what do you think about no till gardening?

[cathleenc]

I've got a ton of gardening books from the library system and very much enjoying reading in preparation for this season's gardening.

The concept of no-till gardening sounds so great! Who wouldn't like/appreciate no weeds and no turning the soil?! but does it work?

I can imagine that greens would do well - but root crops would seem to prefer a loose, deeply worked soil. Same with any crop that becomes tall or big or heavy - like tomatoes. Wouldn't they need access to deeply worked soil to 'grab on' and anchor? I DO like the concept of not disturbing the natural soil structure & flora/fauna.

Polar opposite method is something like 'Joy of Gardening' aka 'tillers rule the world' type gardening. Till, till, till.

Anyone use a combination of both methods? We might actually try that this year out of neccesity - wanting to grow both popcorn & sweet corn and only one bed dug. My understanding is that the popcorn should be at least 100 ft away from the sweet corn - so we might move it to an 'undug' area and try the no-till method 'just because'.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

thanks
Cathy

[Tricky Grama]

Well, we'll see...posted this on another thread: I marked off 20 X 10 w/logs/dead trees. Spread several thicknesses of newspaper, 12 huge bags of leaves we stole , then hay I raked up, then composted horse manure. Tomorrow will spread 50 lbs of dry molasses.
I'm hoping I can plant mid march...

Patty

[JMJones0424]

I switched to no till to benefit the earthworm population and am extremely happy. That being said-

Till the soil until you get basic parameters correct like pH, tilth, etc. Once your soil is already in good shape, no till is a great way to maintain it that way.

-Use lots of mulch. You should never be able to see soil. I grow root crops in separate above ground raised beds because I couldn't really get the no till system to work easily with them. (Not because they needed a different soil, but because plant spacing is so close that I couldn't get mulch in between the plants.) Exposed soil will be subject to the pounding force of rain, which should not be neglected. Good forest soil has two to six inches of leaf mold protecting it, this is what you are trying to replicate.
-Never, ever, ever, ever, ever walk on your beds
-Incorporate "resting" areas where you apply two or three inches of raw manure topped with six inches of straw and let this sit for at least half a year before replanting.
-Use large amounts of compost under straw mulch to fertilize heavy feeders.
-If climate is acceptable, look into incorporating Stropharia rugosoannulata (Garden giant or giant winecap). This is an edible mushroom that really helps to speed up decomposition of heavy lignen materials like wood chips into humus, and it grows directly in the garden if you have high levels of organic matter in the soil.

[cathleenc]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

Till the soil until you get basic parameters correct like pH, tilth, etc. Once your soil is already in good shape, no till is a great way to maintain it that way.

this makes a lot of sense to me. thanks!

[Jennifer L.]

I am going with more landscape fabric this year, which you can call no till as I won't be taking the plastic up often, if ever (put a lot of compost in before the plastic went down). But I can't see raising carrots this way. I'm looking at it being a time saver so I can spend more time weeding crops like the carrots/beets/strawberries when the tomatoes and cole crops now don't need the time weeding. Granted, they are the easier plants to weed, but if you only have a half hour at a time in the garden it should make a difference.

Last year I had squash, tomatoes and cole crops on the plastic and it worked well. This year I want to expand the tomatoes, cut back on the squash (grew way too much!) and do better with the carrots which didn't get treated too well last year (mostly too much rain all summer).

Jennifer

[chickenista]

When we moved here in June two summers ago I had to 'no till' a quickie garden.
I laid down old straw from the barn and newspaper. I dug holes in the lawn, a single hole for each plant, and added compost etc.. and then stuck in my seedling. I went around the plant with cardboard adn more straw. I ahd a pretty good garden.
But the next summer!! Oh man! My soil was so soft that I could stick my hand into it up to the elbow like butter. I dug nothing in and tilled nothing under. It was just the natural breakdown and worm action under all of that newspaper and stuff.
If you no till you may not get carrots that first year, but by the next it will be fine.
Also.. you could just dig and turn the soil in the root crop beds and leave the rest be.

I will be tilling this year but only because we are gardening in a spot that needs to be tilled just one good time. Then I will make mounded beds and never, ever till it again.

[kjmatson]

All the literature I have read convinces me that it is a great way to farm vegetables. This year I am going to install raised beds. The only thing that will not get a raised bed is the corn patch. I still love running my tiller

[kruizeag]

Commercially I do both. Last year I had tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and peppers that I no-tilled into rye stubble. I mulched it with the rye. It worked to hole the moisture much better, but stronger weeds made their way through the mulch. I would mow between the rows every few weeks. I ended up with clover growing nicely in between the tomato and pepper rows. I also had later plantings of tomatoes on conventional tilling. I did not see an noticeable difference in production. I was able to keep the rows cleaner of weeds and didn't have to mow between the rows. Down side was it was much more muddy picking after rain in the conventional till spot. The weeds went crazy in my melons. It was much harder to mow with all the vines. This year I am going back to conventional till and using plastic mulch and drip tape.

VA Tech did research on no-till vegetables. You might want to google that. They planted corn, pumpkins and tomatoes into rye and hairy vetch with good success.

