Lots of previous discussions on the issue if you want to review them for info - just scroll down to the blue banner discussions - and I have linked a good recent one below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Tilling your garden

This is one of those subjects that come with a wide variety of opinions and reasonings. Almost as many as the herbacide debate.

I have tilled, and I have not tilled. I prefer to not to till, more for reasons relating to my lifestyle than any arguement about soil structure.

I have found myself most comfortable with a semi-raised bed-sq ft-lasagna-french intesive-potager style. Got all that? I find aesthetics to be a very important aspect of my veggie garden. I plant intensly, with lots of flowers and herbs, with an eye towards shapes and colors.

Basically, my veggie garden is a 4' wide curvy L-ish shape, accessable from both sides, with a cedar-poled 6'fence running through it. Lots of mulch. 7 or 8 large pots. The occasional, random perenniel.

I live in a rural area, so corn, pumpkins, winter squash, cole crops are all readily available from my neighbors or local growers that sell at the farm market in town every week-end June-October - and several of them take my fresh eggs in a dollar for dollar trade, so that really works for me.

I hope you get lots of responses on this question. Sure, it has been discussed several times before, but by different people over the years, with different points of view and interesting reasons. I have certainly changed methods several times in the many years I have been visiting GW. Gardens evolve and so do gardeners. Sometimes writing about an opinion cements it, or make you question it.....kay.

I don't till. Like Kay said, it's more because I don't want to and don't have to than soil structure reasons.

I figure even those who don't till still dig and turn over the soil for planting and to a lesser degree, for weeding.

Still, it's really not necessary to till at all beyond preparing an area for gardening use and even then it isn't absolutely necessary.

These days I use raised beds with soilless mix. In the past I have used raised beds with soil and ground level areas with heavily amended soil.

I prefer the soilless raised beds for veggies as it provides a weed free start and the structure/tilth is perfect from day one.

A statistic presented by Mel Bartholomew in his book 'Square Foot Gardening' is that the average gardener spends 5-10 years working the soil before they feel it's in really good shape for gardening. That is also about the amount of time the average person spends at one property before moving.

What a waste to labor for years just to have the next resident put a concrete slab over the garden area.

No need to till, no need to dig. Just fill an area (framed or not) with excellent growing media (lots of compost, a little peat and maybe a little perlite/vermiculite) and get going.

I love the affects of tilling, but that's because I'm amending my clay. And I must say, even if I had good soil, I'd still till the top couple of inches before planting. The reason is because I like to work lose dirt.

My extremely limited experience has totally sold me on the value of untilled, soilless raised beds. My first veggie gardening experience this year has involved building raised beds and filling them lasagne-style, and the results have been much better than what I've seen growing in-ground in gardens nearby. The only problem is finding enough material to actually fill the beds, which can be expensive or involve a lot of laborious scavenging, and knowing that the mix needs to be topped up between growing seasons as it breaks down & settles. Mine sank by at least 10cm over a four month season but none of the plants seem to have minded- I assume that by now their roots are penetrating into the (clay) soil below the beds, which would be in better state than it was from having the compost above acting on it.

I'm sadly having to dismantle those beds as I'm moving and my landlord doesn't want them there- which is sort of a bonus because I get to take the materials with me & use them to start new beds. It's been really fun sticking my hands into this brand-new 'dirt' and seeing just how quickly all those different ingredients broke down into rich, beautiful dark compost. All that compost is going to make a great starter layer in my new raised beds!

Work-wise I have to say that building beds feels a lot less laborious than having to de-weed, dig up & amend existing ground. And not having to weed AT ALL for almost the entire summer? That's been awesome.

My garden is permanent beds (not raised) in permanent mulch. No till, of course. I'm going into my 14th year of this garden, and it's great: no weeds, no tilling, and every year it gets better. Tilling not only destroys soil structure and worms, it brings up weed seed. I just don't see the need of it.

I reckon it also depends on what we mean by "tilling". To plant most any kind of seed, I find that I need to expose the soil and loosen and smooth it, and make a furrow ( and possibly add some amendments), and then cover the seed up. Isn't that tilling, by any reasonable definition?

I dont consider tilling 2 inches as tilling. To me tilling is more like at least 6 inches down , I dont till anymore because i have better results with the no-till method. bill

I brought in soil, made raised beds, and mulch and my gardens have beautiful soil. Tilling into the Texas clay gumbo used to be backbreaking work and I'm no spring chicken anymore.

i till because i have a large garden and it is the only way to evenly amend the soil. if i ever change to beds instead of rows, i probably would go no till, but then what would i do with my garden tractor?

the till/no till arguement is about as evenly split and heated as the organic/chemical ones! you have to make up your mind for yourself.

if you have the room, do 2 small gardens. one of them till and one fo them no till. see which works best for you.

