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The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
"Can You Really Garden Without Tilling?" with guest Johann van der Ham
Embrace a radical shift in your gardening approach as we dive deep into the concept of no-till gardening! This episode illuminates how you can cultivate a flourishing garden without the use of a tiller. Listeners will meet Johann, a seasoned farmer with extensive experience from Malawi, who shares invaluable insights on the significance of soil life and encouraging sustainable practices that honor God's creation.
Explore the challenges and rewards of preparing your garden plot with minimal disturbance to the earth. We discuss the importance of understanding the delicate ecosystems beneath our feet, focusing on the myriad living organisms God created to contribute to a thriving environment. By incorporating mulching and organic matter into our gardening practices, we can foster healthier soil that yields bounteous crops.
Join us as we debunk common misconceptions about tilling and redefine what it means to cultivate the earth with respect and care. This conversation not only highlights practical gardening techniques but also frames them within a biblical worldview of stewardship and responsibility.
Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting, this episode offers pearls of wisdom that can change how you approach your plot. Don't miss the opportunity to learn how to work with God's creation as a steward, rather than suffer the consequences of abusing it. Tune in and discover how to keep redeeming the dirt! Be sure to check out the links and resources in the show notes below for further learning and inspiration.
Click here to download my free no-till gardening checklist!
Here are some videos by Johann:
Further Resources for Planting a Garden without a Tiller:
- Redeeming the Dirt Academy
- The Well-Watered Garden Handbook
Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. This is Noah Sanders, and today I'm joined by my friend, johan, as we're going to talk about an exciting question that hopefully is hopefully is pertinent to many of us in the northern hemisphere, at least right now, which is how can we prepare our garden without a tiller? It's springtime here in Alabama and we are enjoying new lambs and new puppies and all the the, just the the new daffodils starting to come up, and we just love that springtime just new life that we see. We've been planting potatoes.
Noah:And so this is when all of us kind of get that itch to start planting stuff. But on our farm here and a lot of what we've done with our teaching and what we've learned from Foundations for Farming in Africa, we put in our gardens here in Alabama in red clay, without any tiller, which is very foreign concept to a lot of people and we love to talk about that. But it's something that is. It is an overflow and an expression of our faith in Jesus and trying to honor his design, but it's not like a legalistic thing. And yet many people that we've talked to that have hard red clay or have just, you know, any garden. They want to prepare it. It's. It's really challenging to think about how would they prepare that if they didn't plow it or they didn't till it? And and some people are excited I actually have a lot of hits on my blog on an article we have on called how to prepare your garden without a tiller, because I think some people you know, maybe you don't even have one.
Noah:So how can we uh um, garden this spring even if you don't have a tiller? Or if you do have one, should you use it or not? And today we want to talk a little bit about some of the practical aspects of that and a little bit of, maybe, how we should think about that as christians. And so I have today my friend johan, who's from africa, and he's going to help us discuss this topic because he has a lot of experience in growing and thinking about this and working with soil and soil stewardship. So thank you so much, Johan, for being with us today.
Johann:Yeah, it's great to be here, noah, really a privilege.
Noah:Yeah, so Johan and I met several years ago at a Foundations for Farming forum in Zimbabwe. He's been working in Malawi for many years. I'll let him introduce himself a bit more. But I've just always been so encouraged by Johan, his love for the Lord, his ability to just on a farm out in the field, just really showcase God's glory, just be excited about farming, but more so about Jesus, and just really bring those things together and articulate it.
Noah:And I was watching a video you sent me earlier today, johan, on the beautiful crop. That was from about seven years ago. That's actually the first time I ever heard you say anything was. A friend of mine shared that on his blog and I just loved the way that you talked about the sunflower in that video and I'll share that in the in the show links. But just so grateful for for your heart for the Lord and we'd love to just have you briefly introduce a little bit about yourself for people before we get into the introduction, and kind of what God's done with you so far and kind of a little bit of your experience.
Johann:Awesome, yeah, kind of a little bit of your experience. Awesome, yeah. So I've just come out of a 25-year season in Malawi, africa. It's a small country in Central East Africa, with my beautiful family, my wife Rieta. We raised four girls in Malawi and, yeah, it's just really been a privilege to be living there. You know, I think our children grew up with a very interesting worldview, living among amazing people, very hospitable people, beautiful people are so peaceful. Malawi has never had any war.
Johann:One of the few countries in Africa that can boast about that is known as the Walmart of Africa, but also surrounded by severe need and poverty, and most of the population in Malawi are subsistence farmers. They live from the soil. Literally, that's how they survive. They depend on the soil for their living. And when we started engaging with the local people there, we started working at an orphanage, and we did that for eight years.
Johann:We had 130 orphans that lived on the property where we were and we had to host these children, put them through schooling, feed them and raise them, and we had quite a bit of land there and I knew zero about farming. So I'm sorry, I'm not really an agronomist, but I was thrown into the deep end because the board members of the orphanage said why do we have to send money for food if you have all this land? So that sort of propelled us onto a journey towards agriculture, which I never really pursued before, and I think all my agricultural acronym that we've gained over the years have come from farming, not from a classroom, but from actually trying to grow food in a subtropical climate with a lot of heavy rains, a very definite dry and wet season. And so I'm now in Knoxville, tennessee, at the Crown Financial Ministry's home office helping them to develop training material for Africa. So quite an exciting journey for us to be here.
Noah:Great, and you had a little bit of opportunity to get some gardening experience in in the US. I think it was last year, wasn't it?
Johann:Yes, we were privileged to have access to a small piece of land and we started a little veggie patch there, and I must this is in Tennessee, I'm telling you. This place is like a rainforest, it's very humid in the summertime and the stuff just grew amazingly. I was surprised. I mean, we harvest so much from a little piece of land that we had to just give away so much veggies, and it was a privilege. I also built a compost pile and, yeah, could you know, rent or hire a chipper, and we've got lots.
