As a result, the ditches between the Thompsons' fields and the road are virtually free of silt. In contrast, their neighbors' ditches must be dug out nearly every year. In their fields, insecticides kill most of the earthworms, and the soil surface is crusty. Rain puddles and forms gullies, washing the sickened soil away in a torrent of runoff water from a heavy rain, filling the ditches with silt and swelling the already over-flowing creeks and rivers. As I watched the television news stories of record-high flood waters in the Midwest, I wondered how much less damage would have happened if every farm was managed like Dick and Sharon's.
Healthy soil is the key to healthy crops and health-enhancing foods.
Conventional tomato growers never plant tomatoes in the same soil two years in a row because the accumulated disease pathogens will destroy the roots of the second crop. Consequently, less profitable crops are rotated for at least two to five years before tomatoes are reintroduced to the field. When the cover crop is about 5 to 6 feet tall, he flail-chops it and turns it under the soil surface as a green manure. Later, when he transplants the new tomato crop, he also plants an onion, leek or garlic plant next to each tomato. The secret is keeping the soil healthy and interplanting with another plant that provides the necessary habitat for the natural enemies of the disease-causing organism.