Natural Way of Farming

Outstanding todos

Final boss
- publish as two substack articles
- link on permies, send to fukuoka farm
get the projected figure for famine due to strait of hormuz closure
source
What is surface drainage? 2-3 weeks before rice harvesting, do you drain all water from the field, or just the top layer of water (ie lower the irrigation channel water levels)?
what is field grafting?
what is the composite family? example?
source

Final boss
- publish as two substack articles
- link on permies, send to fukuoka farm

Why publish yet another summary of Fukuoka?

This one is different! I swear!

I promise that what you're about to read is different to anything I've seen on the internet. Most people I've heard of who try to emulate Masanobu's natural farming just read The One Straw Revolution, try his techniques loosely, and then give up. I am yet to find a person who has deeply read this book and also tried to reproduce Fukuoka's amazing success (especially with grains). Most natural farming information out there is missing the most crucial information that Masanobu Fukuoka left behind, in my opinion.

Maybe you'd like to try natural farming but are skeptical whether it works or unsure where exactly to start. I can't promise you that it works; all we have to go on is Fukuoka and Larry Korn's accounts. I visited Fukuoka's farm which was run by his grandson Hiroki at the time, and even they haven't reproduced natural farming in its prime.

As such, I've compressed the practical knowledge nobody seems to be talking about so you can read it in under an hour. I hope that, armed with the bulk of Fukuoka's knowledge, we might succeed in reproducing and extending his sustainably high-yield farms.

If you just want the practical information then skip ahead, but if you'd like more motivation (ie my opinion) as to why exploring Fukuoka's farming methods is important, read on.

I'm trying to make this as accessible as possible, and throw this as far and wide over the internet as I can. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please hit me up at hey [plus] masanobu [at] jackzezula [dot] com.

Discovering natural farming is hard, period

To date, nobody that I know of has successfully implemented Masanobu's succession planting grain with broad seeding and natural irrigation, which is perhaps the most high energy and space efficient grain farming method known to us in recent history. Let's brainstorm why this hasn't happened yet. Possible reasons include:

Nobody has yet tried hard enough for long enough. Possible reasons for this are:
1. Transitioning to natural farming can take a long time, and people give up during the transition (which led Masanobu himself to many years of failed harvests).
2. People don't have sufficient knowledge to survive the transition period.
3. People likely to try these methods (ie farmers) are financially constrained (and cannot afford the losses), which shortens their potential transition period.
4. A combination of the above reasons. Without sufficient knowledge (2), people make the already-long transition (1) longer than it needs to be, and this is longer than the maximum time they're able to wait (3).
The environment has changed in such a way that these results are much harder to reproduce with the same effort. The possible reasons are numerous, as we have changed much of the climate and robbed nature of much biodiversity since Masanobu accomplished what he did.

What're the chances of Masanobu, really?

Discovering the knowledge of natural farming requires tremendous friction in our world. Masanobu already analysed why industrial capitalism continues to plunge into increasingly unnatural and reductive-scientific methods, and why these methods are unsustainable ^[1].

But Masanobu was uniquely positioned to rediscover the knowledge of natural farming in our high-friction world. His factors for success were:

Landowner. He had the privilege of owning existing farm land.
Devoid of high capitalistic pressure. He did not need to bring in a high income.
Scientific background. He had a background in biological sciences, and therefore an ability to interpret his intuitions of nature in a way most of us can't.
Inordinate amounts of free time and joy in exploring farm experiments. He could focus purely on the natural system that included his farm, and clearly enjoyed conducting experiments on his farm enough to do it for the second half of his life. In addition to his rare level of financial freedom, I assume his free time was due in part to neglecting interpersonal relationships too^[2].
A willingness to challenge authority. He did not mind pissing off his neighbours and broader community to prove his point. He was a self-assured hermit.
Preference for the flow-state over rationality. He sought insights that arose from his intuition during periods of intense non-analytical connection (perhaps meditation) with his farm.
A burning desire to disprove the utility of rationality. His epiphany arising after his near-death experience drove him to use an unconventional way of thinking to improve farming. As he describes it, natural farming was a means to try prove that a lot of human knowledge is largely pointless.

These seven things are each quite unlikely; the chance of them occurring together is slim-to-none. They also all seem essential; if you ticked all the above except the scientific background in agriculture, would you be able to make the same insights as Masanobu?

When you consider this, the chances of spawning a Masanobu feel mind-boggling slim. Of course, other permaculture greats like Sepp Holzer seemed to create similarly bountiful farms. Sepp credited a lot of insights about his farm to his dreams (6), was able to maintain a profitable existence while he explored more natural solutions (2) on his own farm (1), and fought even the law to develop his ways (4). It's not to say you can't access sufficient bounties of this knowledge with only a subset of these circumstances, but you probably need a majority.

Why do you care so much about the specifics of natural farming?

I'm pretty scared about the collapse of industrial agriculture. As of 2026, it turns out that to cause mass starvation, there's a very simple process.

Cut off 20% of the world's oil supply for less than a month. For example, by exploding some pointy things in the Gulf states.
This temporarily increases fertiliser prices, causing many farmers to scale down or altogether avoid plantings because it's too expensive, and they're too hooked on industrial farming methods to come up with an alternative.
Wait about six months for food prices to jump from the ensuing food shortage, causing wealthier nations to stockpile food, further inflating the prices of food for poorer countries that didn't stockpile yet.
Watch as tens of millions of people (fact check with UN) in poorer nations become unable to afford food.
- get the projected figure for famine due to strait of hormuz closure

This is the suffering we get from one very specific (albeit core and far reaching) failure in in the supply chain of industrial agriculture. But other points of failure are becoming more likely, such as plant diseases and ecological collapse source.

What do you think will happen to the price of food when bees disappear and we have to pollinate some crops entirely by hand? Either the price goes up (because the labour did), or the price stays the same and someone is being forced to work much harder for the same pay as before; you either turn the price dial up or the "modern slavery" dial up a notch. Please don't let your empathy stop for the people behind your cheap supermarket prices for food, becasue consumer expectations of cheap goods cause massive suffering. Our expectation to only pay a few dollars for Thai green curry mix sustains a supply chain of human trafficked employees that cut the eyeballs off shrimp to trigger a breeding frenzy^[3].

The machine we buy our produce from is unbelievably fucked up. In the best case, when things get harder to make, our complex supply chains disguise human and animal exploitation. In the worst case, your groceries get more expensive and people starve.

...

...wow, that was depressing. What next?

Stand as tall as you can on the shoulders of giants

I wrote this summary because I want to help people inspired by Masanobu's work (including myself) to help nature come back into its full power. I don't believe this is likely to happen without a little more diligent learning. Otherwise, why hasn't it been reproduced in the (over) 60 years since The One Straw Revolution went viral?

I am not the first to suggest that Masanobu did not adequately pass on his methods. Unfortunately, Masanobu became very depressed in the years before his death, because he felt that as much as he'd tried to educate people about natural farming, nobody had seemed to understand it as he meant it. Even Larry Korn (the driving force behind The One Straw Revolution's translation and worldwide reception) said in an interview^[4] that he thinks they didn't really increase the prevalence of natural farming.

