I am well aware of your background and the fact that you garden organically. I am also aware that you are into Permaculture and have just recently purchased your home. As well, it is common knowledge for those who have the ability to read well that you chop wood off your property. Yes, there is a lot of thinks that are well know. However, you and "confounding factors" fail to make the list...

Blutranes

OK, I put out about 2 inches of compost on top of raised beeds about a month ago. My impluse was to fork it in, but they are long beds and it looked like a lot of work. Plus I try to do as little tillage as possible. I am planning to work the top inch or two in the spring and direct seed with a planter. In all you all's experience, will this leave too much organic material on the surface for early spring planting? Zone 6b

Wow Blutranes, wrong side of the bed this morning huh?

No pablo nh,

This being your first time addressing me directly, I was taken aback at the first words you said to me being LOL. I have mistakenly thought you were laughing at my post. Please allow me to get in bed and back out and readdress your comment...

Blutranes

Fertilizerman, as you know my take is add as little as possible and let the soil work.

With that said there is much University work with chemicals sponsored or funded by Monsanto, Scotts etc about the chemical side that show things that may be better done organically but there is no money on that side.

My main position is the soil is as complicated as an ocean reef, just because we can keep a few fish in an aquarium does not mean we can create an ocean.

Blutranes- no problem. It happens to all of us.

Gee fertilizerman, a quiz, I love a quiz.

Ok, you have a raised bed, but you didnt say how old this raised bed is/how long you have been amending it. Now I have to "if" it. Knowing you are biochemical inclined, if the bed has been there for some time there is a good layer of humus about two inches or so from the top of the bed. Adding two new inches to the bed will make the plant root zone right in the middle of that humus and it will grow really well. If you forked in the new compost you would disturb the humus layer, this will destroy all the work you have done so far.

So my answer is to leave the new compost on top, do not fork it in. Of course, for extra credit, I would add that you should add mulch on top of the compost. I can give you the reason I say this if you like. You just have to give me even more points.

One point though, I am a long way from being any kind of know it all. I know too much of what I dont know to even consider myself anything but a organic gardener in training, and that is being kind to myself. So, how did I do

Blutranes

Thanks pablo nh,

I was starting to get nervous around here. You had me searching for my super powerful apology speech. It will not happen again...

Blutranes

OK More details. The beds have been untilled (more or less) for two years. Prior to that they were tilled for two or three years. Before that they were turf. I rotate things around so in sections where bulbs go in and out it is in effect tilled. Depending on what was in particular sections of the bed it is likely to have had cover crops in the winter. Some sections recieved transplants and others direct seeded (which means the surface was stired up a bit to make a seed bed in the spring). Oh, and it was all organic. What worries me is that in a couple of beds that had late crops and did not get a cover crop planted I loaded them up with compost. Like a wheelbarrow load every 6 feet (by 3 feet) and it is several inches deep. I add compost every year and the soil is in very good physical shape and is full of worms. Still, I am worried that a lot of that organic material will still be on the surface in the spring and will make for poor seeding. Thoughts?

Fert- I've seeded directly into a mostly-compost type medium and germination is excellent. One of the reasons that compost is not an ideal mulch.

Pablo,
I guess I mostly worry about it drying out too quickly. I use drip tape that works pretty well for established plants, but I have to hand water seedlings and with several hundred feet of bed I prefer to do so as little as possible.

It does get a bit dry by itself- I've almost forgotten about that with the incredible amount of rain we've had this summer through fall.

I guess I will let it go and see what it looks like in the spring. If I need to I can turn it under then.

Fertilizerman, "If I need to I can turn it under then."

How do you know if you "need to"?