This question goes right along with:

Treated or untreated lumber?
Use Roundup or not?
Is electric or gas tiller best?
Kill the squirrels or not?
Chemical or organic fertilzers?
Are hybrids or heirlooms better?
Should I use chemical sprays?
Are genentically modified seeds OK?

The classics never die. *8^)

And what a blessing that is, that new generations of gardeners are learning by asking the same questions we did; and that they have these forums to see answers both old and new.

g'day chefwong,

since i converted to "no-till" i can no longer see any cause to ever turn a sod again, it simply isn't needed 'all that back breaking work trying to dominate the soil'.

we have details on our site as to how and what we do and our successes are equal if not better at times to those that till.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

If you have only raised beds that are edged, I can see no-till.

If you have unedged raised beds that are wider and longer than small ones, I can see the value of limited tilling of manuee/compost and cover crops.

If you have unraised beds and raise a lot of sweet corn, sweetpotatoes, and potatoes, I can see more tillage.

Guess what? I have both the second and third situations.

tcstoehr I think you got most of the classics.
Except the cat using my garden as bathroom one.

Again, one size does not fit all. I too had to truck in soil (for filling and leveling purposes). I had my choice of clay or silt. I chose silt. Now ready for year five of my garden.

It still needs more organic material, and I can not reasonably rotate crops geographically, so I till every year to incorporate vegetation from prior year crops. The soil gets shuffled, and I can keep the same layout that works, year after year.

So far, so good. Much easier for me to till everything up from a tractor seat than to do any digging. I till it, then set up my drip irrigation manifold pipe, make any hills and furrows I need, Install my drip tubes, and plant.

What will I do when I get my organic material up where It should be? Probably will still till the whole thing, because it is easier than dealing with raised beds. Cutting up earthworms? No problem. For every one I cut in half, I get two earthworms.

I have a very long and narrow garden, along a treeline. It's the only sunny area I have. In one season, roots from the trees find there way back into my garden beds. I till periodically to break up and remove the tree roots. It's sort of a pain, as my garden has become 4-season. I have been thinking about renting a ditchwitch, and just running it all along the back edge of the garden to sever all the new roots. I've even considered trying to figure out some kind of barrier to put in the trench a ditchwitch would leave.

I thought I could get around the root problem by just building a raised soiless bed. I left it up for one season, but had to dismantle it due to my poor planning of it's location. Tree roots had worked there way up from the bottom, and had completely filled the box to within a few inches of the top. I had to use a tiller just to break it up, it was susc a solid root mass. The same thing happened to my experiments with lasagne beds, and if I get lazy and don't turn my compost pile regularly, the same thing happens there. My tilled beds definitely have fewer tree roots, and better production (as an experiment, I put in a standard lasagne bed right next to a tilled bed to which I added the same ammendments, and the tilled bed was amazingly more productive).

Anybody have any suggestions? I really really want to be no till!

Cheers!
JP

But would you till if you had this and hard clay soil to amend?

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Macheske, if I had that I would till for fun, regardless of the soil.

Tilling or not probably has as much to do with preferences as with practical matters of how best to make the garden productive. If you have a poor soil type, tillage to work in organic matter can be quite useful. No-till with mulch certainly helps keep the weeds down and builds a rich organic layer at the surface.

If you water your garden with rainfall or a sprikler/hose/drip system, tilling in unnecessary for water control. If you irrigate with surface water as I do, the soil has to be leveled and worked to put in water marks that the water will flow across the garden in, otherwise the plants would never even germinate.

If you were farming larger areas, no-til is generally considered better than clean-till for the soil health, water retention, nutrient management, and erosion prevention. For a garden plot, you usually have better protection from winds and vegetative barriers around the garden to control water erosion. Plus, gardens tend to get amended to the hilt to maximize organic matter and other characteristics, plus they cover relatively little area and replenishing or improving the soil is relatively inexpensive, though on a farm scale it is completely uneconomic.

Just try what you'd like or experiment with both and see what works best in your situation.

anyone here with heavy clay soil, and a no till veggie garden? We are just digging the garden and starting the seeds so we will be amending and tilling the soil this year but I sure am hoping you veterans say it's not necessary.

Kay I'd LOVE to see veggie garden pics! sounds beautiful!