Johann:I found it hard to find organic matter, you know, in the springtime or after the springtime, because that's when we arrived here, but later, of course, after the fall, there was all these piles of leaves everywhere, and so, but yes, a few weeks ago, you know, I'm still separating our waste.
Johann:We're putting our organics in one bin and non-organics in another bin, and I find people here don't do that, very few people actually do that. But I took our organics and I went back to that compost pile I built, um, you know, before the winter, and I thought, okay, I'll just incorporate it on the top of the compost pile and when I turn it again it will become part of it and I. It was solidly frozen, so it was my first time to see a frozen compost pile. I could stand on top of that thing. It was just hard. I could throw my stuff on top and that's where I had to leave it, so that's a new experience for me. I struggled to get a nitrogen source which would cause it to heat up, so it didn't heat up as I wished it would. So yeah, I'm still learning where to find manure, where to find organic matter and so on in our environment here. But yeah it's. It's quite an interesting experience yes, we just.
Noah:I just received, uh or saw, a post on redeeming the Dirt Academy for one of our students and they had just built a compost pile it. She showed the picture with snow on it, but it was still. They had built it with nitrogen. So she said it was still hot even with the snow on it wow, that's yeah, that's what we.
Johann:I believe you could see. You could build it in the winter time if you had that nitrogen source absolutely yeah.
Noah:So let's get into a little bit of this, uh, this topic of tilling and plowing and preparing our gardens. So when I think of, uh, you know, in the us, here on a large scale, people think about plowing on a garden level. A lot of people have these rotary tillers and I think the first question I want us to kind of discuss is you know, why do we till, why do we plow? Why is that the current way that we approach preparing the land, you know, and historically recently, and why might we decide not to do that? We'll talk about that in a bit. But why do we till?
Noah:And I'll just say, you know, for a lot of the people here in my community, you know, when you want to start a garden, oftentimes it's just grass, it's a grassy spot and it is where it's weeds left over from last year. So the biggest motivation to start with, I just give one reason. The first first reason comes to mind is we want to get rid of the weeds or whatever is growing there so that we can have a garden. So that's, that's one reason that comes to mind. So when you're thinking from an african perspective, um, or in in the context you come from, why? Why do we normally tiller plow? Why is that typically the approach?
Johann:yeah, I think. Uh, that'll be the same in africa. The only problem we had in malawi is there were no tillers. People were not having access to tractors or not even to oxen, so they all use a hand hoe and it's an amazing implement. I mean, I feel lost if I don't have one, after my experience there. And what they would do is they would literally till the land by hand. So they would dig it with that hoe and turn it upside down and turn the weeds. You know, they would incorporate the weeds into the soil so it could die in the winter or dry season. They would burn to clear the land and then they would till it by hand. And it is so laborious and they're so determined to do that, and it's really. But the first thing they will do is they will just weed the tall grasses that would stand there and then after that they will dig it and turn it in. So that would that's an obvious reason to start telling. And then, of course, another reason would be people believe that it will help with infiltration of water. So you need to get the land soften up, because if it's too dormant for quite a while, of course the soil is very hard. I mean, I've worked on soil where you take that hoe, it just goes cling on the soil and you could barely penetrate it so to get it soften up and you have to turn it and tell it so that you could get water penetration but also root penetration. That's what people argue. And then I think the other thing would be, you know, to be able to maybe mix your organics into the soil, to get that organic top layer mix into your soil. So those will probably be the main reasons why people want to plow or till the land.
Johann:But I, through my experience now on that land of where we were at the orphanage when the american board started to ask these questions, they actually acquired a tractor for us and the plow was knowing nothing about farming. So I learned how to use that and I started plowing the land for these reasons and we had slopes there and then we saw quite a lot of soil erosion with the heavy thunderstorms that you get in Africa after plowing. And what I found is the creeping grasses after plowing. Man, it's like you stimulated them instead of getting rid of them. After the first rains ever we plowed, we we saw even more weeds coming up. It was just like you, were stimulating these creeping grasses and that was really hard to manage. We eventually ventured into uh, using uh herbicides and I actually got these battery opted, perhaps like sprayers, and we would walk and trying to kill this, these creeping grasses, with herbicides and uh, even roundup and all of those things. That's all people were, you know, that's all I knew what to do. I didn't know what, what else.
Johann:And then, um, this group from arari, from zimbabwe, came and they started teaching us about foundations for farming and man. It was revolutionary. It just changed everything for me when they started talking about mulching the land and lease soil disturbance and all these principles that they claim were coming out of how God makes things and how God works. And I started to take meticulous notes and really starting to apply what they've taught us. And we started on a small scale. I think we had about four hectares, which may be in a home homesteading context is quite big, but for a farm in africa that's quite small. And we started to apply those principles where we took the previous stover of the crop and we just slashed it and left it on the ground and wherever we put in contour reaches also on the slopey land, I learned how to make contour ridges using a simple A-frame method and we built these contour ridges and then we planted vetiver grass on the contours and then we mulched the land as much as we could and this vetiver grass would grow out quite tall. And this vetiver grass would grow out quite tall. So before the planting season we would cut the vetiver grass which added mulch, and I could actually get about six feet of mulch cut, you know, continuously along the contours, with this grass that I grew, which helped me to mulch the land, with this grass that I grew, which helped me to mulch the land. And in the first season, after I started applying these methods of mulching, we stopped the plowing, we put in contour bands. We tripled our yield.
