Just like sheets on your bed - a well made bed tucked in lasts -- at least for me in my part shade areas. In my full sun vegetable beds it doesn't seem to last as long & I need to reapply compost, manures in fall, mulch to keep my soil in good condition. Amounts vary, but probably 6-12" sheet mulched in fall after harvesting & 2-4" mulch applied after planting in spring sounds about right. If I heap on too much in fall I will remove some to other beds in spring that had crops growing in fall & missed the application. I haven't as much success with no till if I just layered on top of unimproved soil & didn't dig it in at some point down the road. SOunds like you've already double dug the area & added amendments for past 6 years. Your soil might be ready for no till. Different methods for perennials or annuals - vegetables or shrubs/perennial ornamental flowering beds. Earthworms do dig things in, but only so far. Seems like the moles also follow the worms & do their share of tilling in. In my raised veg beds where I don't walk on I don't till anymore - just dig in a bit of compost & some complete organic fertilizer with hand trowel when replanting (amount depends on the crop grown), add mulch when plants established. Some have been in use for just 3 years & others up to 20 years. The older beds are easy to dig with my hands. That's the difference over time & I don't dig there anymore other than how described above. Never used a tiller. Mostly the kids & I with just garden fork & shovel layering amendments in fall & turning in spring. Cost depends on what you have available cheap or free. Some ideas: -Raise chickens, ducks, or rabbits for nearly free soil amendments (have to buy feed & bedding for animals) -gather sweepings from feed store hay & straw mixture -try Craigslist for straw after Halloween, -wood chips from tree trimmers & let compost well before using -bag or contain pile of shredded leaves in fall to use in compost piles in spring with green grass clippings -call ahead to get a good amount of coffee grounds from St*rbucks -make friends with a horse rider. Horses can't eat hay that's spoiled, but it works fine in the garden. You can try it & always go back if you don't like it.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to the Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association "Spring Growth" Conference. The main attraction was Anne and Eric Nordell, talking about their low till methods. They have written columns on the subject for the last 15 years or so in Small Farmer's Journal, and reprints are available. Their farm is in the zone 5 hills of northern Pennsylvania. Their method is entirely horse powered, so that reduces wheel compaction. Not all of us have that option though. They consider the cover crops to be the main method of tillage. They have twelve fields, a half acre each, and in any one year, six of them are in cover crops. They call this the "Bio-Extensive" method. The purpose of this tillage is to improve deep soil structure. Contrast that with the shallow cultivation used for weed control. There is a rotation that begins with a field geting a year of cover, interupted by a bare fallow with repeated light cultivations to germinate and dispose of weed seeds. There's usually a legume in there somewhere, maybe several, as well as bulk carbon growers. After the fallow, they spread a light (2 yd/ acre) application of compost, then plant a fall cover that will be winter killed, usually peas and oats. One favored method of planting is to broadcast, then hill the soil into 5" ridges, much like small raised beds. The method has to be adjusted to make sure the path also gets cover. The next year, this field would be planted to early crops. Weed control was accomplished with the summer fallow. The cover was winter killed. Even though the field is wet, they're able to get in and plant, because they don't need to work the soil other than scratch the dry (or drier) top of the ridge. They either use a cultivator with a coulter and a sweep to clear a narrow planting zone on top of the ridge, or a coulter and a tooth to clear just enough to transplant into. This moves the mulch left from the winter cover into the paths and lets the soil warm around the planted row. After the crop matures, the field is planted to cover again. That cover will overwinter and resprout in the spring of the third year. Again, there will be a variety of cover crops grown in sucession, separated by open fallow periods to wear out the weed seed bank. At the end of this year, the winter cover may be something that overwinters again. Six weeks before planting a late crop the next year, the cover is killed, usually by just disking. It may get disked repeatedly durring the six weeks leading to planting the cash crop, and by planting time, even without moldboard plowing, the dead cover has been broken up and incorporated into the top inch or two of the soil. This helps rain soak in and reduces evaporation, which helps as they have no irrigation system. And that's four years. Do it again. But there are many variations. Sometimes covers are planted by skim plowing after broadcasting seed into stubble. Sometimes garlic is planted in a furrow cut onto the top of a fall ridge, already a foot tall with winter cover. The order of cover crops and fallow is moved around to deter different weeds (spring versus summer). Sometimes ridges are used and sometimes they aren't. Some paths (garlic) get an extra cover of straw mulch. Some paths get more tillage to control weeds. Some get a line of cover crop planted in them while the cash crop is still growing in the rows around it. And they keep expirimenting. So the system isn't exactly no till, but it is low till, and shallow. They have a very few specialized tools, such as a rolling chopper made by mounting about ten coulter wheels on a disk axle, but do most of their work with ancient horse cultivators, disks, and walking plows. They say they spend about four hours per field per year hand weeding. Dan

I'd suggest leaving your land alone and just see what happens. Take out the invasives as they appear and maybe plant a few native grasses. Plan on it taking a few years for "nature" to do your work for you. One source for help might be the Upper Raritan Watershed Assn. They have a beautiful property, Fairview Farm, in Bedminster, that is open 7 days a week sunrise to sunset for visitors. There are trails through both uplands and wetlands areas to explore; you might find many ideas there as to how to handle your property. I'm in Hunterdon County also, northern Hunterdon, up close to the Morris County line. Here is a link that might be useful: URWA

If I were working on your garden, I would not attempt to seed the entire area, or even most of it. In fact I might plant very few seeds directl into the ground. You don't really have an overwhelmingly large area. I would clear manageable sections, perhaps each as large as a dining room table, and plant each with a single type of wildflower. I would probably get my shovel and dig out a lot of the weeds, but you could also use Roundup as planned. Either way, try to make sure most of the weeds are gone, then plant a nice single-species stand of flowers. The single-species group will allow the plants to develop at the same pace as their neighbors without having the quick growers shading the slower growers, while the dining room table sized patches will still look like a wildflower meadow when you're done. In a real meadow, you'll find surprisingly large patches of each type of flower, and not usually a random scattering of single plants of many species. By planting patches like these, you'll find that the whole area is planted in a couple of years, and even in the first year you could have a dozen or two patches planted and the hillside will start to look very colorful. You cannot have this project done in a year or two. It will basically take forever, but after the initial couple of years you'll discover which flowers grow well, look nice, spread, and persist more than a year or two. Once you have lots of robust plants growing there, weeds will become less of a problem, although there will always be a few popping up. I would focus on native plants that spread vegetatively. Bergamot is a good choice. I would also get some Bee Balm - Monarda didyma - which is related to bergamot. Any native plant or hardy non-native perennial could be used, but the ones that spread vegetatively - that is, the plant grows now shoots or new plants alongside it - will be nice because they will cover the ground and keep weeds at bay better than non-spreading plants. I would not expect satisfactory results from sowing a wildflower seed mix. First, you'd have to till the soil to expect a decent germination rate. Second, you'll have to distinguish the wildflowers form the much more numerous weed seedlings that will be all over, and third, you'll probably get a skimpy stand of plants and then have to decide is you should try to salvage what you have or start over. I would either buy plants and encourage them to spread, or start plants from seeds in pots as you've been doing. I wouldn't expect poppies of any variety to be a major part of your meadow. They grow OK in a garden, but will probably only tolerate, not thrive in a meadow setting with lots of competition from other plants.