This is not to say natural farming is a list of techniques. It's a list of techniques and an underlying philosophy. Seed balls are just one technique you can use to assess what grows well in a patch of soil, and so too is using characteristic weeds to identify suitable edible replacements. But the philosophy guiding the application of those techniques is helping natural systems more quickly grow in diversity and volume (in addition to feeding you sooner). The philosophy's fundamental focus is on nature's needs, and by wholeheartedly giving to nature with an attentive ear, we can hope to receive enough tasty homegrown produce for us (and a few lucky friends).

I think most people who've tried natural farming have acquired a partial subset of what we could absorb from Masanobu. Rather than standing on the shoulders of this giant, they are firing from the hip and wondering why they don't hit the target. This feels akin to why "permaculture" has become an unhelpfully diluted term when searching for work trades; every person and their dog says they "love permaculture", but only a tiny fraction have undertaken a permaculture design course or read the Permaculture Design Manual source, future ecologies miyawaki method.

source

To sum it up so far:

The chances of discovering natural farming knowledge yourself without standing on the shoulders of giants (aka using other people's discoveries) are pretty slim and take a really long time.
The chances of merely reproducing high-efficiency natural farming are, evidently, pretty low. I suspect this is because most people I've talked to about Fukuoka don't even know his practical guidebook exists, let alone have they taken adequate notes on it.
Regenerative agriculture warrants a lot of attention, because our under-regulated capitalist industrial food system creates so much suffering, and it's only going to get worse.

If you were inspired by Masanobu's writing, and you want to create viable change in our food systems, then I believe Masanobu deserves another hour of your best learning efforts to climb as high up the giants' shoulders that you can. The practical payoff is that it might actually become possible for you to reproduce Masanobu's work, and it might even take you less time than it's taken anyone before. You could become one of the first known people to reproduce his work! And even if you're the millionth, your chances of succeeding surely get way higher by being aware of the follies that cost Masanobu years of experimenting (or caused them to abandon it altogether).

How to read this summary

This book is the sequel to The One Straw Revolution and prequel to Sowing Seeds in the Desert. The middle chunk is the practical implementation of One Straw Revolution, and is perhaps Fukuoka's analogue to Mollison's Permaculture Design Manual.

This book contains the most important and neglected part of Fukuoka's knowledge; the practical how-to-start-and-run a natural farm, as well as the experimental process, hypotheses and insights that led to Fukuoka's theory. The latter is especially important, because as your specific implementation of natural farming will likely differ to Masanobu's, knowing how he devised natural farming specific to his farm will ultimately help you devise it for your farm.

In order to make this information more accessible, I have summarised the practical information from this book, and provided italicised references to diagrams, tables and detailed-guides that you might want to look at yourself. This summary should take only an hour to read and be easier to digest. I have essentially cut out Fukuoka's rants, and restructured information within chapters to make it more cohesive.

At some point, I'd like to come back and re-index the helpful concepts and advice in this book, so that I can more easily look stuff up when I'm in the field. I might call this hypothetical project The Masanobu Manual, but you're more than welcome to make one yourself.

Masanobu's practical knowledge in 3 minutes

A short overview of Fukuoka's practical knowledge and techniques. If you're not going to read the whole summary, here is a very reductive summary of the summary.

Soil rehabilitation and farm preparation
- Can take a long time (possibly 5-10 years) and really depends on the state of your land. Done by producing lots of organic matter on your land.
- You'll likely want to drop a bunch of seeds (see 1.3, ie clover, mustard, daikon) and a variety of trees (see 1.2, 3.3) to generate organic matter. After 5-6 years, if the soil is still struggling to produce lots of vegetation, you can chop all the trees down and bury them.
Seeding
- Clay-ball individual seeds to stop insects and birds from destroying them. If they struggle to germinate, add ash.
- If you're not going to tend to land regularly but want to improve it, throw seedballs on unused land and go check on it after a few years. You can either make the extensive seedballs from Sowing Seeds in the Desert (which involve adding bacteria and fungus from healthy soil), or you can use the more basic recipe from The One Straw Revolution (which only focuses on seeds).
Succession planting
- The key to avoiding many pitfalls of natural farming seems to come from Fukuoka's crop rotation (see 1.5).
- Fukuoka's signature grain technique involved growing rice and barley on the same field in one year, and getting amazing yields for both (see 2.8). This is his most famous achievement.
Managing weeds
- Always keep the ground covered with a species you can manage, like annual clovers. "Manage" means "you can suppress it when you want to grow something there".
- Suppression techniques
  - Premature germination. Watering your weeds just before a big summer heat. The weeds come out of their "hibernation" thinking it's autumn, but wither away in the ensuing extreme sunshine.
  - Intense watering before rice. After planting water intensive crops like rice, you can merely soak the field to suppress ground-cover that prefers a drier environment.
  - Light mowing. If you very lightly till (to about 2 inches) or run a mower over ground cover, you'll provide a window where new seeds / saplings can better establish themselves. This technique is emphasised by Helen Attowhe, who applies natural farming principles to a 200 acre farm.
Managing pests and disease
- Build up the insect and microbe web as much as possible. If it's diverse enough, damage should only affect a small proportion of your total crop (5-10% per species), which serves to keep natural selection running on your farm, thereby continually producing the most resistant species.
- A crucial idea here is that you can re-evolve wilder varieties of crops (especially vegetables) if you let them seed themselves once they're established.
- Use plants that serve as natural herbicides, like pyrethrum flowers, derris root, and tobacco.
Fruit trees
- Fukuoka emphasises understanding the "natural form" of a tree. He sketches the natural form of many species (see 3.5), but this is likely something you'll need to understand yourself through experience. Learn about phyllotaxy, and go observe some trees that have grown themselves.

In the introduction of this book, Fukuoka explains that he created a robust strain of rice that has a grain ratio between 70 - 100. He claims it is one of the highest yielding strains in the world. He grew it in fields that were not constantly flooded, meaning it is also suited to soils in drier climates provided they have enough water retention.

In two years (after 3 harvests), from one starting seed you would have $70^{3} \approx 343, 000$ grains, which he says is enough for a half-acre.
However, he says that harvesting a half-acre one year would yield enough rice to sow 50 acres the next, meaning the yield could be as high as 100:1.

I have created, together with the insects in my fields, a new strain of rice I call "Happy Hill." This is a hardy strain with the blood of wild variants in it, yet it is also one of the highest yielding strains of rice in the world. If a single head of Happy Hill were sent across the sea to a country where food is scarce and there sown over a ten-square-yard area, a single grain would yield 5,000 grains in one year's time. There would be grain enough to sow a half-acre the following year, fifty acres two years hence, and 7,000 acres in the fourth year. This could become the seed rice for an entire nation. This handful of grain could open up the road to independence for a starving people.

The Practice of Natural Farming, 135

Key

Bold text = chapter, subchapter, etc
Italic text = diagrams or dense useful tables
Regular text = my notes or quotes.

