No till gardening?

[doingitmyself]

I was reading on another site about folks using a no till technique of gardening. The main reasons are to preserve the soil fauna, earthworms, tunnels and such and to reduce the machinery and time needed to till the soil. Basically the idea is to work the new ground one time and one time only to reduce the sod to organic fertilizer and then add compost to the surface as needed. Earthworms and legumes keep the soil loose and airy. Along with spading but not turning the soil.

There was considerable interest on the other site but no one had any experience with it. Anyone here have experience with this type of gardening?

[bsmit24]

I have no experience with no till gardening but have read about it along with green manure on sites such as http://veganicpermaculture.com/ and would like to experiment with it a little myself.

[bergere]

I put in cinder block raised beds, so it is a small scale no till gardening.

[ChristieAcres]

We have no till gardening for 6 years now. Our garden area is 3,000 sq ft of raised beds. Every year, we add compost, and rotate crops when needed. I have posted pics on the gardening pic thread. A number of my beds are a modified Back to Eden style. They have done very well so far.

[amandaleigh]

I don't till my kitchen garden - granted it is only about 150 square feet, but I do plan on expanding next year.

[jwal10]

I add shredded leaves in the fall to empty beds and then in the spring add a layer of compost and plant. No more disturbance than needed, seeded in a row or starts. I plant very thick, close rows, all the ground is covered, keeps weeds down. I thin and use as needed, many vegys are small, tender and very good. Carrots, radishes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, kahlrabi and such can be used whole, leaves and all....James

[geo in mi]

Originally Posted by doingitmyself

I was reading on another site about folks using a no till technique of gardening. The main reasons are to preserve the soil fauna, earthworms, tunnels and such and to reduce the machinery and time needed to till the soil. Basically the idea is to work the new ground one time and one time only to reduce the sod to organic fertilizer and then add compost to the surface as needed. Earthworms and legumes keep the soil loose and airy. Along with spading but not turning the soil.

There was considerable interest on the other site but no one had any experience with it. Anyone here have experience with this type of gardening?

Folks uusually get wrapped up in definitions and semantics whenever the phrase "no till" is used. Technically speaking there is really no thing as no till--one has to disturb the soil just to get a seed planted or a seedling inserted into it. BUT there are MANY ways of doing minimum tillage, and that's where the arguments begin; each person thinks his/her methodology is the only one. I prefer a method of gentle till, myself.

Your method will depend on many things: your soil is the first consideration. You will need to know it's type, if it is compacted or crusty, if it has clay or is heavy with silt, or maybe completely sand (like mine), then figure a way to work it gently to get it to that state where your crops will grow automatically(or at least semi-automatically )--you may find that working it once is not enough, one rain can beat it back down to its original state of hardpan, perhaps. Or just one working of sod, may not provide enough organic matter to last thru the growing season. You may have to incorporate organic materials from an outside, or purchased source, and get it, by tillage, down to the root zones where your plants can use it. Your initial tillage will undoubtedly turn up weed seeds, so you will have to hoe(tillage) or, once again, add compost and mulch materials from outside, maybe purchased sources. And growing legumes for fertile soil is the best of the ideas, however, it takes more than one year to grow the clovers, and nearly all legumes will present such top growth and root mass that tillage is the only way to get it into the soil...... I don't believe it is a crime to till my soil, but I try to do it gently. Mother Nature didn't really figure human gardening into Her plan, but she usually goes along with you if can convince her you will be gentle.

My budget freed up enough this month to buy another Nook book, this time, "Teeming With Microbes", by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. This may be the book that started the movement toward the purist version of "no till" gardening, since it seems to recommend just what you mentioned: turning the soil just once to get started. For my taste, I think it concentrates a little too much on the immediate root environment(one fourth an inch or less that surrounds a plant root) and not the total soil condition, but we may get some education in all the critters that live in the soil and how they create its health.

geo

[chickenista]

I don't use a tiller.
I have mounded beds with 'natural' paths through the garden.
I run my electric weedeater through the paths a couple of times a summer
and turn the soil in beds after season and once the soil warms up enough for the toads to move out.
I hate turning a bed and either uncovering or harming a sleeping toad.
I let weeds grow over winter and then turn them in.. nature's cover crop.
I have turned hard red clay into well draining dark soil.
Yay.

