I am one of those folks who are starting a new garden on sod this way. Last fall, we layed down cardboard, overlapping the edges on an area about 30'by 60' at hte back of our backyard that gets full sun and then covered with about 6" of composted manure..then recently spread out about 100 bags of collected fall leaves and then mowed with our mulching mower. We have watered it several times. This weekend, we are going to lay down potato pieces and cover with composted manure...thats the plan. And then in April, do the same with corn and greenbeans...then cut holes and put in tomatoes, peppers and squash. We plan to follow the potatoes with soybeans, hoping to grow our very own edamame! So we shall see!

Here's the link mentioned above. I stopped tilling my garden about 8 or 9 years ago after hearing Paul James discuss beneficial soil microbes that were damaged by tilling. I also felt that whatever grass and weed seeds and roots were in the soil just got replanted. With bermuda grass encroaching from the fenceline, tilling just made it multiply. I have not been consistent with true no-till gardening since then, and usually allow the grass to spread after the really hot weather sets in. Even so, the soil seems to be more productive since I quit tilling.

Here is a link that might be useful: No-till gardening article

I'm a minimally tilling kind of gal. I have Johnson grass, Bermuda grass, and that really dense red clay with buttloads of rocks. I do a bit of tilling on some spots/some years and none in other spots/other years, trying to avoid it whenever I can out of pure laziness and lack of time. I have done a lot of sheet composting/lasagna gardening where/when not tilling and the Bermuda just doesn't care -- doesn't phase it. It does seem to slow down the Johnson grass, though, and it does do wonderful things for the soil.

Diane

I did a lot of tilling the first couple of years that we broke-up the clay soil, amended it and improved it, but since then I seldom till, and I find I till less and less each year.

This year, I haven't rototilled at all and the only section of the veggie garden I intend to till is on the western edge of the garden where bermuda grass invaded the last two years. Even then, I expect I'll be hand-digging the bermuda roots and runners out of the rototilled soil for days before I put down cardboard or newspaper and mulch and then plant through them.

I like rototilling and working in the organic matter into the heavy clay the first year I turn a new area into a bed, but not after that. Our clay is so thick and hard and so deprived of organic material that I don't want to have to wait the years it would take for the earthworms to work the materials heaped onto the soil surface down deeper into the soil.

I don't till any of the flower beds and try to keep soil disturbance to a minimum--because anywhere you disturb the soil surface, you'll have weeds sprouting. The same is true of the vegetable garden--anywhere that you pull back or rake back the mulch and expose or disturb the soil, you'll have a million weeds sprout.

The first few years here, we had to fight a lot of weeds in the garden because we had rototilled the soil. I'd say the weed problem now is only about 5% of what it used to be, but I do mulch very, very heavily and that helps as much as not rototilling.

Dawn

I tried round up and killed everything I had planted (even though I "protected it"). I had a tractor come in early winter and till with the concept that it turns up the grass and weeds so they freeze out during the winter (doesn't work). I tried landscape fabric (disaster, grass and weeds under, through and on top). I tried turning, weeding and covering with thick wet newspapers, then covering with landscape fabric and cedar mulch to hold it down...its covered in weeds and grass, but I can "roll it back" and the ground underneath is beautiful and ready after a year of hiding (but it was a small experiment to expand my rose garden). I'm now of the belief that mulch is the only answer. The less we disturb the soil, the healthier it can be with its own eco system. The only time I till is if I'm digging a hole for a bush/tree, then I till in the hole with a small tiller, then till the top soil into the hole, then till the clay/ hard stuff from the hole back into replacement 'topsoil'. From then on its strictly mowed grass/clover/leaves as organic mulch. (Although for this year's 'new March additions' I was short and put on cottonseed hulls.) Weed seeds that sprout on top of mulch are a flash to pull up. I've been amazed to see grass thickly growing everywhere right up to the edge of anywhere I have mulched. And when I 'weed' everything is filled with spiders, frogs, turtles, earthworms and beneficials. I have an orchard that is a continuing challenge, but I now mulch 6 foot circles around the trees and mow paths to them and just let the grass in between grow for the beneficials... or at least that's this year's plan (LOL) (I do occasionally 'till' a grass edge to weed it to expand a mulch area, but I may in the future try just mulching over the grass.) I have concerns that plastic and some other methods do not allow air and water circulation for a healthy beneficial soil to develop. So my vote is to mulch not till...