I will eyeball it and see if it looks suitable for seed germination. Like I said I am worried about my little shallow planted seeds drying out if there is to much OM.

thanks to this site, i tried (admittedly fearfully) not turning the soil over this year. it's funny how we hold on to ideas we have and are afraid to part with them! not digging saved me so much work, and all the crops were every bit as healthy and vigorous as they always have been. so i'm completely sold on no digging.

i still don't know what to put on the garden to overwinter it tho. it's big (45' x45') so i never get enough compost to cover it. are shredded leaves a good winter cover? i have a ton of those. how thick? (btw, a winter cover IS recommended to protect the soil, right?) and if shredded leaves are good, do i remove them in spring? they weren't nearly decomposed last spring. or should i just push them aside to put transplants in and let them stay on as a mulch? but what about where i want to plant seeds next spring? the leaves didn't look like a good medium for seed germination.

lastly, i have access to horse manure that's a couple of weeks old and mixed with lots of straw. is this put to its best use applied directly to the garden, or composted and used possibly next spring?

thanks!

"i have a ton of those. how thick?"

Several inches.

"or should i just push them aside to put transplants in and let them stay on as a mulch? "

I pull mine off to let the soil warm up, and leave them in a pile nearby. As it gets warmer- these will break down fast in a pile. Use them as mulch as needed. It's less work to just leave them in a windrow on one side of a row (I try to plant 6 garlic head or 2 tomatoes/peppers accross a row in a raised bed).

To plant seeds I just push the leaves aside into little piles with my hands (no work at all) and sprinkle the seeds. When the seedlings are big enough I push the leaves back among the seedlings and it works well.

Karen

correct? for no till to work, you need to start out with decent soil, correct?

"correct? for no till to work, you need to start out with decent soil, correct?"

I built a lasagna bed on hard packed sand and gravel and it worked great.

Hooray- are you the former monkeyman?

Nope, you can "Help" Nature create decent soil without ever tilling. Tilling is alot of work, plus it's somewhat destructive. While soil building can occure by simply laying organic matter ontop of the existing soil and allowing nature to take its course.

pablo, when you made the lasagne, you prepared your soil bed. but if im starting with clay and sand, im saying, i have to till in some suff first, and get it suitable for no till, before i do no till(?)

"pablo, when you made the lasagne, you prepared your soil bed."

No I didn't. I just piled ingredients on compacted fill and grew in that.

I always do an initial double-digging and thorough tilling of OM deep into
the soil and remove the many large rocks and small boulders. After
that I add about 3 inches on top in the spring and scratch it into the top
few inches of soil. I got extremely sandy,gravelly soil and rarely see any
earthworms,so I don't count on them mixing the compost for me. I also grow
covercrops that winter kill. I use to turn them over but now just chop of
the top growth and add to compost pile and know that all the root growth
will rot in place improving soil structure and organic matter. I'm sure my
strategies would probably change if I had a larger area to upkeep.

I did the same as pablo_nh only on hard compacted red clay with wonderful results. I don't think tilling in any form at any time is worth the time.

I did the same as pablo_nh only on hard compacted red
clay with wonderful results. I don't think tilling in any
form at any time is worth the time.

That's a pretty broad statement. I got nothing against no-till, I do mostly
that now, but I'm sure there are circumstances, such as my above post where it
gives you a good jumpstart and is a good use of time.

Swanz, it isn't a broad statement from my point of view.

This comes from what happens in an unattended forest or meadow. Plants grow and fall down and the soil organisms change them into soil. The soil they fall on have many horizons of organisms at work, even on the surface is fungus that attacks the fallen organic matter down to zillions of others that take care of the whole process.

So, I come to this, we don't have to do anything except put organic matter on the surface. To double dig for example brings organisms that work under the soil to the surface and vice versa. Many will simply die exposed to the air and the fungus for example that attack on the surface cannot work underground.

You can't always compare the needs of an intensive, hungry vegetable
garden with the forest floor. The forest has very modest soil demands,
the tree's roots can go 20 plus feet deep and bring up nutrients.The
veggies we have cultivated/domesticated need lots of nutrients/OM/water
compared to wild forest or meadow plants.So if you're starting like I was
with almost 100% sand,gravel and big rocks an initial tilling,rock removal, and
adding of lots of OM will give a few years jumpstart to my garden's productivity.

