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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tillers...was Soil and fertility
  • Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:18 -0700


On Jan 26, 2009, at 9:06 AM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

If I were breaking new sod for a garden, I'd plow it with my horse in the
winter and again in spring. Lacking a horse, I'd consider using a rototiller but
only to a depth of 4" or so to destroy the growing points of the sod. I
think a tiller churns up the ground too much and destroys its structure.

An old book named Plowman's Folly showed how a moldboard plow ruins good soil. Among its sins, it leaves a hard, pan-like subterranean surface through which young roots have difficulty penetrating. The author, Edward Faulkner, noted that to that time no one had ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing. That one book turned convention on its head and changed the way farmers prepared soil for planting.

I've gardened with methods of preparing the ground all the way from a
rear-tine counter rotating rototiller churning the living b'jesus out of the soil to
the no-till (at all) method of just adding compost to the surface. My very
clear conclusion is that a somewhat-till method is best. Now of days I turn the
top 8" or so of each bed with a shovel, just gently turn the soil over a bit,
and then rake the top 2" of that with a rake.

James is learning. In another decade or so he will find that his shovel is needed not at all and the rake will suffice.

Rototilling destroys soil in much the same way as the moldboard plow. The spinning tines make a hard, shiny "bottom" six or eight inches below the soil surface which impedes roots and drainage. As for the churning of the soil, please consider the trillions of soil organisms that have established a perfectly balanced community of life in that top foot or so of growing soil. Now consider what those spinning tines do to that community. I liken it to a mile-tall monster tearing up cities to plant its monster plants. Which is not an altogether negative image.

Now go read Masanobu Fukuoka and Ruth Stout and other author's books and learn about the natural, no-till way of gardening. Your back, your soil community and your pantry will be the better for it.

Gene GeRue
www.RURALIZE.com








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