Quote:
Originally Posted by bjbebs
I too am a tiller of the dirt. I only till when adding amendments back in.
My gardens are decades old. They've seen hundreds of tons of leaves, manure, spent crops, compost, cover crops and fish remains. No additional ferts are used. The tilth of the soil is loose to a foot or more deep and remains so during the growing season.
Yes, this does not happen overnight but with a lot of discipline and hard work you can end up with soil that will grow anything. On my larger areas a PTO driven tiller behind a 2000 pound tractor does the work. No compaction, no damage to worms, active bacteria and produce galore.
|
Exactly! That's the flip side. Tillage can work too, but it does take a ton of inputs. That's because you are constantly going 2 steps forward followed by one step back.
Eventually you will get there though.
My neighbor is a double dig guy. He always would have a decent garden, but always applied massive amounts of inputs to double dig in his garden the same time. Usually he paid top dollar for them too. Like multiple bags of black cow and garden soil from the big box stores. This year though is going to be a tough one for him. He made two mistakes. First he double dug like he always does, but he skipped the extra inputs "just this once". We also had huge flooding here in this part of Oklahoma. Right now he has a reddish brown square with no sign of life. It literally looks like the bottom of a pond after being drained. Not even any weeds growing. Meanwhile right next door, I have made multiple harvests already (Peas lettuce broccoli onions etc...) and lots and lots of baby tomatoes, peppers and such. I got just as much water and there are still areas that squish when I walk. But being no till ever means the plants there still have a good chance of living. Actually my seedlings I waited to plant were decimated, but the ones that were already in the soil stood up pretty well. (once they regrew some leaves that were knocked off by hail)
His big mistake? He skipped the inputs. So he went a step backwards without going two steps forward first.
He knew the risk, but decided to take a chance. This time that chance didn't pay off.