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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Compost in Place with No-Till Gardening
  • Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:09:59 -0700


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.





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