Compost, compost, and more compost.

I'm not making compost at the moment. I can buy bagged organic compost and that's what I'll do. It won't need that much just to top off the beds. I do leave a thick layer of leaves on my raised beds all winter. And during the growing season we mulch with grass clippings and leaves.

I too prepare beds in the falll...mixing in amendments and ridging up rows where early planting is desired...works for me.

Some areas have a covercrop of tillage radishes, and these are great come spring.

Wayne, I read a book written by an Amish woman who used tilage radishes in the fall for her vegetable bed and the soil looked gorgeous after doing that for years. I've thought about doing it but never have.

RGreen - I like your very methodical system. :-)

Well, if you include fall work in "prepare beds in the spring", then lots more can happen. In particular in situ composting works great. Just dig in chopped up fall leaves, and let them stew underground for many months. That's not going to help you much right now, though.

We choose our own ways to prepare or not prepare gardens ahead of time. Some may believe that no tilling or such is good. I find that some tilling is so VERY helpful...I can stir in amendments, ridge up rows for higher and warmer soil, make sweetpotato ridges, kill wider areas of weeds, dry the soil faster by potato forking the soil open, and prepare larger rows for planting in loose soil.

Well, the question was specifically what one can do IN the spring, as opposed to ahead of time. But yes, tilling, and even deep digging and forking is very helpful at all times. You can't really incorporate amendments properly if you don't do that. FWIW, in the spring deep penetration and stirring will also help warm the soil.

Some people are reluctant to disturb the fungal strands penetrating the soil. Below a spade depth, so am I! My muscles are very reluctant to disturb them.

I too prepare in the fall. Adding some chopped leaves and any compost I may have. I also do a Ph test and adjust if needed.

I'm one of those people who prefer not to turn the soil over. I have raised beds and I add a lot of chopped leaves and grass clippings as a thick mulch and let it break down. I add kitchen scraps sometimes chopped up and push it down along the edges of the bed or in a vacant bed or area. I do want to open up the soil before planting and I'll insert a pitchfork to the depth of the blade of it but I don't turn it over, I just lift and rock it back and forth enough to loosen it. Just my theory, that I'm leaving the layers where they are, just loosening. I think there has to be multiple ways to do it. Lots of people have success with different methods.

What's the purpose of leaving layers where they were? Rocking it with a fork will fracture all the fungal strands. Preserving those is, I thought, the main rationale for no-till. Certainly it takes a lot less effort to just rock, but I'm just wondering what's to the theory of leaving layers alone. There is a lot written about soil layers and "horizons" in undisturbed soil, but I've never seen any rationale for preservation of them.

Before we moved into town we had several raised beds I would usually have enough compost to cover a bed or 2. I had a very small electric tiller from the 60s or so that tilled down just deep enough so as not to hit the hardware cloth under the beds. Tilled in the compost and tried to remember which ones I done the year before so I could do a couple different beds the next year. Every few year I would get a truckload of the stuff from the dump (since closed due to a lawsuit!) and top all of the beds.

I also tilled cause I like the look of a nice fluffy bed to start my spring!

Oh, and I covered with landscape fabric or cardboard(with knife holes to let moisture in Think Psycho!) during the winter or I would be totally over run with weeds.

Last year, first year in our new little place, I didn't have a garden due to injuries.

THis year, we just cleared an area and planted right in the ground (Had to cut into landscape fabric and clear 3-4" of wood chips away from the plants. This is a learning year in our new place.....just a few plants. Nancy

Dan, it would be interesting to find some kind of experiment where they study different ways of tilling and not tilling. I don't have a study to support doing it that way. I don't think the fungal strands are the only reason not to disturb soil layers. If I didn't have any trees within 50 feet of my vegetable beds, I might not do anything but brush aside the mulch and plant. Maybe it's no better for all I know. [g].

There is a large experiment going on in farming between no-til and till. The results are mixed. There are adfvantages and disadvantages both ways. A person JUST has to find what works best for them.

