All About Home and Garden

One of the biggest problems with conventional agriculture is the excessive tillage that occurs. Tilling is a method farmers use to fluff up their soil by chopping it up with spinning blades on the back of a tractor (typically). The problems that arise with this is that the excessive tillage often leads to soil depletion after a few decades. All that fluffy soil is eventually blown away by the wind, leading to an unsustainable level of erosion. When the soil erodes too much, there's no top soil left to grow in. This is an issue, as an inch of top soil can take thousands of years to develop, and a significantly shorter period to blow away.

Cutting back on tilling in your own backyard garden is a great way to ensure that your vegetables come from a more sustainable operation, and also that you have healthy, vigorous vegetables growing in the garden. You won't have to add as much compost or fertilizers, as your garden will maintain its healthy tilth as a result of not being till quite as often.

Firstly, though, don't hesitate to do a deep till when you initially put in your garden. It's not necessarily a bad thing to get your garden going quicker, and tilling will help with this. After this, though, try to minimize your tilling as much as possible.

You can do this by adding a whole bunch of compost to your garden bed right off the bat. If your soil is sandy, it will help retain water. If you have clayey soil, it will help drain the soil. Either way, it will make the soil structure more suitable for no-till cultivation, as it will be easier to work by hand.

Once you have your garden beds established and ready to go, you can start planting them with whatever you like. Vegetables, fruits, cover crops, or anything else. Typically, between plantings, you might do a quick till between harvest and planting to kill any weeds and aerate the soil. If your soil is healthy enough, you can simply use a hoe to take out the weeds and vegetable residues, and go ahead and plant your next succession of food. Make sure you use a very sharp hoe to cut through the soil, and fluff it up slightly (this will result in almost no soil loss due to wind erosion - much less intrusive).

The other advantage to no-till gardening is that you will grow better vegetables. By not obliterating all the life in the soil with a huge metal machine, most of the worms, bugs, and bacterial life will survive a thorough hoeing by hand, and they'll increase the biodiversity in the soil.

Try no-till gardening and enjoy better food right from your own backyard. Not only will it taste better - but your garden will last longer.

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