Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Compost in Place with No-Till Gardening
   - Pat Ruggiero does it

http://www.sacgardens.org/susgarden/articles/no_tillgarden.html
Charlottesville, Va.— Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007

Many of us who garden are quite familiar with the concept of raised bed 
gardening - particularly those of us who have dirt that glows red with clay. 
We're also extremely familiar with composting - we have compost piles or bins 
hidden out of sight, full of leaves, grass clippings and the vegetable scraps 
from our kitchens. We wait, if somewhat impatiently, for that stuff to turn 
into the "black gold" we then spread on our gardens and cover with shredded 
bark or other mulch we must truck in to our gardens.

But there is another way. This way puts to an end the annual process of 
tilling our garden plots! What's this you say? No more wrestling with that 
bucking machine or breaking our backs as we till our plots with hand tools? 
How can this be?

It's developer, Ruth Stout (1884-1980) called it "no dig, no work" although 
even exponents of her methods, like Pat Ruggiero and Howard Markham of 
Fluvanna, admit there is no gardening without work - this method just 
involves less backbreaking work than most. It's a method based on nature's 
own way, the "no-till" or "permanent mulch" method, and it's amazingly simply.

http://media.gatewayva.com/cdp/images/no-till2.jpg

"Think about it," Pat challenges. "Think about how the leaves fall from the 
trees and land at their bases. Nobody comes to rake them up. They just stay 
there and decay - and they begin to feed the trees, those big, healthy trees. 
No one fertilizes them. No one cleans away the leaves and makes the forest 
floor neat and tidy but the trees flourish."

Pat and Howard both grew up in farming communities but had worked and lived 
most of their lives in Northern Virginia. They knew they wanted to retire to 
a place where they could garden and when they saw this seven acre property in 
Fluvanna, with its south facing slope, they knew this was it.

"We became very interested in no-till gardening shortly after we started 
gardening here," Pat explains. "We tilled the beds the first year, and again 
the second year, but no more - we just pull the mulch aside, plant, and pull 
the mulch back again." And, indeed, the mulch is never removed - it is simply 
added to and over-planted with cover crops in the off-season.

"Our favorite cover crops are bearded oats, field peas and hairy vetch," 
reveals Pat. "We broadcast the seeds, take the rake and tamp the mulch that 
is in place so the seeds to settle in, and let them grow." The oats and peas 
come up almost immediately and they grow and flourish until the frost kills 
them. The vetch grows a little but it's the oats and peas that take over the 
"resting" beds during the fall. When they die, Pat and Howard do not pull the 
cover crops up by their roots. The plants will simply fall over by themselves 
and there they will remain. In the early spring the vetch takes over and 
grows until the couple is ready to plant their food crops. Then the vetch is 
cut down to act as mulch and eventually it, too, composts in place.

Even when their vegetable crops are finished, the plant remains are composted 
in place. Pat says that when it comes to the corn stalks, Howard will use the 
chipper/shredder and grind the stalks down before returning them to the plot 
where the corn had grown. "You could just throw the whole stalks on the 
ground and they would eventually turn into compost but they're awkward to 
work around. It's easier just to break them up and give them a head start," 
she says

"No-till gardening is based on improving the soil," Pat explains. "We keep 
the soil covered with organic matter. Soil microorganisms (the "microherd" as 
they're affectionately known among some organic gardeners) feed on the 
organic matter, mixing it into the soil, and eventually the soil changes. 
That's how Nature tills the soil. Because vegetable plants have a high 
nutrient requirement, we also add our own finished compost at planting time. 
Depending on the vegetable, we might add 1/2" compost over the whole bed, or 
we might just add a shovelful in each planting spot."

Pat is a Master Gardener with the Virginia Extension Service's Master 
Gardening Program and notes that there's usually a new Master Gardening class 
starting every year in late January. She recommends it for anyone who wants 
to learn more about gardening. (Contact your local extension service for more 
details.)

"Soil is built from the top down," she continues. "Nature tills the soil that 
way and that's part of the philosophy of no-till gardening. We compost in 
place, perhaps adding a little more compost here and there, and the 
microorganisms in the soil, the microherd, feed on the compost, dragging some 
if it down with them, leaving behind their castings, and eventually the soil 
changes."

The soil in the vegetable beds has changed greatly in the seven years since 
they came to garden here. As Pat pulls away a small circle of matted hay and 
other decaying cover to show off some of her ready to harvest potatoes, she 
easily shoves her hand nearly wrist deep with little effort. The soil is 
beautiful, dark loam - the kind of soil that even Martha Stewart would envy.

"Two of the principles of no-till gardening are to make sure that there is 
always something for the microherd in the soil to eat," Pat explains as the 
teaching side of her comes out. "The plants don't access the hay and cover 
crops directly. The microherd does and it's their waste that the plants eat. 
No-till gardeners always make sure that there is something for those 
organisms to eat so that the plants will always have something to eat. The 
second principle is that the organic material that composts in place, 
eventually breaks down and changes the texture of the soil for the better, 
which makes it easier for the plant roots to develop and take in 
nourishment." It definitely appears that their gardening method is working 
well for their garden.

"We started planting from the very first year, of course," Pat says. "The 
crops were okay. We started with the hay (spoiled hay was a favorite mulch of 
Ruth Stout, the method's founder) and compost and cover crops. "But it was 
somewhere about the fourth year that the garden took on a new vigor - we just 
saw this really big change in the fourth year. This is the seventh year now 
and we think the garden has made another big advance this year."

The no-till gardening method has another benefit that the couple enjoys. 
According to Pat, it's only the northern most vegetable beds, those at the 
top of the hill, that must be watered every week or so. "The lower beds don't 
seem to need the extra water," she says. "The thatch of mulch holds in the 
moisture that the plants need and we don't need to water the lower beds very 
often. It's really a big benefit of the no-till philosophy."

The additional compost that is applied to the beds in early spring comes from 
their property. Leaving the leaves that fall beneath the trees on the 
property to feed the trees from which they come, Howard takes the leaves that 
blow onto the grassy areas of lawn, along with grass clippings and chipped 
branches that have fallen or are groomed from the surrounding bushes and 
trees and he composts them behind the couple's berry bushes on the northwest 
side of their property. The compost is used solely in the vegetable garden 
and not on any of the many beautiful perennial beds that surround the 
property. "We use the no-till method with them, too," Pat states, "but they 
have to rough it on their own, compared to the vegetable beds."

If the condition of Pat's and Howard's perennial beds is based on roughing 
it, then their vegetable beds are nothing short of a five-star restaurant for 
plants and there's not a tiller, man or machine, in sight.