with drainage and keep people from getting muddy.
Burt Field didn’t go through the stale seed bed process. Instead, after pulling out the old summer crop, the farm crew cut weeds out by “knife weeding,” to set them back. The field got a layer of compost and plants were planted. After several rounds of waterings, Barner noticed that the footpath and the shoulders were covered in weeds. “I was like, ‘Now is the time to put the woodchips down or I have to weed that again.’”
There should be very little to no weeding needed in the Burt Field for the rest of the season. “Then, we figure out how to maintain these beds. They will remain a lot more weed free than the rest of our farm because every time we’re turning, inverting the soil with the tiller, we’re bringing up and burying new and old seeds, we’re just mixing them together.”
Instead, every bed turnover moving forward will involve “putting down a little bit of compost and probably woodchips once a year.”
Additional benefit is a longer growing season
Barner is excited for the changes.
Burt Field will be one of the first sections on the Bounty Farm that could be farmed into the dead of winter in February. Because of the compost and woodchip layering and breakdown, the field will be workable in the rainy winter season.
“Can you imagine, like, just pouring down rain and we’d be peeling one or two beds at a time with the tarp, folding the tarp, and then just planting right into them.”
The goal is weed suppression, a longer growing season, and more engagement with volunteers. “I think it’s going to really change things.” Barner says.
‘A great way to move forward’
“I’ve never really done it like quite like this,” Barner says. “Even in 15 years (of farming), I’ve never actually put wood chips in my planting area because you’re never going to till those woodchips because the moment you do that, stuff just stops growing because the ground is giving all of its nitrogen to the woodchips that are it’s trying to break down. So it’s a little scary proposition, but also it’s a great way to move forward. And it’s very appropriate to what we’re doing here with the volunteers and the scale.”
“I’ve been wanting to do this, but could just never bite the bullet like other farms. Because if it doesn’t work out, like, what are you going to do? … But I think it’s going to work here.”
The new approach is made possible by community support
This is a new approach for Petaluma Bounty, made possible by our partnership with Zero Waste Sonoma. As a community compost hub, where residents can pick up compost weekly, Petaluma Bounty has access to more free compost than most farms. Additionally, we receive free woodchips from a local arborist.
Because we get free resources and our farm isn’t driven solely by market pressures, we can experiment with growing techniques that may take time to show results or that may not ultimately work, Petaluma Bounty Director Suzi Grady explains. Especially if that experimentation gets us closer to being strong ecological stewards of the land with less reliance on mechanical cultivation (tractors), she says.
We look forward to updating you on this project as it unfolds, and hope you will continue on this learning journey with us.