Starting a Natural Farm, 137
- The natural farm must be able to supply all the materials and resources essential for food, clothing, and shelter. In addition to fields for growing crops, a complete natural farm should include also a bordering wood.
- Scenic beauty perfects the site. A good environment in an attractive setting provides the physical and spiritual elements necessary for living a pleasant life.
1. Keep a Natural Protected Wood, 137
  - Diagram on species layout in an orchard. I intend to use it for My farm.
  - Whatever the means employed, the natural farmer must secure a nearby supply of humus that can serve as a source of soil fertility. Examples of soil-enriching techniques:
    1. Direct burial of coarse organic matter deep in the ground.
    2. Gradual soil improvement by planting grasses and trees that send roots deep into the soil.
    3. Enrichment of the farm by carrying nutrients built up in the humus of the upland woods or forest downhill with rainwater or by other means.
  1. Growing a Wood Preserve, 139.
    - What to plant to restabilise vegetation on the top of a hill, which is the most vulnerable part to denudation.
    - Vine -> low conifer (evergreens) + grass/bush -> ferns + mix of trees (reserve)
    - A bamboo grove is also a good reserve since it grows in only a year. Take care to choose the bamboo species wisely, and learn how to tame / harvest it.
  2. Shelterbelts, 139
    - Prevent wind damage, improve soil fertility.
2. Setting Up an Orchard, 139
  - There's no need for bulldozing if you're not going to use machines, which natural farming doesn't require. The only major operation is picking fruit, which if you tend the form of the trees properly, should be easily doable by hand.
  - Orchard vegetation by function (eg protected, green manure, evergreen).
3. Starting a Garden, 140
  - You can plant vegetables and grains amidst your orchard.
  - By observing the types of weeds that grow in a place, you can determine what vegetables and grains are the most suitable there.
  - How to choose vegetables based on weeds. Though interestingly, traditional cultures know how to make use of these weeds, perhaps eliminating the need for replacement. It's easier to change your diet than the landscape.
  - When starting a garden, the main goal is prevention of weeds and soil movement. Use buckwheat for this in summer, Indian rapeseed and rapeseed for winter. Once the garden is mature (the weeds are under control), you can grow anything.
  - Suggested initial succession planting in an early garden.
  1. The Non-Integrated Garden, 141
    - Preventing soil movement is well done with terraces. Ability to build stable earthen embankments (ie dry walls, using knowledge of the soil) can be a determining factor in success of the garden.
    - Slightly graded terraces create much higher crop returns and efficiency of farm work. Learn to terrace.
    - Bury coarse organic matter in the terraces you build to rapidly prepare them for fertiliser-free cultivation.
4. Creating a Rice Paddy, 142
  - You shouldn't make a rice field with machinery. It makes water stagnant (causing root rot), the top soil is distributed unevenly. Concrete paths destroy microbial communities.
  1. Traditional Paddy Preparation, 142
    - Traditional Japanese farmers preferred to build rice paddies in the hills by digging trenches to draw water from valley streams. Building a paddy should be fun in a way that using machines isn't!
5. Crop Rotation, 143
  - Intercropping is essential for healthy growth. Fruit trees need to be connected to other trees, weeds and vegetables.
  - Crop rotation is essential to keep the soil covered as much as possible.
  - Leaving vegetables to themselves in the field allows nature to solve the problems of continuous cropping, space, disease, pest damage, and recovery of soil fertility.
  - There is no universally agreed upon basic crop rotation scheme. However, there are guides.
  - Pictures of grain grown at various stages, including new growth amidst ground cover. This will surely be extremely helpful to identify how close you are to the delicate optimal sowing timings of ground cover with other plants when you wish to broadseed (ie large-scale low-intensity cultivation). I wonder how many people who tried Fukuoka's broadseeding method and failed to control their weeds took note of this section.
  - Pictures of Fukuoka's farm. Companion plantings eg orange with black wattle, daikons with turnips. The hillside orchard that went from hard clay to fertile soil in 5-10 years.
  - Pictures of an anti-desertification project in Somalia. Includes four pictures depicting premature germination, where you water the fuck out of grasses mid-summer to make them grow prematurely and die in the heat they would have remained dormant through. Also includes the picture used for the cover of Sowing Seeds in the Desert.
  - Continuous crop rotation for vegetables, grains, and mixed fields. Perhaps the most important diagrams in the book. Fukuoka's suggested crop rotation over 5-10 years for both cold and hot climates. Starts with grasses in year one and proceeds to diversify in later years. Fukuoka recommends using this schedule to transition from scientific to natural farming. Various alternatives.
  1. Rice/Barley Cropping, 144
    - Japanese farmers have used this for a long time to get consistently high yields of both, but no other country's farmers were using this method according to Fukuoka in 1985.
    - If all the straw and chaff from threshed grain were returned to the field, only 15% of currently applied amounts of nitrogenous fertiliser would need to be applied by farmers. If you use a leguminous ground cover, you don't need this at all. See Veganic gardening for effective mowing of ground cover to make its nitrogen available to other plants.
  2. Upland Rice, 144
    - Might be an effective species for coping with worldwide food shortages.
    - Unstable, often subject to drought, yields lower than paddy-grown rice.
  3. Minor Grains, 156
    - Grass-family grains like corn, millet, buckwheat, job's tears. Worth trying to grow given their wilder forms might be easier to come by. However, seed preservation of these grains was becoming difficult in the 1980s; all the more reason to try grow a handful of them!
    - The wilder the food, the greater its medicinal value. Kawaguchi was a big proponent of plant medicine, so I wonder what his opinion on different grains is.
  4. Vegetables, 156
    - Cruciferous winter vegetables should be sown just before the emergence of weeds because they can outcompete them. They also have deep roots which improves soil.
    - Fukuoka found that growing vegetables in a semi-wild state allowed them to grow with almost no fertiliser / compost.
  5. Fruit Trees and Crop Rotation, 156
    - Interplanting with evergreens and deciduous trees may help minimise damage. Growing vegetables beneath fruit trees (or amidst any perennials) reduces insect and disease damage.
    - Disease and pest damage is largely due to: depleted soil fertility, confused tree shape, poor ventilation, or inadequate light penetration.
Rice and Winter Grain, 157
1. The Course of Rice Cultivation in Japan, 157
  1. Changes in Rice Cultivation Methods, 158
    - In an effort to maximise yields, the focus of rice farming improvements in Japan changed over the decades:
      - In 1940 the focus was on tilling methods amidst existing by hand farming methods
      - 1950, fertiliser production via animals
      - 1960, mechanisation via scientific farming
      - 1970, energy-intensive systemising via agribusiness
2. Barley and Wheat Cultivation, 159
  - Farmers in Japan used to double-crop their field (rice followed by barley) even though barley was a pain in the ass to grow and harvest (with their methods); they did it for pride, and because they knew it boosted their rice production. Eventually, barley was forgone for wheat until the government ceased import taxes on cheap USA wheat, which killed the wheat farming industry in Japan. Then, as now (2026), there was only rice in the fields.
  - Fukuoka wanted to find a new way of succession planting with rice, barley and wheat to permit farmers to economically and efficiently perform natural farming; he wanted to improve on the tradition that existed before.
  1. Natural Barley/ Wheat Cropping, 160
    - How Fukuoka actually arrived at his famous achievement of natural farming for intercropping rice and barley. It took him years of failure, but the persistence paid off. It's possible that many people give up on applying this natural method to their own fields because they cannot afford to wait through this period of failure, and there are not enough hobbyist (aka financially unaccountable) farms currently exploring it.