I would say a small garden with no power tools or tillers available, no till would be a good way to go.

[casusbelli]

JMJ-
thanks for the great info.
I've never done no-till, so I can't opine. Can't say I'm tempted to try it. Soil 'structure' sounds great, but seems more appropriate for a forest or even meadow, where you don't have to plant NEW things yearly. And I'm certain that tilling does not kill either bacteria or fungi. When hyphae are fractured, they just branch, not die. To me, nothing feels better than a handful of soil with great tilth. And my soil IS alive, not an inert substance.
Good point about root crops. And corn seems to thrive with proper tillage. Don't know what others have seen, but I watched a friend's corn do very poorly once with no-till.
On an agri-business level, no-till saves on fossil fuels. But in my square-foot scale, power is provided by carbs to my gluts and biceps.
BTW, I think the 'resting' areas are good practice if you have space to spare. The Old Testament injunction to give even the land a 'sabbath' break every seven years was God-ordained. By rotating parcels to give a sabbath, one need never have a year without any produce.

[JMJones0424]

I don't think it's a question of whether or not tilling "kills" soil life. No amount of tilling will kill bacteria, they are just too small. If anything, tilling will increase bacterial populations, as it mixes food sources more efficiently than any other method. And while tilling disrupts mycellium formations, you are correct in that they bounce back quickly. Tilling, at least in my experience, does decrease worm populations.

It's a question of disturbing the structure of healthy soil. Fungus, dead roots, and earthworm channels create capillaries through the soil that aid in water storage and ease new root penetration. Tilling "airs" the soil, but destroys its structure. If the structure is good, then there is no need to aerate the soil.

When establishing a new bed, you have to keep in mind that everyone's circumstances are different. Those that have mild summers with regular freeze/thaw cycles in the winter can easily start a new bed using no till. I have a heavy clay soil and mild winters. The soil never freezes more than an inch, if that. No amount of "no-till" preparation would create a good vegetable garden bed in my area. I must create the conditions in the soil that I need first, then use no till to maintain those conditions. In the wooded areas of my land the soil is only friable to about three inches. I wouldn't expect no-till to be able to accomplish anything more than that without first properly preparing a bed.

Ultimately, you have to remember that vegetable gardens are not natural. The vegetables we grow are not even "natural". They have been selected over time (hundreds to sometimes thousands of years) to produce far more "food" in relation to vegetative growth than their historic lineage. They are high performance plants, and need a unnaturally high performance soil to support their growth.

The goal of no-till is not weed suppression. The goal of no-till is excellent soil structure. Forests and meadows are composed of very deep and vigorously rooting plants. These plants benefit least from no-till. I have dug six foot deep holes in my hard-pan clay soil and I still find grass roots, I have yet to find significant amounts of vegetable roots more than 18 inches deep in my natural soil.

I do not have experience growing large tracts of anything, much less corn. I do grow sweet corn in my vegetable gardens using no-till with excellent results, but I have worked very hard over the years to have very good soil.

I do not believe no-till to be a cost or time effective way of creating a vegetable bed, but I do think no-till is the most effective way of maintaining a vegetable bed.

[mnn2501]

Some people swear by it, but I till in lots of compost and organics into my soil every spring and fall - its how I get rid of my; leaves, grass clippings, yard waste, kitchen scraps, etc without sending them to a landfill. My dad taught me that if you "grow" good dirt, it will grow good veggies.
Can't imagine not tilling.

[JMJones0424]

OK, this is my last attempt to try to explain my thoughts...

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.

If your soil has good structure, then it has good aeration. But just because your soil has good aeration, doesn't mean that it has good structure.

Tilling is only necessary to produce aeration. (If you allow time for soil microorganisms and earthworms to process fertilizer and organic inputs).

[Paquebot]

You also don't need earthworms to have healthy soil. The best soils that this continent ever had were made without them. There are 3 types; surface feeders, surface dwellers, and sub-surface feeders and dwellers. It's only the third that work to aerate soils and then only if there is organic matter in the soil for them to eat. If no food, they go elsewhere or die. And the only way to get that organic matter down to them is to till it in. By coincidence, that's also where the plants expect to find their nutrients, not on top of the ground.

Martin

[JMJones0424]

I don't expect any plant to find nutrients on top of the ground. I have found that all worms in my area utilize food on top of the ground. I use worms to till the soil. Mechanized tilling obviously works, my argument is that it isn't necessary, provided that you already have good soil.

Compost added on top of the soil leaches nutrients into the soil where it is needed. Tilling (in an already biologically active soil) unnecessarily speeds decomposition of organic materials.

Tilling works, I know that for a fact. What I am saying, is that in certain instances, it isn't necessary anymore.

[JMJones0424]

Originally Posted by Paquebot

You also don't need earthworms to have healthy soil. The best soils that this continent ever had were made without them. There are 3 types; surface feeders, surface dwellers, and sub-surface feeders and dwellers. It's only the third that work to aerate soils and then only if there is organic matter in the soil for them to eat. If no food, they go elsewhere or die. And the only way to get that organic matter down to them is to till it in. By coincidence, that's also where the plants expect to find their nutrients, not on top of the ground.