I have very large unboardered beds. Tilling is probably a necessity here....and I believe it works best for me and my plantings and practices.

Thanks, prairiemoon2. Though we're not really quite talking about "no till". No-till is DO NOT DISTURB. No turning over, no slicing, no rocking. I have to suspect that the value of no-till is going to depend strongly on the kind of soil being managed. That being the case, Wayne's point about doing what works best is probably in order.

I agree with you both. You have to go with what works for you and your circumstances. Sure, for me, I'm doing the rocking and lifting without actually turning it over, so it's just a variation of tilling, I guess, but I make a distinction that maybe is insignificant to most.

This may not necessarily help the author of the thread, but on the topic of no till, I've been running some experiments this year. Kill weeds below with a heavy mulch over winter, spread compost on bare soil come spring, or in the autumn once weeds are dead. Any amendments just get hoed in on the surface. So far things seem to do pretty good, and there's a real abundance of earth worms. I sow and plant directly into the compost mulch. I do prefer to loosen my rows a little just for ease of transplanting however, but other than that no till. I think experimenting and finding what works or a particular person is really the way to do it. Not everyone has great results no till, not everyone has great results tilling. Climate, soil, etc., all affect that it seems.

jacob - I love experiments. I'm sure I've read articles suggesting that layering compost on the top of the soil, will be brought down to lower layers by earthworms and every time you water it, it releases nutrients. Which has to be true, or why would people have been topdressing and side dressing all along? I layer grass clippings mixed with chopped leaves and mulch with that and that always attracts a lot of earthworms. I loosen my beds before I plant, because I have a Maple about 30ft away from the beds and sometimes, some of it's root system attempts to find a foothold.

Well, compost isn't really a nutrient source. Certainly not in the near term, though it does release minimal amounts in the long term as it degrades. To the extent it is mainly an amendment for soil structure, it seems to me that leaving it on top doesn't help that much, except in that multiple layers of surface compost form a quasi-sort of soil on top.

Yes, earthworms can drag those amendments down with them, but one shovelfull is vastly more efficient than doing that than a whole herd of earthworms are.

It's said to be more useful if applied in the autumn Dan, for that very reason. Nutrients have all winter to break down. Part of the ideal, whether spring or autumn, is not necessarily focusing on feeding the plants, but rather feeding the soil. Feed to the soil life, which is in much more abundance if not tilled, and they feed the plants all the mineral and nutrients they need, that is otherwise harder for the plant to get in the soil when tilling due to less of that soil life, thus the need for more of those nutrients in regular feeding schedules. You COULD just use a thick, heavy mulch of primarily hay and leaves or some other organic matter, and I am doing that as well as the compost, but the compost provides a stronger start for a brand NEW garden due to a space to sow seeds into, transplant plants into, as well as give a quick feed to the soil life. Not to mention it's also full of soil life, which, if taken care of, can possibly provide some long term nutrients to the plant in a brand new garden as that.

Its going to be a very interesting experiment. I have some beds tilled to compare of course. I would recommend checking out Charles Dowding if you are interested. I am largely following a combination of his and Ruth Stout's methods. He has website with bi-weekly updates on his market garden as well as all of the experiments he runs. It's a very neat concept. Of course, he is in the U.K. so a bit different climate, making this an even more adventurous experiment.

Jacob, one of the first garden books I got out of the library back in the 1980s were Ruth Stout's book. [g]

I hope you will post photos when your experiment offers you some results. :-)

Yes, that's a fair point, that a thick layer of compost in the fall provides a fluffy quasi-soil medium for planting in the spring. Also, I suppose it does seed the underlying soil with extra microbials that help with hydrocarbon breakdown. Though if you don't dig anything in, there aren't a lot of hydrocarbons in the soil to actually be broken down. The "rocking" strategy is an interesting one, in that is makes cracks that surface organics fall into. It also helps to aerate the soil, which is very important for subsurface breakdown.

I do tipping acting with the potato fork to aerate the soil so it is dryer... not a lot of turnover.