Alternative Choices

The LillNAP project is exploring a successional agroforestry system that, with modification, could be theoretically be scaled to a few hectares in size with the appropriate investments in mechanization and other equipment.* Since it is being implemented as a pilot on less than one hectare, however, this means that purchasing or hiring specialized equipment to do the actual work of the project is usually not a viable option.

What this means in practice is that we must work with the resources at hand and take note of those instances when, should the context have been different, another method or piece of equipment could have improved our efficiency. Recognizing that the number of choices is vast, I have decided to make a list of Alternative Choices that makes sense to me.

*Please note that we are trialing novel concepts in concert at the LillNAP site. It will not be until a few years down the road that the system as a whole will have been put through its paces. However, along the way we will be gathering information to share about specific practices in our context and how they worked (or did not work) that should prove valuable to others interested in successional agroforestry with a silvoarable component.

Each entry will follow this pattern:

What Step Number in the implementation was this?
Which Phase?
- Design, Site Preparation, or Management?
What Action took place?
Briefly, How did we do it?
What Tool(s) did we use?
Alternatives
- At least, one, but up to three alternatives will be described
- If I list a specific tool or item it is not an endorsement of that tool or service and not advice that it would work for you

Step Number	Phase	Action
1	Design	Site Analysis, Planning

How it was done:

A traditional permaculture design method was undertaken. Goals were formed, ideas, postulated, potential sites were listed and described. Once a suitable location was found, I examined the location on the ground as well as using remote data and information to produce a site analysis to understand what could be possible.

Tool(s):

Municipal and national map services, Google Earth Pro, Affinity Designer (Scalable Vector Graphics)

Alternative A:

Good design work takes time and a combination of in person site visits and remote information gathering to build a robust picture of the site. For the most part there are not many any other "tools" that one could use, so the alternative here is simply a more robust version of what we undertook. If you were to scale this from a pilot project to a full scale commercial operation, some ideas are:

Increase the amount of time spent in discussion with partners
Develop a full business plan
Engage in scenario planning to play out multiple designs over at least a ten year time horizon
Begin site preparation well in advance of beginning implementation, see Step Number 3
Utilize satellite land survey data to examine each candidate plot in further detail over as many years as possible
Hire a backhoe and dig sample trenches at least 1,5 meters deep or until bedrock to examine the soil profile in each candidate location
Perhaps use an online agroforestry planning tool such as Propagate. Link to external third party website, unaffiliated

Step Number	Phase	Action
2	Site Preparation	Fencing

How it was done:

We hired a professional to install the fence posts as the soil was too hard for the tractor to push them in with the front loader.

Tool(s):

Tractor with auger

Alternative A:

If you are implementing a system that it makes sense to do perimeter fencing like ours and you have time, then use time to your advantage by waiting for site conditions to be suitable to work with existing equipment. This way you can use a tractor with a front loader to simply push the fence posts into the soil.

Alternative B:

If perimeter fencing does not make sense in your context, then other means of tree protection become necessary:

Individual tubes
Certain specimens may be protected above the browse line with cages
Unfortunately there is no very effective way to protect biomass trees grown from seed without using perimeter fencing

Step Number	Phase	Action
3	Site Preparation	Creating tree lines

How it was done:

Tractor with GPS performed tillage passes to set back and begin killing the perennial grass to establish workable beds (tree lines).

Tool(s):

Vibroflex equipped to undercut the root system of the plants and pulled cultivators as a chopping action to break up the fragments

Alternative A:

This is one step where I would encourage farmers to take more time before implementation. Immediately after cultivating, if you choose to cultivate, you would want to cover the tree lines with unbroken plastic to begin occultation. This takes about three months during the growing season to be adequately effective. Once the perennial root systems have been weakened by this plastic mulching, you can add compost and begin planting without as much weed pressure.

Alternative B:

If you do not wish to use plastic for occultation, it can be possible to smother the existing vegetation or cover the bare ground (if this is an arable field) with organic mulch. Bales of silage that are "bad" for one reason or another are a great tool as they can be rolled out quickly where you wish to have the tree lines. However, if this not done to a sufficient depth, you may only wind up "feeding" the plants you wish to smother.

Alternative C:

You could, of course, combine A + B:

Cultivate (A)
Lay out organic mulch (B)
Occultation with plastic on top of the mulch (A)

Problems with this alternative include colonization of the mulch layer by rhizomes of the perennials you wish to kill and the "loss" of nutrients from the organic mulch as it begins to decompose. Ideally you want to combine mulching with planting of desirable species so that the organisms you wish to support receive the benefit of the input rather than choosing to decompose the mulch under plastic. Benefits to this, however, could be turning the mulch into something more akin to a compost layer by allowing decomposition organisms to start work on it before planting.

There are really a large number of ways to prepare tree lines, but the #1 tip is to give yourself more time to kill or hinder undesirable plant species before you move to another stage of implementation.

Step Number	Phase	Action
4	Site Preparation	Mechanical cultivation

How it was done:

Tractor without GPS following the precision cultivation in order to further set back the existing vegetation.

