I am thinking about trying a section this year and am looking for any hints or tips to start this project. Please let me know if you do this and how extensively do you garden? a few plants or 1000 sq ft? Thanks.
Hiya C! I do not do "no till", but what I do is "min till". My garden is 265 m2. I have not turned the soil over in years and years. ***an interesting note: When I was dining with tourists, I met a big-time farmer from Indiana. We spoke about farming and gardening and he sais that more than 30% of big professional farmers practice min-tilling in America. I was surprised but glad to hear it. He knew all about it.
Thanks S, I do remember you posting about that. I think you might be one of the few who are doing this. I am going to give a plot a try this year and see how it works, but it is going across the road where I don't have a real water source so it may not work without having the water to start it unless I am doing it in the rain if we have rain this year.
Almost all of my garden is now beds. All recent beds were done with no till. Digging holes to place moved plants is the only major soil disturbance (except for my last terracing projects). My garden is primarily perennial gardens now. My veggie plot has been filled in with perennial flowers. I slip a few vegetables into the beds among the flowers. I started using the cardboard,mlayering it so that all of the grass was covered in 2009 in the back yard shade garden. Previously I had used the double dig method but that is really hard work and disturbs the soil bringing up weed seeds. At that time I used the cardboard and mulch method only in the pathways. Now i use cardboard to make new beds. After I put down the cardboard over grass I usually wait to make sure that all plants were smothered before covering the cardboard (or shredded office paper) with mulch. I always overlap the cardboard really well and often have multiple layers of card board. If I see any weeds/grass coming through I simply throw another flattened box over that spot to smoother it. I usually give the bed one season to make sure no weeds survived and keeping an eye out for the stubborn ones. After this time the cardboard has begun to compost with our damp climate. It is pretty ugly, until the cardboard is covered with mulch. After about a season mulch covers all the paper products. it is easy to tear back the semi composted cardboard and place plants or seeds. The woodland section of my yard is 30 feet by 60 feet. I only did a section at a time, and never planned on doing the entire area. It was just such an easy way to make new beds. It was also such a convenient way to get rid of cardboard. I have beds two plus years old that have been virtually weed free, except for one or two introduced weeds. I love using this method. Here is a photo of the first bed already developed with the rest of the area in grass still. The second photo is old cardboard with some rot and covered in fir needles from surrounding trees. The last photo is the latest cardboard placed. I will be covering the cardboard with cedar bark this weekend. I'll probably have new photos then in y blog. New gardening area in June ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden ) Woodland area 2012 on south side of lot being developed ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden ) prepping for new bed, also a good place to feed birds ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )
Jewell... I use the same cardboard method... although I do cover it right away with mulch to keep it in place. It sure saves a lot of work... you just have to plan ahead a little and be patient. As far as tilling... Hubby & cousin till the veggie garden area.
I tried no tilling my giant pumpkin patch. I dont use that method anymore. Organic fertilizer, leaf compost, etc. should be tilled in.
Carolyn did you find any good books on the topic or online sources? We're moving house this year and the wife is letting me have a bigger veg plot when looking for a new house. From what i have read (currently reading "how to grow more vegetables") i'm prepared to do some heavy digging and soil additions first 3 years.if it improves the soil enough to be min digging for all the years after
Hi Dan, Good to see you here again. No I didn't really find any source other than another gardening site where there is someone who is a great advocate for it, but I I haven't gotten real far with it since the weather has been so bad for so long and now it seems like we are behind before we ever get started this year.
I dont think I could stand gardening if I had to keep doing what Im doing. My soil is clay and basically rock hard from summer through end of winter. This year Im going to kinda do like Sjoerd said...till all my beds -really- well, add a s***-ton of compost, and then hopefully wont have to do it again
Cardboard is black gold. My whole back yard is cardboard. The worms love it, the weeds hate it. Once it gets wet it's so easy to plant thru. I never throw a box away.
You sound like me Donna. I had everyone saving boxes for me... from my boss to the guy at the liquor store. And if I saw some boxes in a dumpster, I'd turn around and go get them. But for now... I've gotten my major areas done so I've been weaning myself from "Oh look! Boxes!". I still have a good stash of both boxes and newspaper... just in case.
Check appliance stores and garden tractor sales. Bigger and thicker. They are happy to get rid of them. My dishwasher delemma got me 3 appliance boxes off the truck.
I do use a lot of cardboard. I wish I could afford to invest in the rolls of paper for gardening. It would save so much clean up time in the Fall. I am hoping to get a big round bale of old yucky hay from the neighbor to use as mulch across the road and start a nice sized no till area to see how it would work for where there is no water supply...
Ms. Carolyn, use lots of organic stuff to keep piling on the beds. Mulch heavily. More mulch means less watering, it really works. I turn the mulch under in the fall, so I'm not really no-till. I still have rocks, gravel, and rubble to rake out of the gardens every spring. Spoiled hay is good, although you must use it 'thicker' to prevent weed seed germination. Same with straw. Leaves and ramial wood chips are good stuff. Line clearance crews are always looking for a way to rid themselves of that stuff. Aged manures/stall muckings if chemical free are excellent as a base mulch. Start relatively small and see how it works for you. Good luck.
Hi there, to you too, FBG, glad to see you here again, I haven't noticed you posting, either. I hope your winter wasn't too bad...considering your line of work... I thank you from the bottom of my heart that you are willing to go out there every day in that nasty Ohio winter weather. I am kind of thinking this won't be exactly no till either. The rocks are a big problem here. I was walking through the garden yesterday dreading the rock picking day coming up. I am not sure if the hay is moldy, spoiled or just not suitable for the cows, but I am hoping there will be some this year. I wasn't able to get my DH to run the skid steer down there and get me a bale last year...he just couldn't see the "need" for it or what I wanted to do. he's getting there, though, inch by inch- thought by thought. He has great ideas that I generally wouldn't think of, but they are usually the technical end of gardening. Like an injector for fertilizing the greenhouse and irrigating system, or the groundcover fabric for under the headerline and along the greenhouse for walking on that he thought 6' wide was adequate, I thought it was overkill, but now that I look at it, it isn't an area where we can really plant anything, mow or till there....so, that means less work for me later in the season. Now I am working on that there horse manure issue. He has customer that has a horse boarding facility that I finally got him to ask her if she had a pile we could buy , and she said "*NO, you can have all you want. just pay me for the fuel to run it down to your house with the tractor and manure spreader."....hopefully that will happen this Fall now, I think it is too late for this year already. The wood chips I do have. we have a neighbor who does tree trimming in the summer and my brother does, too, but doesn't come my direction much, they both bring me suitable material when they have it or are close and need a drop spot, but I have a small area that I am stuck with for stock piling anything. Level land is a premium for me. That is usually reserved for fruit trees and the garden. I'm working on it though with all of your ideas, just not as much as I would like to do to the area I am working with already. 2 acres of gardening is a lot of organic material to use. Right now, I am trying to get a small area across the road started to get Dh to see the advantage of a lot of organic material and less tilling/weeding to do. It just may not be really doable with the area as it is. Lots of weeds and rocks at this point. This was a hay field and I don't see an enormous amount of organic matter in the soil. It has been turned and tilled for the last 40 or so years or more and it has had everything for crops in it at one point or another I imagine, but not an enormous amount of organic material applied regularly. Thanks for the help.
