Advice for starting and maintaining a no till garden
Building good garden soil can demand quite a bit of input, including money, time, and work. If you’re looking to save on all of the above, permaculture and no-till gardening methods are your friend. Any kind of no-till soil management will be more labor and cost effective than traditional tilling in the long run. Still,…
Instead of relying on tilling or plowing, a no-till gardening approach encourages beneficial soil life to take up residence and improve your soil’s tilth and fertility. Feed the fungi, microbes, worms, and other decomposers with layers of compost and natural mulch instead of disturbing their habitat, and they’ll do a lot of that heavy work…
If you’ve ever tried to grow anything in clay-heavy soil, then you’ve encountered some of the problems that come along with it. It gets muddy and water-logged during wet weather. When it’s dry and hot, it becomes a terrifying petrified layer water won’t soak into. And it seems like no matter how many amendments you…
When we first started making plans for our new garden at the homeplace, the biggest challenge was definitely the ground we had to work with. My great grandparents grew a lot of crops on the property, but their old garden spot is now part of the pine forest. Our best option was the lower part…
No-till is a major topic in organic and sustainable gardening, and with good reason. A well-implemented no till system will boost soil fertility and greatly reduce the need for watering, fertilizing, and other run-of-the-mill garden chores. It can also help prevent problems like poor soil drainage and compaction, since tilled ground is more prone to…
In wild meadows and forests, both the plants and the soil are part of nature’s highly efficient system. Soil organisms break down the constant supply of fallen leaves, branches, and dead vegetation, converting them into nutrients for new growth, and the result is an ecosystem that takes care of itself without any tending from humans….