Tool(s):

Vibroflex and drag harrow

Alternative A:

Choose one of the alternatives from Step 3 to prolong the creation of the beds and use occultation to smother the plants.

Alternative B:

Herbicide according to context. We have chosen not to use any herbicides and have planned to avoid the use of pesticides in general while managing the site. However, many farmers may choose to use herbicides and it is certainly an option.

Step Number	Phase	Action
5	Site Preparation	Mulching with compost

How it was done:

Compost was spread onto the tree lines using a tractor's front loader. After it was dumped in small piles we used rakes to manually spread the compost into the desired thickness. Compost was used as a mulch and not incorporated into the soil to facilitate mechanical weed control, serve as a mulch to retain moisture, provide a ready seed bed for direct drilling, and a few other management reasons.

Tool(s):

Tractor with front loader, garden rakes

Alternative A:

With better technique and experience, given dry soil conditions, it could have been possible to spread the compost with the front loader.

Alternative B:

A dedicated compost spreader would work very well and more evenly apply the compost.

Step Number	Phase	Action
6	Management	Planting cover crops

How it was done:

After further cultivation, cover crops were sown with a Terradonis (Jang) JP-1 vegetable drill. The drill is a very good tool, but only plants one furrow at a time. Spacing the furrows was aided by the use of the Neversink "Gridder" which allowed the cover crops to be offset from the upcoming garlic planting by about 10cm.

Tool(s):

Neversink Gridder, Jang JP-1 manual seed drill with double disc opener and C-6 roller with half-open brush

Alternative A:

If using a very similar system to ours then other manual seed drills can plant 5 or more furrows at a time.

Alternative B:

A tractor pulled drill could have been used and adjusted to plant a similar pattern. It could be possible to open only a handful of the seed drops, effectively using only a fraction of a 3m wide seed drill. I'm not sure how useful this would be in our context since we have a tool which does the job, but on a larger scale system you would want to consider how to adapt broad acre planting tools for this job.

Note: many of the management actions in this system would require tools which are offset from the tractor, that is, they function to the side rather than behind.

Note 2: I almost never recommend broadcasting seed and in this situation where we want to plant 6-8 lines of cover crops precisely in alignment with upcoming cash crops, broadcasting would be totally inappropriate

Step Number	Phase	Action
7	Management	Mechanical weeding

How it was done:

At this stage, anything other than precise cultivation will mix the compost into the soil profile and eliminate the mulch layer. Therefore the tree lines were cultivated with colinear hoes used in market gardening to slice new growth coming up from the soil below. This preserves the mulch layer and slowly exhausts the energy reserves of the plants underneath. It is slow, however, with small-scale market gardening tools. Even with a double blade set up with the Neversink Rebellion kit, the time it takes is substantial in comparison to tractor pulled devices.

Note: our enterprise calculations use this slower method of weeding in their formulas and still output profitable garlic cultivation

Tool(s):

Neversink Colinear Hoes

Alternative A:

If continuing with manual tools, wheel hoes of varying sorts can be put to great use at this larger, but simpler, scale than the precision work of colinear hoes. However, if you do not have a wheel hoe already, but you do have hand tools, you will need to perform a comparative cost calculation to determine at what point the investment in a wheel hoe is going to break even. This can only be done by recording the time it takes to perform the action with existing tools, knowing your labor costs, and total number of cultivation episodes necessary for the chain of production of your system. In our case, we plan to phase out cultivation of garlic before the system could pay for the investment in a new tool.

Alternative B:

A power harrow set to cultivate only the top 1-2 centimeters through vertical tillage could also preserve the mulch layer. Automated mechanical weeders that use optical inputs can also weed 360 degrees around the cash crop, something a power harrow is incapable of. For example, the Robocrop InRow Weeder by Garford is an interesting example of this technology. Link to third party website, unaffiliated.

Other automated and precise non-herbicide weeding technologies are available.

Alternative C:

While this is not exactly an alternative, if one had chosen and implemented occultation properly, the ongoing weeding would have been dramatically reduced (if not eliminated).

Step Number	Phase	Action
8	Management	Planting garlic

How it was done:

Pre-separated garlic cloves were sorted by hand for soundness and classified by size, then organized into batches of 200 / 10 meters of planting. Preplanting bed preparation was simple: another round of cultivation (Step 7). In order to space the plants properly, the manual Neversink "Gridder" was used to mark out the spacing in either 3*25cm or 4*20cm (±100 or ±200 cloves/10m). Then the Neversink "Zipper" was used: a manual furrow opener/closer to open the furrows lengthwise down the tree line. A wooden frame was built that could be adjusted to indicate where to place a clove for the desired planting rate.

Problems with this method were that the Zipper does not dig a very deep furrow and thus the cloves are not as protected against winter frost as desired. However, the variety ('Ljubasha') used is very hardy and has been observed in three previous seasons to have very high survivability. Once the cloves, which had been inoculated with mycorrhizae and coated with biostimulants, were situated, the Zipper was used to cover them. No mulch was added on top as we need to be able to continue weeding next season without interference.

See the Timeline for photographs of the garlic planting.