    1. Tillage, ridging, and drilling, 161.
      - Experimented with ridge density in field, row density on ridges, and barley density in rows. Realised that ridges were unnecessary.
    2. Light-tillage, low-ridge or level-row cultivation, 161
      - Realised less tillage was better, so tried methods on an unploughed field. Fukuoka thinks embracing no-till was the key change in direction.
      - Explored weed control with ground cover (clover) and leftover rice straw. Using rice straw as mulch was taboo at the time, because it was believed it always caused disease. However, this was only true if it decomposed on the field spring, right before rice planting, which when you think about it, makes sense; it's unnatural for an annual seasonal crop to be dying atop its new saplings, and probably invites unknown diseases the crop the never evolved to combat.
    3. No-tillage, direct-seeding cultivation, 161
      - Questioned why rice and barley (two grasses) should be planted so differently, and opted for broad-seeding. Realised that you can sow all the grain seeds for the year at once with over-wintering rice seeds. Though he doesn't mention it here, this would have to coincide with the introduction of clay-covering seeds or seed-balling to prevent insects and birds from eating the seeds.
      - An agricultural survey comparing the barley yields of Fukuoka's unfertilised fields (from the aforementioned experiments) versus fertilised fields. The yield of a natural field versus a fertilised one was 9.4% less but with better grain quality, far less labour (ie in weed control, planting) and at least ten years of longevity (barley and rice in both years).
3. Early Experiences with Rice Cultivation, 164
  - Analysis of a project plan during Fukuoka's early life at an agricultural research station during WWII. The goal was to increase yields by restraining a particular pest, the rice borer.
4. Second Thoughts on Post-Season Rice Cultivation, 166
  - Re-analysis of the above project with the knowledge of natural farming and hindsight (in a way that was predictable with foresight). This affirmed Fukuoka's resolve to not rely on human decision-making for improving farming.
  - It must be remembered that diseases and pest damage are self-defense measures taken by nature to restore balance when the natural order has been disturbed. Pests are a divine warning that something has gone wrong, that the natural balance of rice plants has been upset. People must realize that nature's way of restoring an abnormal or diseased body is to fight fire with fire, to use naturally occurring disease and infestation to counter further disease and pest damage.
5. First Steps toward Natural Rice Farming, 168
  1. Natural Seeding, 169
    - Fukuoka first succeeded at over-wintering by coating rice seeds in a mixture of pesticide and synthetic resin.
    - He notes that you can apply fertiliser to already-harvested rice stubble and get regenerated rice, as long as the plant is not subject to frost. Fukuoka wanted to explore this in future, but I guess he never wrote about it. He realised this when he reasoned that certain insects survive winter by hiding in regenerated rice stalks.
  2. Natural Direct Seeding, 170
    - How Fukuoka arrived at direct seeding (that is, not transplanting). He believes the centuries of artificial selection on modern rice species will make it impractical to sow them directly; they are dependent on transplants now. I wonder if this is true of Masanobu's grandson's farm and its current version of his "Happy Hill" rice.
    - Fukuoka tried throwing various densities of rice seed and found that the yields were not significantly different. More seeds does not equal more rice grains beyond some safe threshold. The median value of Fukuoka's experiment (which should be a safe bet) is 60 seeds per square yard, or 72 seeds per square meter.
6. Early Attempts at Direct-Seeding, No-Tillage Rice/Barley Succession, 171
  - These findings are taking place concurrently with the barley cropping experiments in 2.2.1.
  1. Direct Seeding of Rice between Barley, 171
    - Various attempts made during the ridging phase of his grain field explorations in 2.2.1.1. Interestingly, Fukuoka notes that rice yields were better when sown in an existing vegetable field (of tomato, eggplant and cucumber) than when the rice was grown in the same field after vegetable harvesting.
  2. Direct-Seeding Rice / Barley Succession, 172
    - The rowed barley cultivation was so effective in an untilled field that trying to till and then plant rice seeds between them was difficult. Fukuoka tried scattering the rice seeds 10-20 days before cutting barley. Germination was good and seed losses from birds seemed low. Although this proved to be part of the final method, Fukuoka discarded it for now.
  3. Direct-Seeding, No-Tillage Rice/Barley Succession, 173
    - Fukuoka's core grain method (but not the final one) was published in 1962, the same year as Silent Spring (which founded the environmentalist movement) and the time in which Sepp Holzer was solidifying his home-grown approach which was later dubbed a standout example of permaculture.
    - Finally, Fukuoka abandoned tilling entirely, which sounds like it would have been a great taboo to say amongst farmers at the time. In 1962, he published his findings. In 1985 (this book), he wrote that he had been growing rice and barley without plowing for 20 years, which means he at least stopped tilling by 1955. This means there was a seven year period between stopping tilling and Fukuoka having a paper ready to publish findings. It doesn't mean it took seven years to successfully grow this succession, but it means it took up to seven years of non-tillage. I find this significant because I assume most people give up before then, and perhaps the reason Fukuoka's grain technique hasn't been replicated is because people haven't tried no-till for long enough.
7. Natural Rice and Barley/Wheat Cropping, 174
  - Fukuoka was still using pesticides at this point and had issues with weed control. This prompted him to explore clay covers and clover as weed control. He called it the "clover revolution", likely in opposition to the industrial green revolution at the time.
8. Direct-Seeding, No-Tillage Barley/Rice Succession with Green Manure Cover, 174
  - This section is the closest thing to a step-by-step process in Fukuoka's works. It gives you the best chance of being able to efficiently grow grain with hand tools like he did.
  1. Cultivation Method, 174
    - An overview of the whole year.
    - What is surface drainage? 2-3 weeks before rice harvesting, do you drain all water from the field, or just the top layer of water (ie lower the irrigation channel water levels)?
  2. Farmwork, 175
    - How to prepare land for rice farming. The method is simple but advanced, and so Fukuoka advises high-precision for all of the following.
    - The information is not super clear to me, but in Fukuoka's writing I have interpreted:
      - "levee" as "the wall surrounding the paddy"
      - "irrigation channel" as "the trench at the perimeter of the rice paddy"
      - "drainage channel" as "a trench dug through the middle of a rice paddy"
    1. Digging drainage channels, 175
      - Fukuoka assumes you have a regular rice paddy field with existing irrigation channels. You can check out what I saw demonstrated at Akame farm school or research this yourself.
      - 2-3 weeks before rice harvest, you open the levee to surface drain the water out from the field. Does this mean you just lower the water levels in the irrigation channel?
      - After the rice harvest, dig 8x8 square inch channels every 5-6m along your paddy to more quickly drain the field, which helps the barley and green manure grow instead of weeds.
    2. Harvesting, threshing, and cleaning the rice, 175.
      - Cut the rice. It's fine to trample the clover and young barley shoots, which should have 2 or 3 leaves. Using machines is fine, but you can build a thresher yourself (beat the rice over a triangular frame atop a tarp) and manual hullers are cheap.
    3. Seeding clover, barley, and rice, 176
      - Seeding date and quantity per quarter-acre.
      - Preparing clay pellets. Although I'm probably going to use something like this, which Fukuoka suggests doing for large seed quantities with a concrete mixer.
    4. Fertilization, 177
      - Fukuoka used chicken manure, but he also suggests human or animal manure, or even wood ashes. Practically, it means whatever decomposed organic material you have. Do not use fresh manure since this can harm seedlings.
      - When and how much fertiliser to spread on your field per quarter-acre.
        