Johann:On corn, you know where we used to harvest. I think we used to harvest one ton from a hectare. We now got about four tons from a hectare. In one season it changed to four tons. So that really was man, if we can do it and we didn't use a tractor, we were just using a hoe then the whole country could do it, you know. And the big problem is food security. So it really was an enlightenment for us that there's a simplistic method that you could use that could eradicate hunger in Africa using a hand implement. It was very exciting.
Noah:That's amazing. Let's talk just a bit about what is it that tilling does to the soil. We talked about why we till. I mean, we're getting rid of the grass, we're trying to keep it weeded, we're trying to keep it from being too hard where the water runs off, maybe we're trying to incorporate fertilizers into it, but for all those benefits, you experienced a lot of benefits from not doing that. I've also seen the same thing, and so what is it that tilling is actually doing to the soil and how is it, how is the soil designed to work? Can you give us a little bit of of background on that?
Johann:yeah, I love to go back to genesis and the way god created things, um, and of course, uh. Then the soil becomes very interesting. Because when you realize that everything that moves on the earth was made formed out of the soil, it means that there's something special about soil. Even us ourselves were formed out of the soil. Every bird that flies, every creeping thing, every animal on the earth was formed out of the soil. God could have just spoken it, but he chose to use the soil as the substrate for every living thing on the earth, except the fish just was there. But this becomes interesting. So, in a way, the soil must be very special to God.
Johann:And then we, we start to think about what is soil, you know, and where did soil come from? And we know that I mean, at first the earth was covered with water and then the Lord brought the land, so the mountains came up and the earth and the land and the sea was separated. Now, at that stage, I, you know, I'm not sure, I don't think there could have been much soil. Imagine, you know, mountains rising up and waters running off these mountains in the lower parts and the oceans being formed. I think that it was probably just bedrock at that stage. And what is soil? Soil is basically humus that broke down and minerals, a rock that broke down and got eroded into smaller particles, and so we get these different layers of soil. We get the different horizons if you start to study soil the o horizon, which is basically the decomposed plant matter right on the top, and then you get the air horizon, which is the top soil, which is basically the organics mixed into the mineral that's been broken down, and. And then you get the subsoil, where it's mostly minerals and and and eroded rock, and then you get the weathered bedrock and then eventually the bedrock. So you've got the strata and it changing color from lighter to darker as you come to the surface, and the more organics you have in your soil, the darker your soil will be.
Johann:Then he took that soil and he shaped man out of it. So in our molecular structure I mean. He says from dust you are and to dust you will return. I don't know from which layer he took us, but probably from the top soil. I don't think it was the horizon, because then it would just be leaves and twigs and things that's decomposed. He didn't say he made us from compost, but he probably made us from the a horizon of of the soil strata.
Johann:And now soil becomes to me in a sense I don't want to say it in that way, but almost like holy, like all of wow, okay, this is the substrate I come from. So when I start to look at soil in that light, I start to be careful how I I work with it. You know, and, uh, if you look at what god said to adam and eve and he said you know, cultivate and keep the garden, those words, even the word soil, which I think the hebrew is adama and he calls adam after the soul, yeah, we are so connected, we're so connected to the soil. And but he says I don't want you to destroy this, I want you to cultivate it and keep it. Now, if we look, think of a laboratory and you ask a scientist to cultivate you know something that he maybe wants, like a fungi. What does that mean? It means grow it. It means you put a little spore, maybe on a petri dish or whatever in certain circumstances, and you let it multiply and grow. But if we hear the word cultivate today, we think of plowing.
Johann:I don't know where it changed, but if you go and look at the original meaning of that word in hebrew, cultivate it really means to care, you know, to tend it and cultivate it. It means to, to protect it, to create the ideal environment for everything that's in it to thrive. Uh, it's, it's. It's not about turning it and breaking it, it's, no, it's the opposite. It's take care of it, be careful with it and rule over it, have authority over it and bring order in it. That's the whole concept that I see. When god blessed adam and eve, he says be fruitful, multiply, rule over the earth. So we need to come, there must be strong intervention. But that doesn't necessarily mean, uh, you know to, to destroy things or to turn it upside down. Because if we start to, when I discovered the soil the first time, uh, I was with my friend daryl edwards in zimbabwe and he's an agronomist and he, we were on his farm and we went to get a sample from his compost, that mature compost, and he took it, he shook it up in a little container of water and he took a drop from there, put it on a little battery dish and he put it under the microscope and we were able to see.
Johann:I was able to see with my own eyes the living organisms that was there. You know now, I knew about these things, but I'm telling you it's different when you see it with your own eyes and it happens right in front. First of all he took a little ant and we could actually see through the ant's head. It was translucent and it was, I mean, the mandibles and everything was so beautiful and amazing to discover and then that was like 40 times magnification, I think. And then he turned it and then we put you know different things and he put the little droplet on there and we looked around there and we found mites. There was a little mite on the side of the glass dish and it was uh, you could barely see it with your own eyes, but when we put it under the microscope you could see this mite, I mean again, this funny shaped body, and the mandibles and and the tentacles and all of that, and the, the legs. It just intrigued me.
Johann:And then he went you know much. Then we could see fungal strands and you could see also they are all translucent. You could see through this stuff and and to see the fungal strands and so many of them, and then to see the bacteria man, I mean that's just crazy. And there's, there's anthropods, there's just billions of things. I mean, in one teaspoon of soil you'll find, I would always say, in malawi, you know how many people are in malawi?
Johann:And they say, okay, 19 million. I said you know, in this teaspoon of soil there's much more than 19 million living organisms, just in this little teaspoon of soil. Actually, there's more living organisms probably in this teaspoon than all the people on the earth. And it's just crazy, the of life that you find in the soil. Then you start to realize, oh my, this substrate is alive, there's, there's almost nothing above the surface that's got so much life as a tiny square of soil it's just teeming with life and if we see it, if we can become aware of it, we will walk much more carefully on it. And if we start working with it, we will work much more carefully with it and then, when I started studying it, okay, so what are these guys all there for? And you know, and daryl explained to me, you know that topsoil, the air horizon, is aerated. So that's where you find the aerobic organisms, organisms that needs oxygen, that needs air to live, and that's probably the first.
