Do You Need to Till?
by Kim Tilley
http://www.frugal-moms.com

Tilling the soil can be hard work, but is necessary the first year of gardening to loosen the soil up.

You can also mix in all of those great soil amendments that we just talked about while you till. Here are several methods for getting your garden into shape:

Roto-tilling- Hard work, but if you don't step into your tilled soil, you will only need to do this once. (You can create walking paths so you don't pack the soil down). Some things to be careful of while tilling: underground electrical cables, water pipes, and large rocks. Long-term roto-tilling is not recommended, since it compacts the subsoil, which your plants' roots can't penetrate too easily. Once you have gardened for a few years, you will find that you need to till less and less (again, as long as you are not compacting the soil.)

Newspaper No-Till Method: This method is easy and effective against weeds too. Cover your entire garden area with a thickness of 30-40 newspaper pages. Wet the newspaper, and cover with more soil, or (for flower gardens), mulch. You can also weigh the paper down with rocks, logs, anything to keep it from blowing away. This method blocks most weeds (through you may still have to tend to a few stubborn ones) and causes everything beneath the paper to break into nice, dark soil. The newspaper will break down within a year, making the soil even richer. I have done this in several places in my yard with wonderful results. An apple tree we planted a few years ago was in some very rocky soil. We covered the entire area around the tree with newspapers, covered with dirt and mulch, and created a rock garden. Today this little garden has beautiful, black soil, which I grow herbs in.

Pitchfork Method- Don't have a rototiller or newspaper? Get yourself a gardening pitchfork and use the muscles in your legs to till up and mix the soil. Still a little hard on the back, but a great way to get in shape! I have done this the first year to all of my vegetable gardening areas, and it did not kill me. I do happen to have very small gardening spaces, don't try this in huge gardens unless you really want a workout!

Voodoo gardening-No spells here! This method is based on the "trickle down" theory, like "voodoo economics". Mix in amendments to the first two inches of the soil. The rain will wash some of the nutrients down into the soil further. Your plants will help break up the soil with their roots, and attracting some earthworms will help out too. You will probably still want to block the weeds for a while with newspaper or that black plastic mulch sold at garden centers.

Raised beds-Build raised bed boxes out of scrap/waste wood, or make from new wood. Fill the boxes with topsoil from the store (or a mix or your soil, top soil and compost). You may want to use the newspaper method at the bottom of the raised bed so that old weeds don't come up. Raised beds can look as good or as bad as you want them too. They are also ideal for those who have back problems. I have even seen raised beds made that a person in a wheelchair could reach. Once you have a raised bed, growing in it is very easy! You will also find that you can grow more items in a raised bed because you control the quality of the soil more.

© Copyright 1999-2000 Kim Tilley 

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