Sustainable farming is a practice that should be given more serious thought thanks to mostly involving ingenuity rather than extra time or money. By using recycling practices, the cost savings and quality of your crops can result in a process that eliminates disease while synonymously removing any use of pesticides. Considering how many elements of sustainable farming exist for a farm, how does it apply strictly to your crops?
Rotating Your Crops
Sustainable farming techniques usually apply this first to their crops in the realm of directly helping the soil and the eradication of disease. The process basically involves replenishing the soil each year by planting something different in the spot where something else was prior. If you grow corn, for instance, you’re going to find that planting it in the same spot each year will deplete the soil’s nitrogen and phosphorous you need to maintain a healthy annual crop.
This is going to require some planning on your part and figuring out which crops are more apt to siphon nitrogen out of the soil faster than others. Organic Gardening reminds that peas and beans will help replenish nitrogen and would be the perfect planting spot for later crops that require more nitrogen to be successful. Those particular crops for the following year should be tomatoes or anything leafy.
Rotating crops could be very beneficial for you if you’re a farmer that’s heartily depended upon for healthy crops each year. And crop rotation can not only help the soil quality but also help eliminate disease that’s the blight of every farmer.
Diversifying Crops to Fight Disease
This practice in sustainable farming may not be as plentiful as it should be. That’s because it’s too easy to use pesticides in getting rid of insects and the potential of crop disease. One of the methods that should be used is genetic crop diversity. Discovery Channel recommends taking something like corn and buying varying seeds from different locations to create a diversity that lessens the chance of pests ruining them all.
While the above might seem to take more time, that’s not necessarily the case. When you’re buying seeds locally, you already have a diversity of different choices in the near vicinity. In the end, you’re eliminating the use of pesticides that are becoming so frowned upon in society.
Also consider that diseases are going to be a major factor and can potentially grow in the soil for several years. Rotating your crops in different strategic locations on your land can eliminate the possibility of those diseases attacking specific crops. Club root, in particular, will be one of your worst enemies and may require crop rotating for a number of years until it’s entirely eliminated.
Taking all these sustainable farming techniques into consideration can help your farming practices have a conscience. In the world of farming, you’re already a friend of the earth, and that should be enhanced by being organic in the principles of growing crops.