Johann:I speak in centimeters, so first, 12 to 15 centimeters. I speak in centimeters, so first, 12 to 15 centimeters. And it's amazing that they need air. But they are the main decomposers. So they would take the organic matter, the mulch cover, the leaves that fell from the trees, the one-year grasses that dies off, and all the annuals and the things and the tweaks, and they will start working on it and decomposing it. We also get the earthworms, which is amazing. I mean the night crawlers would come out at night. They grab the leaves, they pull them in.
Johann:You get the termites sometimes when in Africa, if we walk past a field that's got organic matter on it in the dry season, you hear this noise. Literally you can hear them. What's that? What's that? You go and study and you think is there a critter running here? What? Why am I seeing nothing? You come really close, you realize it's termites and they are busy shredding all this organic matter with their little mandibles.
Johann:They are the shredders, you know. They're the guys who cut things into smaller pieces and it's go like crazy and you could hear them, man. And then you get the earthworms and they create these cavities, lateral, you know, up and down, and they've got this slimy substance that they give off and as they move in the soil they create almost pillars because they bind the soil particles together with that slimy substance as they move and it becomes a strong straw in the soil with a coating, you know. It binds the soil together and it actually holds the soil up in a way, the roots of the plants that die off. They also pillars in the soil. They also keep the soil up in a way so it prevents compaction.
Johann:And god in his wisdom has created all these amazing critters and creatures for our benefit. And you know. Then you get the other guys, like the bacteria. What are their purpose? The aerobic bacteria. They can decompose much smaller particles that the shredders and the earthworms and those bigger guys cannot do. And the mites. And then you get, you know, the fungi that exudes enzymes that can chemically destroy or break down molecules and things and decompose it and in all these processes these critters are busy eating. So they're eating organic matter, it goes through their digestive system, it comes out on the other side as fertilizer and they they just got compost makers. They are god's plows, they are god's erraters. They are all have specific purpose in the soil and they were designed. They would not just happen there. You know. It designed, there's a, there's a godly design in all of these living organisms and man.
Johann:As daryl was explaining this to me, it was like you know, I know, I don't know if any of you have ever gone diving, but if you go and dive in the ocean, at the coral reef or what it's like, you always just see the surface of the sea, in the water, and you get in there and you have your goggles on and you could see all the life that's in the ocean. Man, it's like a whole new world opening up to you. The colors, the diversity, this it's just phenomenal. And these, these, these you shell creatures and the fish and the different colors and the seaweeds and plants that's growing there is phenomenal and you marvel at this whole new world, you're discovering. That's what it was like for me when I looked under a microscope and I discovered this new world under the soil and it's alive, it's teeming with life and I said, man, I was never really so aware of it. And then you go with a hoe or a tractor or you know whatever farming implement, and you come.
Johann:Imagine if you were one of those living organisms. You know you are in the soil, you're in this top layer, you're an aerobic organism and your whole mandate for your, the purpose of your life, is to decompose, to decompose, to aerate, to bring organic matter into the soil. And you're doing that. That's your life purpose. God has designed you like that and you're very happy doing it. Of course people are also. I mean these guys, they're also eating each other. There's predators among them. There's so much happening. They all eat, they excrete, creating fertilizer. They have very short lifespan. They die, they become fertilizer. You know they, they eat each other and it becomes fertilizer, everything that happens there. Their life cycle is around creating organic matter and making nutrients available to the plants. So now, suddenly, we are happy here.
Johann:Let's say, the ceiling there is this soil surface and this is the soil. We are happy. There's roots coming down here, there's earthworms moving up and down, there's termites making their burrows here and whatever food available to us. There's moisture. The moment it rains it infiltrates easily through all those cavities that's been created. The soil has got a structure because the organic matter is holding it together, the roots are holding it together and we have enough air, we have enough food, we have enough moisture. There's a mulch cover on top of the land. That's how God created and designed it. It retains the moisture for us. It protects us against the heat and the cold. There's a blanket. That's insulation for us. It also protects us against the heavy raindrops or the hail or whatever might fall on the ground. And we are just happy in this moderate climate, moist, full of food, full of life. Moist, full of food, full of life.
Johann:And here the crown of God's creation, the one that was made in God's image, you know, the Adam comes and he puts a plow in this beautiful substrate, this medium where we all are alive and thriving and multiplying, and he turns us upside down. He takes that big plow and he turns the soil. He puts the, the, the b horizon, the subsoil, he throws it on the top and there's no organic matter in that. It. It's the least fertile soil in the strata. And he takes us, who are supposed to have air, and he throws us at the bottom and we become subsoil and suddenly we don't have access to oxygen anymore, we don't have access to food anymore, because the food was on the top, there, the layer, and this atom that's supposed to know God, that's supposed to be the son of God, that's supposed to understand this design that the father has put together. He comes and destroys everything and we all die, man, those of us who can't survive. We get up there trying to find air, you know. Then he comes with chemicals. He sprays, roundup or whatever, you know pre-emergence herbicides, and oh, the few of us they're still alive. We're getting this concentrate of chemical and we die. And then, oh, now, now the soil is not fertile enough, so they come with synthetic fertilizers and they throw that in the soil. Oh, and the few of us that's still surviving. We die because of the high concentrate of these salts and chemicals.
