Catepillar tunnels and permanent beds are both features of bio-intensive methods. This week we finished putting up two new catepillar tunnels (thank you Logan!) for winter protected cropping and then more in spring. Levente and Emese put in a lot of work this week preparing some of our permanent beds for early spring production. Many beds sow with green manure, to keep a good plant coverage, but when this gets too late in the season, we prepare beds by raising the bed a little, broadforking to loosen the soil and then spread a generous amount of mature compost onto the bed before covering with a protective winter cover, to prevent erosion and be ready for an early start in spring. This kind of preparation is part of our low tillage system. We stopped ploughing 3 years ago, and we believe that we are seeing good development in the soil biology in our permanent beds.
