Question

what is common between plough and hoe

Answer 1

both can be used forploughing

Answer 2

Everyone can use a hoe. One of the most enchanting and productive market gardens in Europe is managed completely by hand and using natural methods of growing. Appropriately enough, it is called Eden, and it is run by Rod Alston, north of Sligo and close to the Irish Organic Centre in Co Leitrim, Eire. Its nearly one hectare has been developed over 19 years to produce soil in the bed-system of growing that is easily hoed to remove surface weeds, making it ready for planting up with the next crop. This is reproduced by the market garden at Ragman’s Lane Farm, Gloucestershire, also managed by hand by Mandy Pullen. The easy nature of the soil in these two market gardens comes from the use of beds that never need treading on because all the work can be carried out from paths. The application of composted matter as yearly mulches seems to make hoeing easier at the same time as feeding the soil and improving its fertility. (Fertility is defined here as microbial activity, giving soils the ability to break down organic matter and make the nutrients available to crops.)

As a contrast to these market gardens, a recent study has shown that there is little difference between organic and conventional farmland when the chemical and physical characteristics were examined, such as soil structure, organic matter content or nutrient content (interim results from Temperate Research of the International Research Dept., HDRA). The fact that this was unexpected shows how little organic farm systems have been studied and how tenuous is the support for some widely held but largely unsubstantiated beliefs. (At least microbial activity was found to be significantly higher in organic farm soils.) In reality, the common factor between organic and conventional farming is most likely to be the reliance on the tractor and plough. To this can be added other practices in organic farming that were taken from conventional farming and that are increasingly seen to have ecological consequence (such as cutting hay for silage affecting farmland birds). But the point here is that there may be an even greater reliance in organic farming on ploughing because, in the absence of the use of herbicides, cultivation through ploughing is the predominant method of clearing weeds. (It is followed swiftly in order in organic farming by flame weeding, a technique that is not far short of ecocide.) I have a cautionary tale to tell you of how difficult it is for non-farming people to pick their way through the rhetoric that is increasingly surrounding farmland use and its management.

In this last year, a community-based trust has employed me to design and build with them a community market garden on land they have acquired in their community. I had to propose, within the design, a method to clear and manage a part of the land for annual crop use, the land being rough pasture that is heavily populated with ragwort. It also has docks, nettles and thistles and is matted with bailer twine. One organic conversion advisor, infamous in Yorkshire organic circles, often used to recommend to new entrants that they spray-off surface vegetation before entering the conversion process since he maintained it would markedly reduce problems in later years. Moreover, the conversion period then of two years would re-establish your sainthood from sinnerdom. ‘Legal’ as this may be, I also sought hopefully a more principled approach from another adviser who told me that I needed to use a plough with a good set of spring tines. I was to do the following: