The Ecological Farm: A Minimalist No-Till, No-Spray, Selective-Weeding, Grow-Your-Own-Fertilizer System for Organic Agriculture (Paperback) - Helen Atthowe

The Ecological Farm is a breakthrough resource for ecological fruit and vegetable growers at every scale who want to go beyond organic. Through a unique ecosystem-balancing approach focusing on reduced tillage, minimising farm and garden inputs and pest control, you'll learn how to build higher soil quality and fertility by using fewer harmful inputs.

Farmer, consultant, and educator Helen Atthowe (along with her late husband, Carl Rosato) have decades of farming experience which is shared in this essential book. They guide readers on how to reduce or eliminate the use of outside inputs of fertiliser or pesticides - even those that are commonly used on certified organic orchards and market gardens. With clear, easy to action language and colour photography, charts, and graphs throughout, The Ecological Farm emphasizes the importance of managing the details of an entire growing system over the full life of an enterprise.

The Ecological Farm features a crop-by-crop guide to growing more than 25 of the most popular and profitable vegetables and fruits, including specific management advice for dealing with pests and diseases. You'll also learn how to:

• design a system that establishes a year-round root-in-soil system for microbial health
• strengthen the "immune system" of a farm or garden
• supply crop needs using only on-farm inputs such as cover crops and living mulch
• maximise the presence of beneficial insects and microbes
• minimise ecological impact in dealing with insect pest and disease problems

The Ecological Farm makes complex, sometimes messy, ecological concepts and practices understandable to all growers, and makes healthy farming, in which nature is invited to participate, possible.

About the Author

Helen Atthowe has worked for 35 years to connect farming, food systems, land stewardship, and conservation. She farmed and conducted research at Woodleaf Farm in eastern Oregon until spring 2023, when she moved to western Montana. She is helping the new owners of the Oregon farm learn her ecological management system as she simultaneously begins a new Woodleaf Farm in Montana, where she has already planted a no-till orchard of thirty fruit trees. Helen and her late husband, Carl Rosato, co-owned and operated a certified organic orchard in California where they pioneered methods for raising apples, peaches, and other tree fruits without the use of any type of pesticides. Her on-farm research includes ecological weed and insect management, organic minimum soil disturbance systems for vegetable and orchard crops, and managing living mulches for soil and habitat building. She is a contributing writer to The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control and other books. She has served as a board member for the Organic Farming Research Foundation and advisor for the Wild Farm Alliance. Atthowe has a master's degree in horticulture from Rutgers University and has worked in education and research at the University of Arkansas, Rutgers University, and Oregon State University, and served as a horticulture extension agent in Montana, where she annually taught an organic master gardener course.