"a good jumpstart and is a good use of time".

I agree. My soil is dead. It is basically compacted silt and limestone rocks. I guess if I wanted to wait a couple of years in order to be able to use a particular space, I could just throw stuff on top of it. I choose not to wait. I lightly till, incorporate all kinds of organic matter, let it rest a bit, then plant. While the argument that I am killing organisms is based in fact, I have never had an experience where the soil is in worse condition AFTER I have used my method. It has always created a better planting medium in a shorter amount of time as well as a better environment for those organisms in a shorter amount of time. It seems that although I may be killing a small number (because of the poor soil) of organisms at the point of tilling, there is no shortage of these organisms and that their numbers increase dramatically and quickly using this method. This is evidenced very basically by a quick migration of worms to the area. They don't have to tunnel through hard pack to get to the goodies and they are eating a lot better than they had been thus leading to greater numbers of worms as well as microscopic stuff.

The bottom line is that one method is not ideal for all circumstances. As long as we're improving the soil, we each need to use the methods that are most appropriate for our needs and that bring us the most enjoyment from our efforts.

Just my thoughts....

Kristi

"I have never had an experience where the soil is in
worse condition AFTER I have [tilled and added OM]."

Ding! We have a winner!

Tilling is GOOD. Know what? So is no-till!

I think the biggest difference between those who till, and don't, is the level of fanaticism among no-tillers is MUCH higher than folks who till.

DING! DING! I think that we have two winners! Kristi (I could not have said it better) AND mistervetch puts it in perspective as well.
Bill P.

Last three posters,Thank You.
I was afraid we'd gone to the Absoluteists.

I'm really not an absolutist, it just ain't so.

The soil is so forgiving of our mistakes that most anything where organic matter is increased will yield good results whether it is the best or not.

It makes you feel better, do it and ignore me.

I would be real interested in seeing or hearing of results where someone has done both, side by side, with poor soil to start with.

The person who posted the "mulch on rocks" comment struck a chord with me. If I didn't get the sandstone boulders out (with backhoe and pickaxe and prybar) I don't think I would have had much success. There was a spot where even the backhoe had to quit. In most spots, it got me down into the clay layer and mixed in some crushed sandstone to boot, and got me some nice landscape rocks. I had the backhoe guy dig in quite a bit of partly-decayed wood chips from the city place. (I know, I know, the nitrogen.. ) It sat all winter. This spring I planted after digging in some chicken manure. The wood chips were already starting to rot pretty well, about a year after they were first dug in.

Before, bermuda grass wouldn't even grow, and the native bluestem was having a real hard time. Once the bluestem was mowed, water just ran straight off.

Here's my first-year garden in that spot. Cover crop in the foreground, and tomatoes in the back.
{{gwi:315021}}.

I have a winter cover crop planted now, lush and green. Next spring I may turn half of it in, and just mow the other half and plant right in it, and see what happens.

If I get real brave, I'll try a lasagna bed on a nearby spot that hasn't been dug yet. I will try to post some pics next summer.

Nice pic. Sure looks lush!

Maggiemae,it's not a matter of ignoring you.I am just very curious of anyone who says,"Never do that,because (whatever)".Do such claims stem from familiarity with conditions outside of their local sphere?
I tried no till years ago with no success.Maybe that was from insufficient inputs-I can't obtain OM in sufficient quantities to make deep lasagna layers and maintain them.The matter gets consumed or disappears somehow.I don't produce enough waste matter here,so I was driving all over for more.After piling all I could get on my land for as long as I could maintain it,there was indeed a layer of "topsoil"-maybe a quarter inch thick.And all the rocks were still there.Soil hardpacked.No worms,no "soil food web".
Meanwhile I used "traditional" methods.I feed my family exclusively (save meat) with my garden.I make as much compost as possible,which includes outside manure.
Last year,in some beds, I tried no till again,this year being the 2nd for produce,of good quality.I only mulched with clippings.
There are very few conservation tillers in this area,which has been agricultural for 400 years.The ones who practice it (not organic)are doing it on land that has been plowed,manured, and rock-picked for that long.
Not that I disbelieve what I hear.I just need some salt.

