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No matter what type of garden you have – a raised bed, raised row, or traditional garden plot – the more you can leave your soil alone and undisturbed – the better off your plants are, and the less overall weeds you will have."
What a great year to prove this wrong as I'm not doing a big garden this year. Leaving 1 bed untouched, untilled.
Forget the fact that I cant even stick my fingers down through the compacted soil; weeds are taking over and it's only June 1st!
So to say leave your soil alone is the worst advice anyone can give.
And here's pic from last year after tilling. Any questions?
And to be fair, this was Mid June last year. Reversed angle. Weeds will always come up but obviously much better to till for plant health and weed control.
Millions upon millions of acres of farmland are tilled to grow the food You eat. Farmers have been tilling the soil since the invention of the plow. Millions of people have backyard gardens that grow food. The grain that is fed to the animals that are raised for human meat consumption is grown in tilled soil. Just my 2 cents worth.
Most of the grain crops in this neck of the country are no till. Most of the area in eastern Montana I hunt birds are all no till. There are a few exceptions, but mostly no till.
Cambium, are you growing plants in the no-tilled areas?
I follow the square foot gardening method from Mel Bartholomew. I only have a 4x8 raised bed but I get a lot out of my little garden. The soil has no loam or “dirt” at all in it. It’s mostly compost, peat moss, and vermiculite to begin with. Then add fertilizer from five different sources. I often use worm casings, chicken, cow, horse wastes, some of which is packaged. It is a very light and loosely compacted medium. I do get a few weeds now and then, but they are negligible.
I just clear out the detritus in the fall and very early spring with a rake and mix in the fertilizers with a trowel. That takes about thirty minutes. I have to “turn” the soil to mix the fertilizers, but the turning is only about maybe 4 or 5” deep.
How do you mix the fertilizers into the soil without tilling or turning?
Sometimes tilling is a necessity. I just did a consult for an elementary school along with an agent from the local extension office. The elementary school wants to establish a garden area for the students, but the current "soil" (and I use the term very judiciously) basically has the consistency of concrete. We both recommended that the first step should be to remove the existing weeds, followed by tilling up the existing soil and mixing in good topsoil and compost before planting anything. To do otherwise would be a waste of plants and effort.
Those who proclaim we shouldn't till should add the descriptive "too deeply," and then they'd be right.
As others have stated-- the top soil needs to be loosened and aerated, but we don't want to dredge up the underlying clay into the top layer.
The vital bacteria, fungi & invertebrates all reside in the top soil and tossing them around with a tiller won't harm a thing-- but there's no sense in burying them in the deeper clay.
If you have less than 4-6 inches of good topsoil, then you need to build it up anyway-- Till in manure, transported topsoil &/or other biomass.
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