Johann:And systematically, adam that's supposed to be the one that was to to cultivate and keep is becoming the destroyer. And systematically we destroy all life in the soil and all structure. We break down that beautiful pillars that was created. There were so many decades, I mean thousands of years, those beautiful, uh, woody, uh, you know, um, the roots that died off and all of that, and the source of sugars coming exuded from the roots. I mean, if we were like bacteria, like rhizobium, what we? We need roots to be attached to, we produce nitrogen, and all of that for the plants. We live in symbiosis with these plants all of that is gone. All that life is gone. That whole synergy is gone.
Johann:We've upset the whole system that god so carefully designed and nothing is sustainable anymore. And now we need to supplement this dead substrate with chemicals, with synthetics and all kinds of things to make our plants to grow. And he's just so crazy. And we're all doing it, the whole world is doing it, and I don't know how god feels about that. How can we call ourselves children of the living god, the creator of heaven and earth, if we go exactly against his design? And now farming becomes so counterproductive and so unsustainable and God's just heart is breaking for us. That lives in such, you know, lack of understanding of what he tried to put together for us. He's given us everything that we ever needed for our garden to be sustaining itself and we just go and destroy it all because of a lack of knowledge. We are suffering and now. So that's my story of the soil. I have seen it firsthand over these last 25 years.
Johann:If you stop so, how do you get to a place where you've done this over years and you want to restore it? You know? So I would say the first step is stop plowing, stop burning. But how do I open this field then? I mean, there's grass growing everywhere. Just weed it, surface weeding, just cut the roots with whatever implement you can have. I use a hoe and turn it upside down and leave it there to die, you know, in the dry season, and let it become the mulch cover that was originally there. Just a surface, just cutting the roots of those weeds. And the next thing you're gonna struggle with is, you say, but the soil is so hard, you think it's hard. But you pour a bucket of water over it and you'll see it infiltrates. It might be hard, but there's so many cavities in there.
Johann:If the soil was virgin land and it stood for so many years, I can promise you it's got an amazing structure. It took so long for for god's creation to create that structure, all those cavities, that, um, the porous in it and it you could. It could really feel hard, but that doesn't mean that the roots won't be able to penetrate. You plant something there. I can promise you you will be surprised at how those plants can produce and the infiltration will be there. The aeration is already there, the organic matter is already there, the the life in the soil is already there. The best soil you could ever try to find is virgin land and you've got a responsibility as a steward not to break that but to cultivate it and keep it. That call on. Our lives have never changed. We are in a new covenant. God never evoked it, so it's still valid for us that call of stewarding the beautiful land that is trusted unto us. And so stop cultivating it. I mean, stop plowing it, stop turning it, weed it, leave the weeds as a mulch cover. The next thing is stop with the chemicals. Get the chemicals out of the soil, you know, and put organic matter in there.
Johann:A fast track to restore your soil is compost. Compost is not a fertilizer, compost is an inoculant of life. So if you, if you, make compost, you're basically bringing all the ingredients together that all these organisms I just talked about just love. You give them food. You give them an energy source, in the form of sugars, in the green material, in the form of nitrogen, in manure, legumes, plants. You give them moisture, you know, in watering the compost or soaking it in water. You give them organic matter. You give them everything their heart desires and the natural decomposition that happens in nature, in the virgin bush. You put it on a fast track, man. That could have taken maybe a whole year or six months. You do it now in six weeks or eight weeks, because you've given them everything they ever desired. It's like microorganisms on steroids and they will do this work within eight weeks. They could decompose huge piles of organic matter if you're, and and noah has got all the teachings on how to make compost.
Johann:But if you can make compost and then you make a small inversion in your soil and you could throw it on the, on the land, just cover the with compost, then cover it with mulch, man, it'll just. You're inoculating your soil with life. You're putting it on a fast track of restoration. If you want to plant, you know maybe vegetables, that you need to transplant heavy feeders that you first plant in a seed bed and then you transplant it. Feeders that you first plant in a, in a seed bed, and then you transplant it. What I would do is I dig a little hole and at the right spacings and I'll incorporate my compost in the hole before I plant. But I already have compost on the surface too, the more. You can never give too much compost, never it.
Johann:It will restore clay soils to loam soils. It will restore sandy soils to loam soils. It will restore sandy soils to loam soils. Just God's creatures will start working and it will change soils. It can change hard infertile places and restore them just by leaving it and feeding it. And then I would say you know, start with rotations, start with proper rotations on your crops. Don't just grow one kind of crop year after year or season after season, but get a rotation going of legumes, heavy feeders, light feeders and so forth, and intercrop with. You know there's so many studies and Noah is so great in sharing these things with us. So from my experience, all of this work tremendously.
Johann:I have grown corn in Malawi, rain fed, no irrigation, using these methods, and I was harvesting 13.9 tons from a hectare.
Johann:Tons from a hectare, and you know where the average yield of Malawi is, maybe between one and two tons a hectare.
Johann:Wow. And if I tell people when this corn, when they see my, my maize we call it maize there they can't believe it. They say, oh, you've used a lot of fertilizer. I said I didn't buy one drop of fertilizer and I haven't used any on my fields for years. But I've built up my soil through this mulch cover, through the organic methods, incorporating compost, and I'm harvesting close to 14 tons per hectare from land that's not been had seen any synthetic fertilizers, you know, for the last 10 years. So it works and it's not about trying to feed the plant, it's about restoring the soil. When you restore the soil, if that's your focus, you build a sustainable garden. If your focus is to get maximum yield from the plant, you'll never get sustainability. That's not your aim. Your aim is to restore the soil and bring life back into the soil, and your garden will become sustainable and you could plant stuff there without even putting any compost after a few years and you'll just see it thriving.
Noah:Yes, so I like to think of it no no, that's great.