Tool(s):

Neversink Gridder, Neversink Zipper, House-made planting frame

Alternative A:

Garlic can also be planted in a similar fashion to potatoes. A tractor rig can be built with a subsoiler shank that opens the furrow and a second person can drop cloves into the furrow using a tube. Given the planting density (20 cloves/linear meter) operators would need to be very fast. I can also see plenty of mistakes and cloves not being planted upright. What is gained by speed may be lost in poor planting precision which also means that cultivation and competition between plants becomes a challenge in the next year.

One way to address that drawback would be to use the custom subsoiler to open the furrows and plant while walking, rather than riding the tractor like planting potatoes.

Alternative B:

Tractor pulled and self driving garlic planters are commercially available. Just as with deciding on any other tool, one must plan in context whether or not the investment is going to pay off or not. In addition to calculating when a tool will break even and start actively saving money, it is prudent to also perform a "weakest link" exercise to determine whether or not investing in that particular stage of your chain of production brings the most benefits to your whole farm system. If your whole farm system could use the investment elsewhere to more quickly advance your team towards your goals, then purchasing new equipment like a specialized garlic planter should likely wait until it solves the weakest link on your farm.

Step Number	Phase	Action
9	Management	Tree seed planting

How it was done:

A furrow was opened in the middle of each tree line, giving proper breaks for where planting stock will go in the spring, and seeds were distributed by hand. Seeds were divided into bags for every 20 meters of planting and thus reduced the propensity for hand seeding to go heavy at the start and run out by the end. Given the size variation in the seeds and that many had "wings," I don't see mechanical planting taking place without processing the seeds further. Lastly the seeds were drenched with a biostimulant slurry which included both endo (arbuscular) and ecto-mycorrhizal spores.

Tool(s):

Neversink Zipper, Buckets

Alternative A:

A small IBC mounted on a tractor with a large diameter hose to dribble the slurry onto the seed and into the furrow with more uniformity would be a clear improvement.

Alternative B:

The tree seeds could have been treated with similar biostimulants and allowed to dry. This would require a compost extract, rather than a compost slurry, to ensure that during planting the seeds are spaced regularly. A slurry, with the suspended solids, would not be appropriate in this case.

Step Number	Phase	Action
10	Site Preparation	Tree Planting

How it was done:

Planting holes were triple dug by hand, trees planted mostly solo. Bare root trees were dusted with mycorrhizal fungi after soaking in compost and seaweed extract water.

Tool(s):

Shovel

Alternative A:

A combination of mechanical tools can be used to prepare the ground: Subsoiler and harrow to break the plough pan and create loose soil for digging while planting the trees

Alternative B:

A reliable second pair of hands would speed the work up tremendously as bare root fruit trees should be planted with care to avoid root circling etc

Alternative C:

With other species and different aged bare root trees, you can use a tree planter pulled by a tractor which sees operators sit behind and place trees into the trench, followed by a press wheel which provides good soil:root contact. However, this is not always appropriate for different species.

Step Number	Phase	Action
11	Site Preparation	Preparing Alleys and Margins

How it was done:

Vibroflex turned the grass roots upside down

Tool(s):

Tractor + Vibroflex

Alternative A:

Herbicide is one of the few alternatives to tillage if you wish to reduce the vigor and kill couch grass at scale. After herbcide a no till drill could be used to avoid harrowing.

Alternative B:

Potentially one could severely overgraze the couch grass with sheep or cattle, providing supplementary feeding, to reduce the grass vigor, but likely would cause more problems for the animals the benefit to transitioning from a monoculture of grass

Alternative C:

For margins only: you could use grazing for the margins only: the animal impact (hoof action, manure, urine, saliva) would awaken the latent seed bank, potentially reducing the need for tillage or planting new species

Step Number	Phase	Action
12	Management	Occultation with Silage Tarps in Tree Lines

How it was done:

Silage tarps (2 meter wide strips on average) were used to reduce the vigor of the couch grass in the tree lines; see the timeline for more explanation (06.06.2023)

Tool(s):

Silage Tarps

Alternative A:

Step 3, above

Alternative B:

Herbicide

Alternative C:

One could also extend the silage tarps to move into the alleys, which we did not do because we were set to have cover crops planted as close as possible with a 4-meter planter

Step Number	Phase	Action
13	Site Preparation	Planting Garlic 2023

How it was done:

Bed was broad forked and manually weeded

Tool(s):

Broad Fork

Alternative A:

A single subsoiler shank could be side mounted onto a tractor and used to loosen the soil in the tree line at this stage of the project; also could be combined with a relatively large disc vertically mounted to do additional root pruning at the outside edge of the bed

Alternative B:

The above option would perhaps not be necessary if subsoiling were performed during the initial preparation of the beds after occultation removed the weeds; however, subsoiling may still be necessary if you have drought conditions and are unable to promote root growth to capitalize on the loose soil and hold it in an improved state

Step Number	Phase	Action
14	Management	Rodent Guards on Fruiting Plants

How it was done:

Flexible mesh guards were added in late October to protect the stems from winter-time damage

Tool(s):

N/A

Alternative A:

At planting, trees can also be protected below ground by using metal cages around the roots, though this requires extra expense in equipment and labor it can provide protection during the vulnerable years