        After rice harvest: 300-400kg
        
        During barley heading (optional): 90kg
        
        After barley harvest: 200-400kg after a high yield
        
        During rice heading (optional): 90kg
      - Alternatively, you can release 10 ducklings per quarter-acre when the rice seedlings have become established. They will pick insects and lightly turn the soil too. Presumably, this means that one duckling provides about 30kg of manure over its season in the field. You'll need protection from stray dogs and hawks; why not guard geese or llamas?
    5. Straw mulching, 178
      - Return all of the straw and chaff (husks, hulls) back to the field from whence they came.
    6. Harvesting and threshing barley, 179
      - Five people are enough for harvesting and threshing (including hulling) on a quarter-acre.
      - Once you've seeded the barley and mulched the straw back in the field, there is nothing to do with the grains until the barley is ready for harvest. Enjoy your winter holiday.
    7. Irrigation and drainage, 179
      - The first 20 days of rice and barley cropping is the most critical; the main problems are ensuring germination and controlling weeds. Water management (irrigation and drainage) is the most important part of grain crop management. It's probably the hardest challenge for newbies.
      - Notify your neighbours you'll be irrigating at different times to them if you're using natural farming and they're not. Fukuoka ran into trouble with this, and I believe his son Masato stopped Fukuoka's grain method largely because he wanted to repair relationships with their neighbours (the farm now floods its rice fields).
      - Manage your levees. See Kawaguchi's natural farming#Naturally irrigated fields.
        
        Once you can consistently prevent leakages in your levees (aka drainage channels), you are an expert rice farmer. In Japan, this means being an expert mole catcher.
        