Noah:I like to think of it. As you know, we also have milk cows and uh, you know, when milk cattle to or in cow to feed their own calf, I don't have to worry about how much they're eating. I don't have to worry about how much they're eating. I don't have to worry about how often we're feeding them. I just have to make sure that the mama cow is getting what she needs. And if she's getting what she needs and she's happy, then the baby cow, the calf, will be perfectly fed, just the right amount, just exactly what it needs. But if I'm bottle feeding it, which is what we typically do when we plow and destroy that fertilizer system and we have to bring in fertilizers, then you need to yet be very specific. You know how much are you feeding when off, how often are you feeding it. It's much more precise, even if it's an organic fertilizer, that's manure based, but it's that's why,
Noah:compost is so forgiving because it's it's like a mama cow feeding a calf It'll do it by itself and you can't overfeed it. You won't overfeed the calf, you know, and that's. That's a beautiful system. So what would you? You know, one of the things that I like thinking about when we're talking about this is I love this idea of this biblical perspective. And how does a biblical world view is what we're kind of talking about impact the way we look at plowing and soil stewardship? But then there's still. The bible talks about plowing. You know jesus talked about when you put your hand in the plow, don't look back. Um, we see, you know, beating your swords into plowshares and your plowshares and the shorts, depending on the. So it seems like there was plowing in the Bible. It wasn't condemned by God as sinful, necessarily. So how do we think about that as Christians? How should we think about plowing from a biblical worldview, especially in light of the fact that it's been something people have done since biblical times?
Johann:Yeah, absolutely, times, yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of references to plowing in the Old Testament and so, and when I studied it, I realized that if you think of that verse you just quoted, you know about the swords into plowshares. So what does a sword look like? A sword is so narrow. You know how can you make a plow out of a sword? That indicates that it's really just a tooth. And that indicates that it's really just a tooth. It was probably a wooden instrument with a metal tooth attached to the front of it, a sharp metal tooth, and it was pulled by oxen and it's just to break that top layer of soil in order to get seed soil contact.
Johann:I mean you don't expect you're gonna get a yield if you just distribute the seeds on top of the surface of the soil. I mean the birds will come and eat it, it'll wash off with the first thunderstorm. There's no seed soil contact and therefore the moisture also cannot penetrate the seed coat of the seed. So you need good every farmer knows you need good seed soil contact, that that seed must be surrounded by soil and it must stay there. And when it's all, the whole surface of the seed coat is surrounded by moist soil. That's where germination happens the best and you also need that heat that's absorbed by the soil from the sun. So you need heat and you need moisture and you need light those three elements for a seed to germinate and thrive. So that's why it's necessary to do disturb the soil and get the seed into the soil and get it surrounded by soil for it to germinate.
Johann:Well, but that's probably at the deepest eight inch you know depth of soil disturbance and it will be more like a furrow that was created. They didn't have the plows that we have today where that can actually go up to 12 inches and then turn it. It was a tooth that pulled through and created the farrow. It was more like a ripper. You know, today we have rip people do rip this today with very deep rip tooth in order to break a plow pan. So root penetration can be better. I'm not against that because it doesn't turn the soil and it does help. You know, if you had soil that's been plowed year after year, you actually get this hard pan of soil that water cannot penetrate. The roots cannot penetrate deeper than that and then people come with a deep rip tooth to break that right in the line where they're going to plant their plants, and that might be needed to do, you know, when you start off. But it's not going to turn the subsoil to the top or or the topsoil to the bottom, and so that was what they did. They were just pulling a tooth through the soil. Then they could get the soil, the seeds, into the soil and good seed, soil contact for good germination. So wherever you read about tilling, it's at the most eight inches deep, between two and eight inches.
Johann:In the bible times they used animals. They hadn't had that drought power that we have now with tractors and all these, four by four tractors and six by six tractors. So it was a surface, you know, tilling for that purpose. We see that actually happening in God's creation with the antelopes. If they run, it's a heavy animal with a small hoof and that hoof is penetrating.
Johann:I mean, in africa we get these huge migrations of the wildebeest, for instance, and they come into this after the rains. There's these grasslands, beautiful savannas, and huge herds of wildebeest or antelope will go over it and as they run, the hooves are beating the soil and they're literally plowing it up. But how deep, you know, it's just this deep and the grass. The seeds from the grasses are getting mixed into that. They also defecate and they fertilizing it and plowing it, bringing seed soil contact all at the same time. It's an amazing system and the next season you'll see beautiful grasslands there because the antelope grew their own food. So we're trying to do the same. We just want to do surface. So I could use my hoe and dig a furrow to get seed soil contact. I could use my hoe to dig a furrow to get seed soil contact. I could use my hoe to dig holes to plant something bigger there. But I'm not going to take my hoe and dig the entire garden and turn it upside down.
Noah:No, the only reason I'll use it is to get that seed soil contact. Yeah, what you're saying is when we talk about plowing or tilling, um, there was nuance to that. There's not just one way that that looks like. And historically you're saying that it was shallower, more just to you know, kind of a ripper kind of plow. Most likely we see um that in in historical pictures and stuff. I actually have in in my one of my books here. This picture of um for those of you who are looking online it's not very doesn't, doesn't want to be still fuzzy, but in ancient egypt you can see it's a very pointed kind of plow, very small plow. Um, it's interesting.
Noah:In Isaiah 28, it says there's this passage where it talks about when a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually, does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? And it kind of goes on saying like there's a right order to do things. He doesn't just plow forever. He prepares the soil, then he plants, and like there's a systematic way to do it. He prepares the soil, then he plants, and like there's a systematic way to do it. And it's always interesting because at the end it says his god instructs him and teaches him the right way. So there's an implication there that there's a right way, you know, to do things when we're stewarding the soil and there are obviously ways that are, you know, not good stewardship.
