Traditional American Farming Techniques

Seed Saving

Seed saving involves saving the best seeds from this year's crop to plant as next year's crop. Traditional farmers didn't need to pay a seed company for seed because the food they grew contained their seed. Saving seeds yielded crops that were well suited to the land they were growing on. If pests attacked the plants, the seeds that survived to be planted the next year were those with some pest resistance. If frost came early, the plants that survived were the ones that ripened early. When farmers planted those early seeds the next year, they often yielded a crop able to ripen before an early frost. Planting seeds selected on a particular plot of land eventually yielded seeds ideally suited for that plot of land.

Crop rotation involves alternating plantings of soil-enriching crops and soil-depleting crops. For example, barley grows better on soil were beans were grown the prior year than it does on soil where barley was grown because barley is depleting. Sugar beets grow better when they follow wheat or barley. Corn grows better after alfalfa. Rotating crops not only maximizes nutrients, it also helps deter pests. Insect pests usually specialize. For example, pests and diseases that attack wheat rarely attack sugar beets. During the sugar beet phase of the rotation, wheat pests will die off, leaving the land free of them for the next wheat rotation.

Strip cropping involves growing crops in a systematic arrangement of strips across a field. Strip cropping minimizes erosion. Crops that require the soil to be tilled increase the chance of erosion. As water or wind passes over the bare soil, it can carry topsoil with it. When tilled-earth crops are planted in strips with grass or close-growing crops like oats or alfalfa, the close-growing crops slow the water runoff and catch some of the the soil carried by the wind. Topsoil is protected, and fertilizers stay on the field rather than being washed into nearby waterways.

Cover crops are crops grown not for harvest but to improve the soil. Cover crops slow erosion and break into the life cycle of insect pests. Some cover crops, like legumes and annual medics, fix nitrogen. In other words, they convert atmospheric nitrogen into compounds that other plants can use, before they themselves are cut for fodder for animals. Red clover, which also fixes nitrogen, grows so tightly that weeds are choked out. Cover crops, when plowed into the earth, compost in place. Winter rye, for example, can be tilled into the soil as a green manure.