        If you build concrete levees, when they break they're going to be harder to repair (ie moles will dig under them in a few years).
    8. Disease and pest "control", 180
      - Fukuoka noted "clouds" of dragonflies and "flocks" of sparrows around his fields as markers of biodiversity resulting from natural farming.
9. High-Yield Cultivation of Rice and Barley, 181
  1. The Ideal Form of a Rice Plant, 181
    - Dimensions of ideal shape of rice plant. Lengths for internodes, leaves and sheaths.
  2. Analysis of the Ideal Form, 183
    - Describes the ideal ratios within internodes, sheaths and leaves.
    - The rice plant only needs 3-4 internodes, whereas conventionally farmers like to have 6-7.
  3. The Ideal Shape of Rice, 184
    - Shorter plants are better. If you apply lots of fertiliser you'll think you're going to get lots of rice because the plants are big, but this is the wrong mindset; in rice too, it's not size that matters, but what you do with it. In fact, larger rice plants produce smaller yields.
    - See the diagrams in the next subsection.
  4. A Blueprint for the Natural Cultivation of Ideal Rice, 185
    - Diagrams of the ideal shape of a rice plant.
  5. The Meaning and Limits of High Yields, 186
    - A table breaking down harvest yields. Yield (kg) per area, plants per area, heads per plant, grains per head.
    - Blueprint for high-yield rice cultivation. This table allows you to aim for a particular target yield, seed a certain density look, then diagnose your progress with the number of heads/tillers per plant. Relates panicle type, planting time, soil richness, fertiliser (chicken manure), water management type, based on the panicle type.
    - Diagnosing your yields. Fukuoka never tried to use scientific knowledge to increase yields. He believes that you will indirectly increase your yields by focusing your efforts on what nature needs (which you will identify from being present with your land).
Fruit Trees, 190
- Preparing soil for an orchard.
  - Do not clear land that has top-soil with a bulldozer. Land left bare for 10 years will have had its topsoil washed away; you may need to account for time to build up top soil again.
  - When clearing trees from land for an orchard, leave the organic matter (ie branches) in lines along the contour to decompose. Do not burn branches and leaves.
  - One foot of top soil should have enough nutrients for a fruit tree for 10 years; three feet for about 30 years.
- Plant at equal intervals along hill contours. For each tree, dig a "fairly deep" hole, fill it with coarse organic matter, then transfer a fruit-tree sapling (notably, Fukuoka does not emphasise planting seeds here, unlike with grain, vegetables and ground-cover). If you've cut down some trees, you can also dig holes next to the stumps and plant your saplings there.
1. Establishing an Orchard, 190
  1. Natural Seedlings and Grafted Nursery Stock, 191
    - Grafted saplings have shorter lifetimes, poor resistance to extreme temperatures, are dwarfed, and require lots of fertiliser to grow. This is because it cuts sap flow off at the graft juncture.
    - Planting from seed or not.
      - Fukuoka tried direct-seeding fruit trees, and noticed they are "inferior and generally useless because they revert or degenerate". However, it helped him understand the natural growth rate of fruit trees.
      - However, he said that trees grown from seed that are heavily cared for grow very quickly. So it sounds like direct-seeding could be ideal, but only if you are good at recognising the plant's needs.
  2. Orchard Management, 191
    1. Correcting the tree form, 191
      - It's really hard to recognise the "natural form" of a tree. Early pruning on a sapling heavily scales the effort required for future pruning, for better or worse. It's difficult to tell which shoots should be pruned on a young sapling, so it's better to leave them alone.
    2. Weeds, 192
      - Some saplings became overrun with weeds, grew in the shadows of other trees, and were difficult to find. However, Fukuoka noticed that these saplings suffered less disease and pest damage than others.
    - He kept weeding until the sapling were established, then replaced the ground cover. Let the natural weeds be ground cover at first, then replace them with "soft weeds" (chickweed, knotweed, crabgrass), and finally with broadseeded clover.
    3. Terracing, 192
    - Fukuoka says you can wait 5-6 years after planting the saplings, specifically until you've replaced the ground cover, before constructing terrace. You can do this by creating roads or steps on the uphill side of the saplings. Up until this point, it just looks like a hill. I assume it's important not to terrace early (ie before planting) because you might lose a lot of top soil if the ground cover is not well-established.
2. A Natural Three-Dimensional Orchard, 192
  - Avoid monoculture of fruit trees.
  - Plant deciduous fruit trees with evergreen fruit trees.
  - Never forget to plant green manure trees. For nitrogen, plant pea family (ie acacias). For phosphoric acid and potash, plant eg alder and podocarpus. Perhaps interplant large trees, shrubs and climbing fruit vines (ie grapevine, akebia, gooseberry).
  - For undergrowth, plant legumes, forage and semi-wild vegetables. Allow poultry and livestock (ie ducks and chickens) to graze freely here.
3. Building Up Orchard Earth without Fertilizers, 193
  - Fukuoka was led to natural fruit farming by noticing that his father's farm did not make a net profit over 40 years due to ongoing soil depletion.
  - He mentions later that a rapid method of intense soil regeneration is to plant a mixture of fruit trees and acacia (specifically including black wattle), then after 5-6 years, chop all the trees down and bury their wood in trenches in the soil. You can also do this with existing wood on the site.
  1. Why I Use a Ground Cover, 193
    - Table of orchard cover crops by herb type, growing season and uses.
  2. Ladino Clover, Alfalfa, and Acacia, 195
    - To rehabilitate soil, ladino clover should be the primary crop, and alfalfa, lupine, and bur clover should be the secondary crops.
    - Deep soil penetration is improved by planting black wattle, myrtle and podocarpus.
  3. Features of Ladino Clover, 195
    - Pros: eliminates weeds quickly (2-3 years), improves soil down to 1.5 feet, one seeding lasts 6-8 years, doesn't compete with fruit trees for fertiliser or moisture, grows back easily after cutting, remains healthy when walked on, doesn't hinder farming operations, makes weeding easier.
    - Cons: does not survive well in hot dry weather and growth is inhibited by shade (ie of existing trees).
  4. Seedling Ladino Clover, 195
    - Drill seeds in autumn, delayed seeding causes insect damage, do not cover seeds (just firm the soil).
    - Increase density by seeding in late autumn among dying weeds and grasses.
    - If planting in spring, sow among weeds, but cut it back after a year to stimulate growth. Use ladino clover vine (like sweet potato vine) to ensure a full cover by summer.
  5. Managing Ladino Clover, 195
    - Failure to control clover will lead to "certain failure". Trampling clover increases growth. If clover eliminates all other weeds, it becomes vulnerable to disease (ie leaf spot) and will give way to weeds in 5-6 years.
    - Maintain by mowing like a lawn with a scythe (or lawnmower). If you see perennial weeds (ie sorrel, dandelion), twining plants (ie bindweed, cogon, bracken) or herbs, cut it more often and then scatter wood ashes or coal.
    - Lateral growth is slow, so seed it all over your orchard at the beginning.
  6. Alfalfa for Arid Land, 196
    - In extreme conditions, summer, arid land or cold dry areas (ie earthen levees), it's best to mix clover with alfalfa. You can also use lupine or other summer legumes.
    - In general, alfalfa eliminates other herbs and grasses.
    - It can be used for feed and a forage crop.
  7. Black Wattle 196
    - Plant 10 black wattles per quarter-acre among the fruit trees. Direct seeding is better than saplings.
    - Pros: rapidly improves deep soil, forms a shelterbelt and windbreak between fruit trees (in only 3-4 years), shades soil in summer, protects against soil depletion, prevents orchard pests (ie mites), protects beneficial insects ()
    - Uses: the bark is rich in tannin and can be sold for lots of money, the wood is great for furniture making, the flower nectar is a source of honey (eat it!), can cut and bury wood in trenches after 5-6 years (yielding about 500kg high-quality organic matter).
  8. Black Wattle Protects Natural Predators, 197
    - For reducing scales and mites, plant at least 5 per quarter acre.
  9. Some Basics on Setting Up a Ground Cover, 197
    - Clover lasts for around 6 years after planting, leading to the orchard being overrun with weeds. However, do not cut them as long as they do not interfere with farming operations. It is more conducive to enrich soil by letting nature decide what to grow once the soil is healthy and the other crops are established.
    - If weeds become too thick, you can sow clover seed again, or use vegetables as cover crops. You can often substitute weeds for equivalent vegetables, giving you more yield and variety. For an easy method, scatter among the weeds: cruciferous seeds in fall, solanaceous seeds in spring, leguminous seeds in early summer. See the table in 1.3.
    - All plants emerge for a reason; you can understand soil by analysing weeds quicker than analysing the soil itself. You should use succession planting for cover crops, not just edible crops.
  10. Soil Management, 198
    - Soil regeneration is slow by cover crops, taking about 5-10 years per 6 inches of topsoil. While you can get rapid results by bulldozing and burying organic matter, this has to come from somewhere. If you're strapped for cash but not for time, grow the organic matter yourself. However, Fukuoka believes that fruit trees grown in soil prepared artificially (especially with chemical fertilisers) halves or thirds their natural lifetime.
    - Interestingly, Fukuoka mentions: "...there is far more to the quality of a soil than its acidity. An infinitude of factors and conditions—physical, chemical, biological—go into the overall assessment. Nor can one justifiably call a soil healthy or diseased as there are no criteria by which to judge whether a handful of soil contains the right number of certain microbes, the right amount of organic matter, and the right percentage of water and air."
    - However, one of his students, Shimpei Murakami, provided a classification of ideal soil in terms of physical, chemical and biological properties. See Lessons from Nature for more details. Shimpei spent years applying Fukuoka's teachings in the tropics of Bangladesh.
Disease and Insect Control, 199
- Table 4.12: Resistance of fruit trees to pests and disease. Fruit trees, common pests and some countermeasures.
- In general, this chapter is an overview of how to deal with various pests. In many cases, the best solution is to attract natural predators.
  1. Arrowhead Scale, 201
    - Fukuoka noticed orchard areas with parasitic wasps and 4-5 kinds of ladybugs had far less damage from scale despite no pesticide application. Any damage was just cosmetic.
    - However, trees with criss-crossing branches still sustained heavy damage even with these bugs or heavy spraying, leading to the importance of correct pruning.
    - In the absence of natural predators, Fukuoka applied a "machine oil emulsion" or lime-sulfur mixture during the larval stage of scale.
  2. Mites, 201
    - Mite infestation was not a problem in Japan until after WWII, perhaps due to the use of increasingly strong pesticides. Mites cannot be eliminated completely, but their damage should not kill trees or grasses.
    - Microclimate changes, such as the amount of shade and sunlight on a tree, can dramatically shift mite and scale populations.
    - Interplanting of evergreen trees among deciduous should be sufficient to prevent mite damage.
    - Certain fungi feed on mites.
    - Fukuoka never had problems with mites in his citrus trees.
  3. Cottony-Cushion Scale, 202
    - Fukuoka saw almost no damage from cottony-cushion scale and thinks it's due to the presence of ladybugs.
  4. Red Wax Scale, 202
    - An example of a pest whose outbreaks are likely caused by the use of pesticides. Pine rosin spray was a traditional prevention. But parasitic wasps are the best prevention.
  5. Other Insect Pests, 202
    - Many insects appear when an orchard is abandoned. For some pests, you can effectively deal with them in winter by destroying the larvae. For example, the long-horned beetle larvae enter at the base of citrus trees, but you can pick and destroy them. I wonder if letting chickens run wild in the orchard does this automatically.
  6. Mediterranean Fruit Fly and Codling Moth, 203
    - These are two foreign pests which will likely (or may have already) enter Japan. Fukuoka warns that the free trade of fruit brings with it invasive species that can destroy harvests for many years.