Noah:And I think I love this idea of what Jesus said when he said, you know, the son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his father doing, because whatever the father does, the son also does, and that's from John 5. And so I think a biblical worldview we really want to come with this idea of how can we see what our father does, how can we honor that, how can we begin reflecting that, appreciating that? You know, when the knowledge is not there, um, we're going to suffer. When we're not seeking him, we're not observing that and appreciating it, like we see in so many places of the world or in in poor agriculture, we're suffering, it's not like necessarily, we're, um, you know, purposely sinning there, because the bible talks about, you know, everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.
Noah:Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive is what first Corinthians says. So we we want, though, not just to think about what's allowable, but how can we reflect the creator? How can we learn how to steward the land, like you said, that, growing, cultivating, making it better than it was before, recognizing that, ever since Adam fell, like most of mankind has not reflected a right relationship with God, we've reflected a wrong relationship with God and a broken relationship with his creation as well. So we need to be in this continual, like humility of how can we be doing this better. You know, we want.
Noah:I was reading this morning, where it talks, in Jeremiah, about, like, ask for the ancient paths, you know, ask for where the good way is and walk in it. And ancient is not just like a hundred years ago. It's like how did God intend this originally? What is the good way that he originally designed that we can then, you know, try to be in line with. And I think, um, that's where it's so helpful to recognize this overflow of this heart of acknowledging god as a creator, wanting to honor him, um, and it not just be about a legalistic what's allowable or not allowable, but a sitting at the feet of the creator listening to, like, like you said, this wonderful picture you painted of this incredible design that you know.
Noah:If we can partner with that in the soil, it's so much more beneficial than if we ignore it or destroy it. And, of course, god shows grace, and it's amazing, the soil will still grow something, even when we do plow it, or even do we, when we do till it. Um, but how much more benefit is there if we, if we're not doing that? So, as we're wrapping up here today, um, I want to talk just a few tips for people that want to actually get started with their, their, uh, their own garden plot, let's say, a non-african context in America. First, johan share, how did you prepare the garden there that you cultivated last?
Noah:year and then I'll share a bit of what we do before we wrap up here.
Johann:Yeah, so we basically we first had to put a fence around it because there's white-tailed deer roaming around and rabbits and so on. So we just put some steam and we got very cheap netting on our own and we just put the netting around on the stakes and that kept the deer out. That was very cheap and easy to do and then we just weeded that portion. You know, there was grass growing there like a lawn and we just weeded that and sort of put it aside on a pile, all the weeds. And then I measured 110 centimeters. What could that be? Two feet around, about two feet wide. I made walkways, you know, every two feet um of maybe 40 centimeters. What's that in inches?
Noah:you don't make me convert it on the spot, johanna. Okay, we'll look it up later about this.
Johann:Well, yeah, there we go. So I made walkways in between the two feet portions and I sort of used my hoe and just took the top soil from those walkways and I threw it, know, on top of the two feet portions to create these beds and they were nice and straight. I used ropes and pegs and I wanted to do it at the high standard and so I made a raised bed. It wasn't raised much, maybe just this, you know, but I got the topsoil from my walkways and I threw it on those raised beds and then I had a portion that I dedicated as a seed bed where I planted, you know, the stuff that I was going to transplant. We already started earlier in the season propagating seedlings in the house, you know, when you still had frost, so that by the time the frost wouldn't be there we could transplant them quickly into the veggie patch. And I also purchased some nice healthy, organic seedlings from a friend who had a farm, yeah, and then we basically built, got some decomposed manure from a horse farm and I first had to find out where you know how the grazing of the horses happened, and I was wondering if they are using herbicides on the grazing. And they did not. So the horses were keeping the grass down and it was all organic system. Because you need to be careful also where you get your manure from, because if the horses would be feeding on on you know hay or anything that was sprayed with herbicides, you would get that through their system into your garden and you might be killing your berries with it instead of growing it. So you need to be careful where you find your sources of manure and organic matters as such. You know you could get dead grass that was killed by Roundup and try to compost with that. I don't think it's going to work well. So try to find organic sources of organic matter if you want to make compost or you want to find manure. I didn't have time to make compost at that stage, so I got these guys at Mountains of Horse Manure and they were lying there for years, so it was totally decomposed I could apply that directly into. So I just covered the bed with that manure and had ample supply of it and, like I said, if I grew bigger veggies, like the kale, which grew so big, and my peppers and all of those things, I would dig a little hole and add compost in the hole before I transplanted those and it it just thrived. Man, it was amazing. We just kept on harvesting from there. Yeah, so that's how I did it and we're getting ready to plant again.
Johann:Of course, we found that the kale you shouldn't plant too early. It's better to plant. It got totally white with pests, pests and uh, but it grew out again later in the season. So, but I would plant my kale a little bit later. Some of these leafy crops, probably later in the season, not in the heat of summer, and then, but all the others, the solanaceous crops, peppers and all those things did great, um, and your root crops did great. You could plant them also later in the season. You could plant your garlics and onions and all of those when it's quite cold already. So, yeah, that's how we did it that's awesome.
Noah:Yeah, I just love um. We've we've done this many times here in Alabama just preparing, you know, like you know, johan, like you did, just removing what's there, either through smothering it with a tarp or, you know, heavily mulching it or chopping it off and compost on top and kept them mulched, and they were, you know, several inches in diameter, four or five inches long, like two. You know we have nine people in our family. Two or three carrots was enough, you know, to add to any meal for us for supper by the time we chopped them up. So it's just amazing to to see that production and and I just love that it's all going back to saying you look, I don't, I don't understand how all the soil works. It's amazing when I hear about it, but I just know that when I go into creation there's minimal soil disturbance, there's not this huge inversion, there's a mulch on the ground and I'm just trying to do what my father does, what I see my father does, and then, wow, I can give him credit when I have these incredible results and it's so much easier and it's much more affordable as we're trying to teach people in our community who don't have a lot of resources. There's just so many amazing side effects of trying to do things God's way, because it gives us that ability to point back to him, and that's what stewardship is really so much about. It's about acknowledging his ownership, allowing his principles to speak into any area of our life, whether it's our relationships or finances or the land itself, and then that gives us opportunities to testify and to witness to other people of the work that he's doing in our life and in our land and the work that he can do in their life. So I would encourage anybody that's listening.
