No tilling. EVER!
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Planted by: Jennifer Tidwell
Date: Tuesday November 24, 2009
Planted in: Frugal Gardening,Green Living
Tilling just doesn’t work. Not for me anyway. It does nothing but compact the soil below the level where it tills, and the crabgrass and bermuda grass just love freshly turned soil, not to mention the weed seeds that get churned up. Last year I decided to take the easy way out. I started with layers of cardboard and newspaper, followed by soil or compost, finally topped off with a layer of mulch. Water and allow to sit. I have had great success with it. The longer it sits, the easier it is to plant and the deader the grass underneath gets.
Once you’ve allowed several weeks for the cardboard to start disintegrating and the weeds beneath to die, you can start planting. Pull back a handful of mulch/soil, pop in your plants, backfill if needed and then cover the rootball with mulch. For larger plants you may have to puncture the cardboard and dig a bit, but the grass below the cardboard should be good and dead by this point. If you can start these beds in spring and plant in fall, or start them in late fall and plant the following spring, the results will be great. You may have to do some weeding if you start the beds in spring and are a lax mower like me.
If I get behind in weeding the grass and weeds will creep in from the yard, but it has been so much easier than trying to plant in the crabgrass. Have you ever turned over a shovelful of your yard and looked at how deep the roots on those demons grasses grow? The soil that is formed below the mulch has a great texture, which allows you to pull the weeds out much easier.
Every bed I’ve made in the last year was made using this method. I’ve never seen more earthworms in one place than in my flower beds, aside from a worm farm. If you need some detailed help planning a flower or vegetable bed, feel free to drop me a line with your questions.
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3 Comments
Comment by [...] a big fan of lasagna bed gardening and I don’t believe in tilling, so that’s what I use for most of my flower beds. By building a raised bed, you are providing [...]
Comment by Backyard Grown Gardens » Garden Bed Preparation on December 1st, 2009 @ 2:45 pmLine and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
There are many reasons to not till the soil one of which is that it destroys the beneficial ecosystems in the soil. My main reason is that it is too much work!