[farmerDale]

We have been no till gardening for years. People have little idea how harmful tillage is to soil structure. We mulch heavily every fall with 6 month old sheep bedding/manure. Then we plant in the spring, right through 3 or 4 inches of mulch. Very few weeds, very nice soil, very high yields. NEVER have to water either.

There are many folks who struggle getting their heads around not using tillage. There are some who think the only way to fix a soil is to TILL in organic matter.

Just try a little corner if you have fears and denial like them. Burning ZERO fuel is nice. Not having the soil worked up into a fake fluff is nice. Having scarcely a weed is simply awesome. Giving the soil a chance to be natural, and rebuilding the amazing soil microbial activity, and soil life in general is phenomenal. The ability to walk in the garden after a heavy rain, and not compact the soil, or get mud on your boots, is hard to get used to.

It works. Don't let the, "you have to till in the organic matter" folks dissuade you. There is a real good reason why no till farming has taken off like wildfire. It preserves and rebuilds the soil that was beat to death by tillage for a century, saves fuel, and promotes greater reliance on agronomic features such as crop rotation, not plowing so it is a no brainer. For myself, I simply am mimicking what I do on my grain land, but on a smaller scale. And at a faster pace, because outside material is easier to add to a half acre, than it is to large fields.

After a few years, you will be surprised at your soils response.

Give it a try on a small scale, and see how it suits you...

[chickenista]

I agree with Dale.
And another misconception is that the paths and walkways in the garden must be bare dirt.
I started that way out of habit and I noticed that I was always needing water.
So I decided to let the paths grow up and thick with grass and low weeds.
With roots and small leaves for shade on the soil the paths no longer leached water from the beds.
So.. dry bare soil sucks water away fromt he beds, a weedy pathway does not.
And I ahve noticed a great reduction in harmful insects.
The wilder and more natural my garden is, the healthier it has become all the way around.

[farmerDale]

Good point there chickenista. Sometimes things are not what you may expect!

[jwal10]

I grew a lot of peppermint when I farmed. I spread the residue (straw) on my wheat ground with a huge manure spreader on a truck, 6" deep. I started to see a huge increase in my wheat yields with all this residue on top of the soil. We get a lot of rain here, sometimes near 100". This residue kept the rains from packing the earth. Every year I needed less and less spray to kill weeds. I just do the same in my garden, except now I use leaves instead of mint straw....James

[farmerDale]

jwal, while we do not get the rain amounts you get by a long shot, we are in a high rainfall area for our short growing season. When tilling, the soil was hard, packed, and impenetrable with a lot of rain, because we tilled. In spite of manure additions, and our best effort, our soil was always hard. Now, it is so nice and soft, retains moisture well, yet it drains it away equally well.

And as you said, herbicide usage is less necessary every year. Nutrient cycling of active, alive, and undisturbed soil, allows for lower fertilizer needs.

[Steven e]

Some great discussion here. I've been no till gardening for about 7 seasons now. I have more to say about it than I'll say here, but I hope to blog about it sometime in the next year or so. I believe that anyone's specific system is only of so much relevance to other gardeners though.