Noah:We have on Redeeming the Dirt Academy. We have videos showing exactly how to do land prep. We have videos on compost making. I'll include in the show notes here a free checklist on steps to do to prepare some ground for planting without tilling, to prepare some ground for planting without tilling. And then we have the Well Water Garden Handbook, which you can download for free at the wellwatergardenprojectorg or you can get it on Amazon if you look up Well Water Garden Project, and it has a step-by-step kind of that, the layout, like Johan was talking about, of the paths and the beds and all the different steps for putting in a no-till garden but really doing it and showing how to do that in a way that flows out of that heart of humility, acknowledgement of God, and then how to actually use that to teach and train other people. So really encourage many of you who want to learn more about that to check that out.
Noah:We're also going to have an after show with Johan where we're going to go into the question of how to talk about new methods, how to talk about how do we farm god's way, talk about plowing versus not plying, especially in a christian context, with other christians or with non-christians, without being divisive and judgmental, and so that's a question if you're a member of redeeming their academy, that you can pop on there and get some uh some and join in that conversation. But I really appreciate it, johan, for you, uh, just taking time with us today and sharing some of your insights and just your passion for god's uh, the soil and god's creation, just how he made that, and really inspiring all of us to want to learn how to work with that better. And uh, and I would love, uh, if you have any final thoughts and then if you could just pray for the listeners that god would bless their garden this year.
Johann:That would be great yeah, I mean, I remember times where, in malawi, where we, we were growing all these crops we were growing many crops, different crops and, uh, to walk in that garden, you know, after you've put in all that work, and to see the corn just so tall and two cobs on every stalk, and to see the mulch cover, and the joy and the worship that rise in your heart, you know, and to think that god created this plant and I know it's been. I mean, those were hybrid plants, but so man has intervened, god has given us wisdom to make plants grow even better, and through breeding and cross-pollination and all of that. But and through breeding and cross-pollination and all of that, but that wisdom also comes from God. But just to be in awe of these creations, these plants and I really I mean I've sent Noah a link of a little video clip I made in Zimbabwe, in Harare, where I'm walking among these amazing crops, and I'm just overwhelmed by God's creation, the, the beauty of it and the fruitfulness of it and the, and that I was able to put one tiny seed like this in the soil and it produced two cobs. And if I counted the pips on those cobs, there were 600 pips on a cob, on the primary cob, and the secondary cob was always a bit smaller, but you would have at least 400 pips on that one, so that one seed produced 1,000 other seeds, and on top of that this huge biomass, this huge stalk and all those broad leaves and things. And I just think this is a miracle. I mean I could and I had the privilege to take the seed and to put it in the soil exactly in the right depth to prepare the soil for it to thrive and see, germinate and grow.
Johann:Now I, I can feel this way about a plant. How much more will god feel about us? You know, and we come from even a much smaller a seed, and and here we are living creatures able to create things, to be, to think and to thrive and and to multiply, and and humans are the most beautiful, amazing creatures that god has ever made, truly in his image and to think. How, if I could feel that way about a plant, how must god feel about me? And how does he want to cocoon me and cultivate me and tend me so I could grow into everything he has meant me to be? And ephesians 2, verse 10, is always such a beautiful verse for me.
Johann:You know we've been recreated in Christ Jesus unto good works that God has predestined us to walk in. And each one of us, each one of you listening, there's a purpose for you, just like those microbes. There's a purpose for the threaders, there's a purpose for the fungi, a purpose for the aerobic bacteria. There's a purpose for you in god's great design and what's amazing about your purpose. There's not one other person on this earth that could fulfill the purpose that he's given you because it's unique. Especially your fingerprints are unique, totally unique, and God has got a purpose for that. And to discover that and to thrive in that and to be rooted in his love, just like a plant rooted in a compost, you know, and those nutrients. That's the place where you will be the happiest is to discover that godly mandate and purpose for your life and where you will thrive.
Johann:And I felt that call, you know, to minister to the poor of africa.
Johann:And that's what we've been doing and it's been such a joy and I'm looking forward to see a continent totally transformed by the love of Jesus.
Johann:Thank you for listening and thank you, noah, for initiating this call. Let's pray, father, I just want to worship you, honor you and bless you. Bless your name for For engaging with us, your sons and daughters, and showing us your creation and how you designed it, all For our benefit, for our enjoyment and our sustenance. Thank you, father, that we can interact with your creation and that we are part of it. Just like the seed needs good soil contact for germination, how much more do we need to be surrounded by your presence for flourishing? So I pray for each one that's on this call or watching this, this podcast, lord, that you will right now surround them with your love, with your presence and every, every purpose you've intended for each person here. Lord that the germination in their spirit will happen and it will grow into beautiful trees, fruitful, flourishing people that will bless their communities and those around them and their families, and that they will enjoy the fulfillment of living in their own godly purpose.
Noah:In jesus name, amen thank you so much, johan. Thank you so much everyone for listening again. Check out the show notes for links to some of the videos johan mentioned and links to redeeming the dirt academy, or you can just search that or the wellwatergardenprojectorg to find some more resources. But just encourage you guys to continue seeking the Lord and how to reflect him through agriculture and until next time, just encourage you to be humble, to be faithful and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.