Why NOT till?

People grow gardens with tillage all the time--why should anyone NOT till?

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[Seasoncromwell]

Heyyy Nerds. Funny story.
My child (8) will hear a gardening video on and will walk in and say Heyyy Nerds. Lol. Made an impression on him.

[WorryFreeGardening]

Thank you for your great videos. We try both here in our smaller gardens. Depends so much on the soil you start with.

[stefanr]

I prefer no-till because it works for me and it's less work and I don't like destroying the worm tunnels, etc.

But I don't follow the argument that tilling brings up seeds from deep below for them to germinate. Seeds don't develop deep in the soil, instead they develop above soil and fall on top of the soil. If seeds are deep in the soil, it's because they have been tilled in there, meaning they were removed from the chance of germination which is a good thing. If they are brought back up at the next tilling and are still viable then they may germinate but that would not be a net bad thing since they would have germinated previously anyway. Maybe someone can explain this conundrum to me.

[ddouglas]

Only time I till is when starting a new garden area which is usually as hard as a rock!
Before I till, I put down at least six inches of leaves and then light a fire and carefully burn all the leaves. This really helps eliminate most weed seeds in the top 2-3 inches of soil.
Then I'll add more leaves and some straw(not hay!) on top along with some 10-10-10 and till it all in.
I let it sit a few weeks or a month then plant my seeds or seedlings.
This gives you a basic good setup for a garden area you really don't need to amend or adjust for the first 2 months of growth.
I try to go light on fertilizer because of salt! You cannot get the salt out!
I've transitioned to jadam and natural home made fertilizers and am seeing decent results but time will tell.
The reason you don't want to till is the fact that the soil becomes its own ecosystem rife with those little bugs working hard to break things down. Tilling just upsets the entire system.
I'll still till a row here and there to incorporate compost or fresh green matter but it is rare.
Thanks for the insights!

[blenderbenderguy]

I appreciate all of your content and especially your dry wit delivery.... thanks for your efforts!

[donavinnezar]

im on team no till but i definitely see the benefit of tillage especially when initially setting up and trying to fix soil texture / fertility

[billsnyder]

The dogma prevents some people from getting a head start in clay soils. I think the only thing you might have missed is the benefit of broad forking to support no-till in clayey soils.

[ursamajor]

I grow a pretty small garden but every year i open up a little more area by broadforking and hand picking the weeds and roots. Being retired, it's a truly enjoyable experience to sit in the garden, warmed by the sun and commune with the bees, birds, butterflies, earthworms and the occasional tree frog.

[aileensmith]

We will be finishing our first full year of attempted No-Till. It has been a FLOP in a few ways and VERY encouraging in others. Hopefully we will have a decent amount of compost to apply to part of our garden. And the march goes on and our view is No-Till from now on. As always Thank You for another fun and informative Sunday Morning video!

[Grow-all-year]

3.5 inches of rain last couple days and i can walk my woodchip paths like nothing happened. Before no till it would be a weed paradise in a week and too muddy to walk.

Im tempted to tilth, but affraid i will rejuvenate the weed seeds just below the surface

[KrazyKajun]

I am trying to do a lasagna method, I plant a cover crop, knock it down, cover it with tarps for a couple of weeks then cover with compost. plant into the compost and repeat.

[okpen]

I prepared 2 beds for a friend in a city superb context, the soil was so compacted and dead that I chose to till and incorporate compost+ rabbit manure.
Tilling isn't always bad.

[tamarackartstudio]

No-till is kind of a misnomer, and just creates division among people without a nuanced viewpoint. It’s all just spectrums of tillage, from deep plowing, to power harrowing, to broadforking, to using a tilther. One thing I would point out is it’s a lot harder to use cover crops without tillage than with, especially in a northern climate.

[samgriffiths]

I have to go no dig cause Im not well enough to dig over ground... Lucky for me no till works great cause I'd be stuck with it either way 😅

[flatsville]

After trying numerous, seemingly fad methods, for what appeared to be only marginal gains, if any, I managed to distill my in ground & slightly elevated raised beds to a formula for main, if not all crops.

I plant a winter kill, nitro fixing covercrop in mid fall, followed by 4 in +/- of leaf mould or chopped leaves in mid to late winter (after hard frost killed the cc.) Fertilizer & mulch is then in place for spring.

Pull back to dirt for planting seedlings, or lay thin compost for direct sow/mound.

Since the rhizosphere is so tiny, I'm now covercropping in the strips where I plant into rather than the whole bed. Oddly, no noticeable reduction in yield.

I am not market gardening. For a home gardener, it is the minimal amount of effort that produces maximum results with little damage to the soil.

I provide plenty of worm casting drench at planting & castings there after.

[davidhendricks]

I think the biggest thing that gets overlooked with no-till is that people still use pesticides. The whole goal is to build life in your soil, you can't continously spray it with poison and expect life to thrive.

[LiamG]

Tilling is so key for many reasons, one is for those in the north it's a great way to get the soil warmed up to get those critical early weeks. Using a product like earth alive get the bacteria back healthy and forces worms to work. Tilling is great for weeds as well. Know your soil and why you do what you do for best results. No such thing as one best way, you learn to ge the best for you conditions

[donnabrooks]

I watch a lot of Charles Dowding videos . He been doing no till for over forty years. He has absolutely beautiful gardens and he is also a market grower as well in England.

[octaverouge]

Greetings from France, I was not expecting the "ça marche?" ;)

[glassbackdiy]

I don't think we can talk about till vs no till in orgnic systems without refering to REDOX (see Olivier Hussons mammoth papers or his more accessible presentations on YT) it's arguably much more important than pH, and if you also include information on pest and pathogen resistance relationships to nutrition, from people like John Kempf & Dr Don Huber, and how diverse soil biology provides those nutrients naturally in Nature from people like Dr James White & Dr. Elaine Ingham, no till becomes a no brainer. BUT you have to earn the right to go no till first, by removing compaction, supplying the minerals and soil biology lacking, and best management choices so your soil doesn't recompact (by the multitude of different routes and practices available). I'm convinced that with the correct mineral profile, diverse biology, good soil aggrigation to provide a range of REDOX, and good garden management to maintain those conditions, we can raise pest and pathogen free, high nutrient density healthy food, and therefore start to reverse the collective decline in humanities health. Assuming we can do this before the world goes completely to hell in a hand basket that is (lol).