All of my positions are based on the life cycles of soil organisms and how they will
work with organic matter if left alone. Here is a spot that
was a limestone gravel driveway when we built the room on our log cabin. I put down
about 8" of simi-finished compost from the yard waste compost facility I owned. My
intention was to keep plants "heeled in" over the winter then do something the following
year. I didn't get around to it. I just used this as a nursery area so I left the
plants on this limestone driveway in compost, that was about 6 years ago. You can see
a few nursery pots since I still use this area to store unplanted additions to the
landscape because it gets a lot of shade.
The driveway where my car sits went back past the wall of this addition. While Im
at it we gathered the rock off our property for the room.

{{gwi:315022}}

This view shows the new room on the left and the garage
on the right. It was cleared down to red clay suitable for
pottery making. I did the same directly on top of the clay.
I sat the soil ball down and filled this area with the same simi-finished compost.
You can't jump over these plants and they have never ever
had any form of chemical fertilizer. So, for my satisfaction
I've demonstrated that organic matter on the surface will
get the job done. Dig if you want to or must, not me.

{{gwi:284858}}

OK Maggie, looks nice! you have convinced me to give it a try.

There are some spots where I'd plant something but I can't even make headway with the pickaxe and there's no room for heavy equipment.

I have a 20 x 20 area a foot deep in woodchips (I always ask for the oldest rottenest stuff they have). I turned about a pickup load of horse manure in a few weeks ago. I had planned to get the backhoe guy out there next spring to mix it in with the dirt and get the big rocks out.
Instead, I may just move it to a bad spot and try planting something in it.

Considering how much easier and cheaper (that hooked me) isn't that worth a try. Now to get the process really humming takes 3 years. Lasagna or sheet mulching and plant, if the plants make enough organic matter you are finished if not then additional organic matter for 2 years and you are finished.

In a veg garden, lasagna mulch, plant and watch for bugs, weeds etc. Year 2 put down something to suppress weeds such as 6-8 sheets of newspaper and mulch, finished for the winter. Then in the spring go down and punch a little hole in the newspaper and plant and you are finished again.

This is so easy isn't worth a try.

All of the other problems of landscape or veg gardening are still there; this only addresses the preparation part.

This will not work in wheat or corn or any monoculture growing. They are mechanical, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide intensive and a whole different matter. They require ph, nutrient, moisture monitoring etc. For example, a friend who owned land that he sublet for corn and soybean, etc keep coming up off ph so he added lime when the problem was manganese, magnesium or some other mineral deficiency. Purdue did ph test and recommended so much lime per acre, which never improved his problem.

Small-scale growers using multi source organic matter will get everything they need without ever bothering with ph or fertility problems.

for what it's worth: 24 years of vegetable gardening, in 3 different soil types, has taken me through different methods of soil preparation, digging and not digging. in my experience, (none of this has been any kind of controlled study, of course) i have not noticed any difference in the vigor of the vegetables themselves.

the first few years i did double digging. after a couple of years i started just turning over the soil with a shovel. about 5 years ago i began simply using a broadfork to loosen the soil in the beds. this past year i just laid down aged manure in the fall, and put mulched leaves on top. no digging in the spring. i've almost always added things to the soil (and mixed them in). in the early years blood and bone meal, more recently rock phosphate and greensand. in every case, my vegetables grew vigorously and without pest problems. the only time the crops looked bad was the year i removed the sod and dug, adding nothing to the soil.

my main observation is that adding organic material yearly makes a huge difference to the soil. the lazy years of just adding powdered nutrients (and no organic stuff) produced good looking crops, but the soil didn't look great. i don't know if the digging helped or hurt on some level i couldn't see, but the vegetables always seemed robust.

now, tho, i must say i'm thrilled not to be digging, because it's so much easier!! of course, i started not digging in an already established garden. i can't speak about creating one on difficult ground.