2. The Argument against Pruning, 204
- "Pruning is the most difficult of the skills practiced by fruit growers." Pruning is traditionally done to: balance tree growth with fruit production, increase yield and quality of fruit, facilitate orchard operations (tilling, pesticide, weeding, fertilising).
1. *No Basic Method, 204
- Pruning is very confusing because there are many methods aimed at short-term goals; you can prune a tree one way to increase plant growth, and another to increase fruit production, because plant growth and fruit production are opposing factors. As a result, there is no simple method.
- Phyllotaxy is the study of the arrangement of leaves and branches on a naturally grown plant. Intuitively, plants have evolved a means to grow in order to most effectively harness sunlight; no leaf should shadow another. However, most fruit farmers have trees whose branches criss-cross, knot with neighbouring trees, and whose leaves overshadow one another. In essence, Fukuoka argues: if pine forests grow by themselves with no pruning, why should we prune fruit trees?
2. Misconceptions about the Natural Form, 206
- It is interesting that no book (as of 1985) had been published on pruning with regard to phyllotaxy, which suggests that much pruning advice is not based on natural tree forms.
- The natural form does not exist. Trees grow naturally under such a variety of conditions (ie insect/bird damage, wind, isolation from other trees) that there is no one natural form.
- There are many arbitrary pruning methods suggested per species, but all of these are likely about catering the form of a tree to (likely industrial) farm operations (picking, weeding, etc).
3. Is Pruning Really Necessary ?, 207
- If you use machines, till or weed a lot, then you will likely prune your trees to accommodate these operations. So how would you prune the tree if you could avoid (or eliminate) these operations? Fruit-picking is the only essential operation.
- Once you prune a tree "incorrectly" (into an unnatural form), it will be forever dependent on you pruning it to prevent harmful forms (like criss-crossing which leads to pest damage). Even pinching a young sapling will change its form forever. Essentially, you can make a bonsai from a pine just by pinching the ends, but you can never make a bonsai into a full-tree again.
- Of course, in nature young trees can also become damaged which is akin to erroneous human pruning. Therefore, we should focus on protecting the natural form of trees and restoring it through pruning when damage occurs.
3. The Natural Form of a Fruit Tree, 209
- Fukuoka identified the natural form of fruit trees by observing many plants and fruit trees.
- Deciduous trees naturally have a central leader.
- Hemispherical trees are generally unnatural and have been abandoned after pruning.
- Intuitively, maybe direct-seeding and not pruning would give rise to the natural form; however, due to artificial selection and cross-breeding fruit species, the seeds available today do not give rise to natural forms. Even if they revert to ancestral forms, hybrid species will likely yield inferior fruit. If you can find heirloom seeds, try direct-seeding them. However, direct-seeding any fruit tree should at least give hints (before it deviates) to the natural form regardless of whether it bears good fruit.
1. Example of Natural Forms, 211
- Some examples of the natural form for central leader trees.
- Satsuma orange is low-pyramidal if it's early-ripening, and tallish cypress-like conical if it's late-ripening.
- Summer orange, shaddock, persimmon, chestnut, pear, apple, loquat are all tall cedar-like conical form.
- Figure 4.7: forms of fruit trees. One of the most important diagrams in the book. Provides four classifications: 1. pruned-then-abandoned trees (bad), 2. pruned open-center trees (bad), and natural (central-leader) forms that are either 3. conical or 4. modified.
2. Attaining the Natural Form, 211
- A description of some species' natural forms. In short, while many trees can retain their natural form as they grow, some trees are sensitive and will deviate.
3. Natural Form in Fruit Tree Cultivation, 213
- Essentially, the pros of the natural form are:
- maximum growth and yield through naturally efficient phyllotaxy
- minimal pest damage through eliminating branch entangling and increasing even sunlight penetration
- balanced tree growth and fruit production, permitting good yields every year (rather than intermittent yields with artificial forms). Presumably, this is because natural forms encourage even nutrient distribution within a tree.
- the root system resembles (mirrors) the visible branches of the tree, resulting in a deeper root system. Fukuoka thinks pruning affects not only the growth of branches above ground, but the roots below ground too.
4. Problems with the Natural Form, 213
- The main problem is that creating a pure natural form is difficult. A direct-seeded tree might deviate anyway without sufficient attention. Either:
1. give the tree a modified central-leader form through pruning, or
2. aim for an ideal natural form by growing directly from seed, or growing a rootstock tree in a planting bed and then field-grafting.
1. [ ] what is field grafting?
- Natural forms of some varieties (ie grapevine, persimmon, pear, apple) have low fruit densities and therefore low yields. You can still use discreet pruning to increase yields, as long as it doesn't detour from the natural form.
- The natural form of trees with a central leader is difficult to harvest while they are young, before the scaffold branches grow out which makes it easier to climb. When the tree is mature, expect to climb trees to harvest all the fruit; some trees form a spiral stairway (ie persimmon, pear, apple, loquat) due to their phyllotaxy.
- Careful observation is required to attain a natural form. Enabling a "vigorous, upright leader" is key to the natural form. You must monitor the angles of scaffolding branches and remove any that deviate from the natural phyllotaxy.; primaries should be 40º with the horizontal and extend outward at 20º, and secondary scaffold branches should overlap vertically every 6 (ie the 6th branch is above the 1st). Be suspicious of phyllotaxy information you find which might be informed by badly pruned trees.
- A tree with a natural form may deviate into an open centre form if: 1. the central leader becomes inclined, 2. the tip of the leader is weak, or 3. the tree is injured. It is preferable to do formative pruning earlier rather than later, but only so long as you are sure of what the natural form is. Fukuoka attained this understanding from being present with nature, which he writes is something that it incommunicable through writing.
5. The natural forms of deciduous fruit trees, 215
- Figure 4.9. The natural forms of deciduous fruit trees. This is the best diagram from Fukuoka on natural forms. These drawings provide sketches of many species and their branch silhouettes throughout young, mature and old stages of life. The species shown are: apricot, peach, cherry, chestnut, persimmon, pear apple, loquat. He notes these are all easy species to attain a natural form.
- Fukuoka notes that even when he felt he understood the natural form, he struggled to produce the natural form in the several thousand fruit trees he planted thereafter (due to not having enough labour to attentively prune them when they're young). However, they were closer to the natural form, and required much less pruning later. Ultimately, Fukuoka may not have achieved the natural form in any trees, but achieved trees with less pruning requirements. One of Fukuoka's students, Panos of what's that farm, might have further developed this pruning technique, and emphasises it as one of the most important skills of natural farming.
- [ ] find and link panos's farm
- My guess/conjecture: a heuristic for "how natural is this form?" is phyllotaxy; "how many leaves do not receive sunlight at a particular time of day?". If we presume the natural form utilises (almost) all leaves for sunlight absorption, it should follow that if leaves do not have sunlight on them, it suggests the tree might need corrective pruning. I'm going to try marking leaves that do not have sunlight and track how many days they are sunless for.
4. Conclusion, 216
- To achieve a tree that requires minimal weeding and pruning, and does not require fertiliser and chemicals, it is all or nothing; without all principles in action, the tree will diverge from its natural form and likely fall prey to unnecessary sickness. Transitioning takes time, and unlikely to succeed if done quickly.

