To Till or not to Till

This was published in the April 15, 2021 edition of The Fish Wrap.

As Spring is arriving and people are starting to plan their gardens, many people turn to the tiller as the first step. Tillage may be your best bet for starting a new plot, but it’s not the only option or even the best one. Nature abhors bare ground and does everything it can to repair the damage done. What we call ‘weeds’ are actually the first, crucial step in building back a rich, healthy soil. 

Soil goes through a succession like any living thing. When something damaging happens, like a fire or a flood, the soil is bared and the soil food web has to start over with just the microbes present. Mother Nature’s emergency act is to grow fast-growing, hardy ‘weeds’. Soil maturation continues with early, mid-stage and late grasses. At this point, the soil is mature enough to nurture vegetable plants. Or it will continue with shrubs and vines and finally a forest that will stand until the next damaging event restarts the cycle.

Tillage brings the weeds, but tilling has other negative effects as well. Tilling may allow the soil to warm up and dry out in the Spring, but when you get into summer, tilled soil is in danger of becoming too hot and dry. When a rain comes, a crust on the soil doesn’t allow water to penetrate and you get runoff and soil compaction. 

If you want to try out no-till gardening, there are many strategies to choose from. For example, you could use beneficial cover crops or mulching to avoid the bare ground mother nature hates. Try an experiment. Plan the same plant for two beds. In one, till as you have in the past and try not tilling the other. See which bed Mother Nature rewards!