I think soil is very forgiving unless some one does some thing very harmful.
Even if one does till a couple of inches or, does not till at all, adds some thing on the top

Whether it is straw, pine mulch, leaves or what ever
It responds.
Even if one does not compost, or uses store purchased humus, manure what ever it is available to them and adds to the soil,
Still one can grow some thing.
Last year I dug a couple of inches, added molasses, compost and alfalfa
And covered with straw.
The earthworm count increased form one to more than half a dozen. Plants did well.
This year on another plot I added rabbit chow, afalfa and some manure, covered with straw and watered it for 2 months from the last week of September with molasses water.
The soil is friable already.
Doing what ever we can is important.(even if it is little)

swanz said...
You can't always compare the needs of an intensive, hungry vegetable garden with the forest floor. The forest has very modest soil demands, the tree's roots can go 20 plus feet deep and bring up nutrients. The veggies we have cultivated/domesticated need lots of nutrients/OM/water compared to wild forest or meadow plants.

Starting from the middle of this paragraph, I agree there is a difference between a forest and a high production garden, but I don't think I agree with what you are saying about those differences. To say the forest has modest soil needs is too glib a way to put it. The foodweb is much too complicated in a forest to treat it this way.

I think you're saying that you can't do a no-till garden and achieve the yields that you get with a plowed type system. If that's what you're saying, I disagree with that statement. If you have a no-till garden and feed it as much as you feed your intensive garden, you should at least get comparable results. Of course some hybrid plants will produce more fruit over a given time period, but accounting for those differences, till and no-till should still give similar results. Over a long period of time, you may see less requirement for artificial irrigation with no-till.

So if you're starting like I was with almost 100% sand,gravel and big rocks an initial tilling,rock removal, and adding of lots of OM will give a few years jumpstart to my garden's productivity.

If you started with sand, gravel, and rocks, then you had no soil structure to begin with. Why would you till sand? Simply to incorporate organic matter? Here again, I firmly believe the best way to get organic matter into sand is to grow roots down in there and make sure they decompose intact when the top of the plant is cut off. I would also add some VAM, but maybe you would not.

The value of fungus is not often mentioned but they may be as valuable as all other parts. Of course the whole microherd works in such complicated symbiotic ways that to single out just one aspect like fungus is pointless except that tilling interferes with the fungus more than bacteria, etc.

Why would you till sand?

too help spit out and remove the many rocks.

As for comparing the needs of domesticated plants which are bred to grow
very fast and with luscious fruit in a short time with the needs of say, wild herbs
and such, there is a difference. We do learn from nature but I can't grow a
great garden in most forest floors without adding extra OM/Water/ etc. Like
I said, I do very little tilling now, but there are circumstances where
it can be usefull.

Let me forward this by providing a perspective -- I am the head of a landscape committe for a homeowner's assn. in colorado, with nearly 5 acres of partly-wooded property + multifamily dwellings. Everything we do is under CONSTANT scrutiny, and we have a miniscule budget to accomplish virtual miracles. So wherever possible we recycle, mulch, reuse, and no-till because we don't have the money to do it any other way.

That said, there is ALWAYS a reason to try new things when it comes to gardening. Last spring our major project was to convert and area that USED to have several mature trees (some spruce, some probably elm). They were cut down by the previous mgmt. in 2000, chipped in place without removing the stumps or any roots, the ground covered with plastic landscape film, and the chips laid on top. All in 24 hours (long story). From that point forward, every year the landscaping contractor would deliver a load of fresh chips, spread them on top of the old chips, and charge $$ for the services rendered. I found this out AFTER agreeing to do the project, and after excavating the entire 1500 sf of what had been characterized as "old flower beds". Ha ha on us, I guess.