Martin

I couldn't disagree more. While I recognize the difference between surface dwellers and surface feeders, I am not sure about the nature of what you call sub-surface feeders and dwellers.

What I am calling earthworms are (I believe) what you are calling surface feeders. Redworms and other "compost" surface dwellers are another species type entirely and do not live long in gardens. I am not refering to their benefit as they add almost nothing to the vegetable garden. (While being extremely beneficial in other applications).

The typical earthworm species found in America now were without a doubt brought over by the old world colonists. This does not change the fact that their cultivation is highly useful for vegetable gardens.

The whole point of a thick layer of organic mulch is to provide a feed source for the surface feeders, which also happen to dwell far below the surface, so that as they feed and incorporate organic material throughout the depth of the vegetable garden, they create soil structures that have the same benefit of aeration as tilling. They however do not in large part destroy the other fine capillaries created by mycellium threads and dead roots.

Perhaps we are arguing over semantics, as I am sure we both agree on the make-up of fertile soil. I just don't think that mechanical manipulation of the soil is necessary once ideal conditions have been met.

[Spinner]

My no-till garden produces better than any of my past gardens. A few years ago I made a small lasagna bed that outproduced anything I've ever seen. It's still producing very good even after planting in it every year with no added fertilizer.

I try to use any and all methods that save work. I've been growing tomatoes and peppers upside down in pots with lettuce in the top. I drop a scoop of goat or rabbit poo in the pots when I plant them. That does very good. I even had a couple of bean vines growing in the top of a couple of the pots. They attached themselves to the post the pot was hanging on and produced real good.

I've read that tomatoes will produce more if they have a red ground cloth around them. I've been looking for some red ground cloth but haven't found any. This year I've saved the red dog food bags and will use them, (or maybe just paint their pots red). My idea is to pull 2 suckers from a single plant and grow one with the red and one without to get an honest comparison of the production from duplicate plants under each condition.

Oops! there I go chasing rabbits when the subject is no-till, not lasagna beds, red cloth, or upside down plants. Sorry 'bout that, sometimes I get carried away and the domino effect kicks in. LOL

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

I couldn't disagree more. While I recognize the difference between surface dwellers and surface feeders, I am not sure about the nature of what you call sub-surface feeders and dwellers.

What I am calling earthworms are (I believe) what you are calling surface feeders. Redworms and other "compost" surface dwellers are another species type entirely and do not live long in gardens. I am not refering to their benefit as they add almost nothing to the vegetable garden. (While being extremely beneficial in other applications).

You are attempting to establish yourself as an expert on soil and you apparently know little or nothing about earthworms! For example, there are no native earthworms anywhere in Canada from coast to coast. There are none in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, most of Illinois, and the entire area known as New England. They are currently busy destroying 10,000 years of soil in parts of those states. The deep soils of our prairie states was formed without their help. The few native ones that were once in the Pacific NW are mostly thought to be extinct. There is still a small one found in small enclaves of the SE which have never been tilled. Despite that, they vanish as soon as the alien European varieties move in.

They are 3 types of worms, as noted. Nightcrawler types live in a deep vertical hole but feed strictly on the surface. There waste is also deposited on the surface. No organic matter is safe from them. When they have eaten everything in a given area, they move to another location.

The second type is what the redworms are included in. They feed on organic matter at or very near the surface. They do not burrow unless the soil is very soft as they prefer to remain within the damp organic matter zone. When their food source is gone or becomes too dry, they survive by producing many cocoons to be revived when more favorable conditions prevails.

The third type is seldom seen at or near the surface but operates in a sub-surface zone to maximum of about 8" deep. They burrow through the soil searching for and consuming organic matter of any kind, living or not. Despite the damage that they will do to the roots of young growing plants, they are the most beneficial in quickly converting organic matter into available plant nutrients.

Martin

[JMJones0424]

I am not attempting to establish myself as an expert of anything, but I thank you for your direction in my future education. I will research.

There are no native earthworms anywhere in America, but once again, that is beside the point.

Your report that earthworms consume living roots are new to me, I will research that as well.

Ok... I submit. Gardening is not my primary occupation and I have other things to do. Please provide me with a starting point to further my education. I hate that I have to wade through twenty pages of crap on google to find something worthwhile.

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

Your report that earthworms consume living roots are new to me, I will research that as well.

Everyone who has a worm bin knows that their worms will consume green vegetables. The worms do not care if the vegetables are surface or belowground. They will eat it! In the northern forests of MN, WI, and MI, they are simply eating everything; green, brown, or otherwise.

Martin

[JMJones0424]

I too have a worm bin, but I also know that the worms that inhabit that bin are different than the worms that inhabit my vegetable garden. I edited my previous post, and am looking forward to your response. It is my understanding, through both reading and observation, that redworms consume the waste of organisms that process "green" organic materials, not the organic materials themselves. There is, however, a large possibility that I may be wrong.