My advice is to approach it with an experimental attitude. You can worry all day about what you should and shouldn't do, and whether your soil is right, etc, but it doesn't take much investment or risk to just try it out and see what happens. My soil has great structure now, whereas when I dug regularly, it seemed to just constantly destroy the soil structure.. and that was with hand forking, not rototilling. To be fair though, that was in two different gardens, with very different soils. My other advice is not to get overly dogmatic about it. I fork lightly at times, and you have to dig up roots to eat them and transplant stuff, and all that is Ok. If you avoid any soil disturbance at all costs, it's going to take the fun out of life and it's just not necessary. I rarely dig, but stuff happens. Edges of beds get walked on or whatever. I also do some surface cultivation as needed using an hula hoe (reciprocating hoe, scuffle hoe, stirrup hoe etc...) One of my main goals is always to keep some organic matter on top of the bed. The hula hoe cuts under the surface and leaves the top relatively undisturbed. Mostly I hoe like this for weeds, but sometimes to break a crust if it forms. The main purpose of the mulch is to prevent evaporation and crusting, but it also feeds the plants slowly and contributes organic matter over times. I add 1/2 inch or less of compost,(rough screened at 1/2 inch) with each new crop. I'd like to have more compost, but I don't, and I don't have livestock except chickens. If you can add 4 inches of manure every year, great, but I can't, and 1/2 inch of compost is not enough to feed the crops. I've found that a soluble fertilizer is indispensable. You can't get a better one that urine and everyone makes it. the vast majority of useful plant nutrients leave our bodies in the urine, already in solution and already soluble. I dilute about 1:3 to 1:5 (aged or not, doesn't matter much) and water in after application. Obviously you don't want to dump it on the lettuce right before you eat it etc... Best gardening discovery ever for me. All my nitrogen problems were solved and it closes the nutrient loop so we aren't just mining our soils of micro-nutrients. Unfortunately, I can't use it anymore since I'm market gardening now. Instead I use chicken manure tea (just as gross if not grosser . When that is leached out, I mix up the residue in a bucket with extra water and pour it on a bed as a slurry which forms a great sort of mulch mat. I'll also add coffee grounds or dry sifted manure as I have them available.

I read several books on the subject when I started, but aside from being inspirational, I'm not sure they were of much use really. We all have to adapt to our soils and environments in a way that works for us. I try to be cognizant of what resources are really available and apply them intelligently. The best way to find out what works is to try it. I'm always encouraging people to set aside a couple of beds to try no-dig, but I think few people actually do. There is certainly a growing trend, so we should have access to more information on people's specific methods, but I think that is of limited use only. We know what plants need to grow and we know what they look like and produce when they are happy, so we can all just use what we've got and put it all together in a way that works. For some that's going to be tillage, and there are probably infinite variations on no-dig. I'm not a proponent of no dig gardening really. I'm a proponent of people just trying it. If it works on your site and for your priorities and work style etc..., there are major benefits. One thing I don't like here is deep mulch. Too much habitat for pests. I use it on some things, but not often.

Advantages to no-dig are significant. No digging! That has ramifications beyond just the work though. It allows you to multi-crop and micro-crop much more. No more waiting for the - -insert annoyingly long standing vegetable annoyingly continuing to produce food which keeps you from digging the bed-- to come out before you can dig the bed and replant. You can even plant stuff before the current crops come out. For instance, I'll be starting my fava beans under existing plants this week. or I might plant tomato plants into a maturing row of lettuce and so on.

[dirtman]

I tried no-till on a small section of garden. Put down a lot of newspaper, about a foot of leaf mold and compost. The meadow grass just grew right up through it all. No matter how many more layers I put on the grass just kept coming. I'd love to make this work but can't see how.

When I built my raised beds I filled them with two feet of top soil from the meadow after separating all the roots. I made a U bar thingie I copied from an old MEN from1980. It has tines that go down 18 inches and then you rock it back to pull up the bottom soil. This way I can get the compost to work it's way down and get to bottom soil up to enrich. Pretty satisfied with the results and it's easy to till up the whole garden that deep, but if I thought I could avoid even that and still get good healthy soil I'd do it in a heartbeat. I also urinate my garden. I put a gallon jug of urine into a five gallon bucket of water. The plants are happy.