Using nothing more than shovels, spadeforks, and a few axes, we had to shovel back the layers of chips, peel back the MULTIPLE layers of plastic landscape film, dig down up to 3 feet deep to remove some partly decayed but fairly massive stumps and roots, mix the removed bentonite clay soil with the mostly decayed chips plus some donated horse manure, and regrade the entire mess into nice looking raised planting beds for roses and companion plants. The digging went on for 3 months, 20 hours a week, 2-3 people at a time. So by the end of this process you could say we had pretty well "tilled" the soil. Everything was planted in raised beds, with dry-laid rock walls surrounding, because this IS colorado and it is very dry. Nothing here (this property) gets more than 1" of artificial irrigation a week.

I found only 2 problems with the soil this year. Although the chips provided a fantastic amount of carbon and organic matter, the soil was relatively nitrogen-poor (I expect that to improve over time). The other problem is that the raised beds sunk almost a foot after being constructed, probably because of a combination of natural settling and hastened decomp in the wood chips after all that aeration.

This fall I added a good bit of chopped leaves and composted manure to the top level. Partly for reasons of water conservation, we do not pull out annuals here -- just cut them down and lay the chopped up plant right back on the soil where it grew. We don't plant anything that isn't ok for self-sowing, so that works for us.

On the plus side, we got rid of a huge eyesore and several furlongs of plastic landscape film. Hooray. If I had been able to use a tiller, I would have, but the tree roots were in the way. The tree roots had to come out for other reasons not directly related to gardening -- we cannot allow decaying wood anywhere within 20' of a building because of the pervasive termite problems.

Green1 search my name about bogs for a method of keeping moisture.

maggiemae, I assume you mean the post about creating a bog with diverted greywater?

Not only is it illegal to install that kind of greywater diversion in most incorporated areas in colorado, I rather doubt the HOA board would approve adding a "bog" when we are supposed to be creating a x & xx-xeric landscape. Xeric landscapes generally conserve water in berms and swales, or by concentrating plants with similar water within a moist microclimate. But thanks anyway.

Greywater diversion, in my opinion, should be a REQUIRED part of water management for new construction. Unfortunately we just can't do it here.

greenj1, I may be wrong, but I think she mentioned in another thread (maybe the one you saw) that greywater use is illegal where she is, also, but that she uses it, anyway.

I'm familiar with xeric, but not x & xx-xeric. What is the significance of prepending with x or xx?

greenj1

What I did was to plumb my shower to a prepared or
constructed bog type growing area. Here are a couple of
pictures. Any overflow runs into my ponds, so I don't lose
any water and the plants love it.

LOOKING DOWN EARLY SPRING

{{gwi:284861}}

LOOKING UP

{{gwi:315023}}

LOOKING DOWN AT THE SAME AREA

{{gwi:284862}}

RE: I'm familiar with xeric, but not x & xx-xeric. What is the significance of prepending with x or xx?

Xeric is a totally made-up term created by, of all people, the Denver Water Board back in the late 80's. Unlike most madeup words, it has a real technical application. X-xeric means 1" of supplemental water applied per week during the growing season. XX-xeric is between .5 and 1" application. XXX-xeric means NO supplemental watering.

Most people who start trying out xeric watering regimes are surprised at how much we typically OVER water our typical garden plants, including Kentucky Blue Grass. Simply switching to an X-xeric watering schedule will help you see where plants have been overwatered and are perhaps manifesting some kind of fungal or rotting disorder as a result. Also the soil management techniques that go along with it are things you all are very familiar with (compost, no-till, right plant for the right place) but many suburban lawn-slaves are NOT. It is pretty easy to get usable advice on implementing xeric watering schedules, and most local water boards have adopted some version of this, and may even have reimbursement schemes for businesses and communities that fully adopt these water management principles.

The deeper you get into xeric techniques, the more it looks like permaculture. And that is NO accident, IMO.