Vegetables, 217
1. Natural Rotation of Vegetables, 217
  - "Crops know where, when, and how to grow. By sowing a mixture of many field crops, allowing them to grow naturally, and observing which thrive and which do not, one finds that, when grown in the hands of nature, crops superior to what would normally be imagined can be obtained."
  - For family-scale farms (ie self-sufficiency), you can simply throw wild vegetable and grain seeds and let them continue to reseed themselves with occasional weeding.
  - However, for sustainable large scale farming, you need systematic, long-term crop rotations. See Figures 4.2 and 4.3 (under section 1.5 in this summary). Fukuoka suggests the short-term crop rotations used today are likely insufficient for maintaining soil fertility long-term.
  - For disease reduction:
    - Separate species from potato, gourd and mustard families.
    - Interplant lily, mint, carrot, composite families.
      - what is the composite family? example?
  - How do you gradually transition to natural farming of vegetables?
    - No tilling. In the first year, make ridges every 3-6 feet or dig drainage channels every 13-16 feet. The second year, ideally do not plow, but at most shallow plow before seeding and doing rotary tillage.
    - No fertiliser. Leguminous green crop must be sown every year. If direct sowing (possibly with coating), transplant seedlings. Plant root crops throughout.
    - No weeding. Minimise or remove the field's fallow period. Before harvest, sow the next crop's seeds over the current crop, or transplant seedlings throughout. Return the straw and leaves of the harvested crop to the field while the next crop is young.
    - No pesticides. Either use plants that are more resistant to diseases and insects in your area, or increase diversity of insects and microorganisms.
2. Semi-Wild Cultivation of Vegetables, 218
  - The following advice should be followed closely in addition to the crop rotations mentioned above.
  1. A Natural Way of Growing Garden Vegetables, 218
    - Put poop on the vegetable garden. Do not be shy about using animal or human manure. "Only those vegetables grown with the help of insects, microbes, and animals are truly clean."
  2. Scattering Seed on Unused Land, 219
    - How should we convert unused, weedy land into a wild vegetable garden?
    - When to sow
      - The best time to sow vegetable seeds is in seasonal weed transitions when it rains heavily. In autumn, this is when the summer weeds (e.g. crabgrass, green foxtail, wheatgrass, cogon) are mature, and the winter weeds (e.g. foxtail, bluegrass, chickweed, bog stitchwort, speedwell, common vetch, hairy vetch) have not yet germinated. Vice versa for spring.
      - If not enough rain falls on the vegetables, then after they germinate the seedlings might die to dry weather. If legumes do not grow quickly, insects and birds will eat them.
    - What to sow
      - Mix vegetable seeds with ladino clover and scatter or drill them between weeds.
      - Between spring and early summer, include leguminous vegetables. Fukuoka recommends asparagus bean, cowpea and mung bean for being cheap and high-yield.
      - Sowing lots of crucifers in autumn (e.g. daikon, turnip) should hold back the emergence of weeds.
      - Hardy vegetables which (once established) produce every year by themselves include garlic, scallion, leek, honewort, dropwort, shepherd's purse. For potatoes, as long as you leave some in the ground, they will reproduce by themselves without reseeding.
      - Use clay pellets if birds devour the seeds, which is common for peas, adzuki beans, kidney beans.
      - For weaker plants (eg tomato, eggplant), transplant seedlings into a cover of weeds and clover. Do not train them along poles; leave them to become bushes and vines.
      - If germination is a problem (ie for spinach, carrot, burdock), coat seeds with ash and clay.
      - On sloping land or near tree trunks, grow gourds (eg bottle gourd, chayote); chayote should yield 6 fruit per square yard.
      - Where possible, choose varieties that grow along the ground (eg for cucumber, melon, squash), but take extra care to not let weeds overgrow them while young. Scatter bamboo poles, firewood or branches for them to climb.
    - What happens next
      - Allow the vegetables to seed themselves. After one or two generations, they should become semi-wild, and produce much bigger varieties. Planting a variety of species (e.g. both Indian and black mustards) is important for cross-breeding.
  3. Things to Watch Out For, 221
    - Growing lots of the same vegetable in one area invites disease.
    - If growth in an area is poor: seed clover, apply chicken manure or well-decomposed human waste, consult the crop rotations (1.5) and weed-to-vegetable (1.3) figures from earlier.
3. Disease and Pest Resistance, 221
  - Fukuoka recounts how before pesticides were widely used, farmers used many natural methods to control pests. When he was working at an agricultural research centre, he made a pamphlet of common pest-prevention methods.
  - Plants to grow as pesticides. Fukuoka recommends growing pyrethrum flowers and derris root at the edge of your garden; both can be dried and ground into powders. Use pyrethrum for aphids and caterpillars, and derris root for cabbage sawflies and leaf beetles. You can use them against any other insect by dissolving the powders in water and sprinkling them onto plants. Both are harmless to people and plants.
  - Tobacco is also listed as a plant used for pest control.
  - Let chickens or fowl walk in a field to keep insects in check.
  1. Resistances of Vegetables to Disease and Insects, 223
    - A table of vegetables grouped by resistance (high, moderate, low) to pests. High resistance species don't need pesticides, moderate ones might need a little, and low ones probably will.
  2. Minimal Use of Pesticides, 223
    - Fukuoka admits that sometimes there may be no alternative to pesticides, so he provides info for making them.
    - Figure 4.10 Pesticide compounding chart.

What's next?

Having read this book twice, I think the future of natural farming is:

Reproducing Fukuoka's major work (possibly the highest energy and space efficient grain farming method known to us). After at least a 40 year absence of any examples of Masanobu's purported high-productivity farming, we should make a solid attempt to reproduce his results in hobbyist or community farm patches with small-scale experiments on grain fields (no bigger than a quarter acre, as he did on his own farm). When somebody somewhere has reproduced the method, they can teach their neighbours.
- This may take many years (perhaps even 7) of no-till. See 2.6.3
Explore Fukuoka's conjectures.
- Perennial rice cultivations in warmer climates (without frost). In 2.5.1, Fukuoka notes that you can apply fertiliser to already-harvested rice stubble and get regenerated rice, as long as the plant is not subject to frost. He wanted to explore practical ways to get multiple harvests from one rice planting, which you could do if your winter is mild. This resonates with Mark Shepard's preference for perennials.
- Growing grain amongst established vegetable fields. In 2.6.2, he notes that rice yields were higher when rice was grown amongst tomato, eggplant and cucumber.