Newbie question on tilling

I've recently come into possession of a Honda Harmony FG100 mini-tiller. It's perfect for my 20 x 25 vegetable garden, and I've tilled the whole thing up very nicely. It makes a beautiful tilth.

My question is this: When I see other people's gardens, they have these wonderful rows with the vegetables on sort of long raised mounds, and depressed paths between the rows. How the heck do they get that? Do you have to rake after tilling? Or is there some technique that I'm not aware of? When I till, the dirt just goes everywhere.

-- Mike

Reply to
Mike
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You take the soil from the path and put it into the bed with a shovel. Manual labor. The best way to do it would be to lay out your garden and then simply do this one time and then in subsequent years you dont till the whole garden just the beds. There is no need to waste time, fuel, effort on the paths so build them once and then forget about them.

The next step would be to scrap the tiller all together and move towards no till gardening and then you will really be building some serious soil. You will never walk in the beds, mulch them heavily, and never till again.

The tiller will still be handy for other things but at that point dont take it in the garden any longer as it ruins your hard work.

Good Luck, Mark

Mike wrote:

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

You gotta fritz around with your dirt. Rake some up into mouds or rows; just walking around will compress the dirt into 'paths'. A tiller, as you've discovered, just tills. You have to supply the finishing work.

Reply to
Frogleg

Reply to
Allonia

Hi Allonia,

It do create a crusting after the rain, if the soil does not cover with mulch after till. But to mix in organic matter for a fast cure of bad soil type, I do think rototill are good for it.

My soil are black heavy clay soil. The black color not due to high organic, but because of lack of oxygen. People here use it to make brick. It's low PH and high iron, a fern are dominating here. After a rain, water can stay there for days.

For each inch of my soil, I till in one inch of rice hull, up to four foot deep. After the tilling complete, I transplant my plant on it, and cover with mulch. This work for me. Without doing in this ways, all ground cover I tried before will not survive.

Regards, Wong

Reply to
nswong

What are you taking about????

I have never had any problems with the soil getting compacted after rains of any type.If what you are saying is true than tell me why the semi-organic farmer neighbor of mine rototills his fields than plants his carrots/parsnips and beets in the same field.When he harvests the soil is not compacted even after a few mopnths of rain or irrigation. I'm a para with a large garden that has permanent isles/rows. My rows are about 20"s wide that are rototilled yearly to blend in the compost.I have no compaction occurring in my garden rows at all.

Frogleg Another method to make raised beds are get your lumber and construct your large form for the raised bed.Than dig out the same amount of soil that the sides of the raised bed are(say you used 10inch wide boards or the sides are that high)leaving a few inches for the sides to rest on.Than fill in with some old hay or other compost or even new balled hay where you removed the soil.Pack this filler and replace the removed soil.You will need to get additional soil to fill up the raised bed completly. There you go, you now have a raised bed. Or as other poster said rake up and mound the soil to have a freeform raised bed.

Jerome

Reply to
JRYezierski

What the poster was talking about is over tilling and especially with high speed sharp tined tillers. You basically create powder which is not the best thing for gardening. You can do some reading about "til pan" and no till gardening and learn about the negatives of tilling. Many will argue that tillers have no place in the garden however this isnt always true in the real world. We are small scale organic farmers and in many cases we use 3PT hitch tillers on our tractors however we are very careful not to over till. As you state, one of the best places for use of a tiller is when you are starting from very poor ground or grass. They are almost essential in the first couple years unless you can employ countless quantities of low wage or slave labor. However, if you have the ability to build your soil heavily in those first couple years the tiller should never see that soil again once its built up. Of course if you have the time, energy, and manpower, you can do away with the tiller from the start but in the real world when you are taking a piece of ground from say red clay covered with grass to a viable piece of land to grow on, a tiller is almost a must. This goes for most poor soils. However, tilling in general is not the best option if it can be avoided. It can be, but on larger scales it gets very very difficult.

Mark

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

I am waiting for some organic purist to declare all agriculture is damaging to the ecosystem, and we should become gatherers, living on such roots and shoots as 'nature' provides.

"No till" farming has benefits mostly related to reducing soil erosion. This is scarcely a problem in a home garden plot.

Reply to
Frogleg

This of course is incorrect. No-till substantially helps with weed reduction, by leaving buried seeds buried, and soil structure improvement (if coupled with organic mulch). No tiller will ever produce a soil as fine as earthworms can. Minor gains are also to be had from improved soil fertility, again thanks to the eartworms.

Reply to
simy1

I doubt no-till will ever be the norm but it is far more than an erosion control and makes complete sense if you can employ it. As I stated however this can be hard to do on a massive scale. The mere amount of organic mulch that would be needed on large commercial farms would be overwhelming in generation and application. No-till does produce far better soil and therefore growing conditions for crops however I dont think the increased yeilds of no-till practices would offset the expense (both dollars and environmental) of going no-till on mass.

That said, its foolish not to practice it on a home level as it is a better practice in every facet and the results will show this. Better yeilds, less pests, less weeds, less water. All things every gardener lusts for on a daily basis.

Mark

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

I didn't say erosion control was the *only* presumed benefit of no-till farming. Soil compaction is reduced by not using heavy machinery in the fields. Fossil fuel is saved and pollution avoided by not using heavy machinery in the fields. (I wonder if harvest is by hand.)

As I understand it, no-till means no weed-clearing, with planting or seeding accomplished by slits or holes poked through existing organing matter. I fail to understand how this reduces weeds. I also understand that crop yields are *lower* with no-till, but one feels so good about being 'green' that it doesn't matter.

I am also curious how no-till produces "better soil." It certainly can result in fields where topsoil isn't blown or carried away in rainwater runoff, but I fail to see how that improves soil quality.

Please elaborate on "better practice in every facet." Give me a few facets.

Reply to
Frogleg

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

I think what puts my back up is someone asking a simple question (about tilling in this case) and immediately having someone jump on him saying "no, no -- you can't do that -- that's awful -- do it *my* way." In all fairness, your first answering post wasn't quite in that category, but there *are* some like that in the thread. And I haven't been as kind as I might.

The reference you cite is a mildly partisan one, though with some interesting information. However, quoting one of *its* references, "In Nature, the earth is not tilled, and fertilizers (dead plants and animals, fallen leaves, etc.) begin as mulches on the soil's surface." In nature -- excuse me, Nature -- food crops are not cultivated except by accident.

I'm sure there are benefits to this method, as there are to many others. However, few regimens are suitable in all areas and all situations. Theoretical and anecdotal evidence of benefits notwithstanding, one supposes that if no-till had no downside, industrial and family farming would be revolutionized, which is clearly not the case. Farmers and gardeners are practical people. They see that some methods aid them in their goals, and others don't.

The invention of the plow may have been a disaster for the maintenance of the "soil horizon" and soil "crumb structure," but it allowed the cultivation of food for an ever-expanding population.

Reply to
Frogleg

nice link, and basically what I posted earlier. I bet frogleg comes back asking for more evidence.

Reply to
simy1

I agree completely.

I agree with this also.

But if you were willing to wait "a long time," how would mulch make it down to the soil that needs to be improved? I have a lot of worms in my compost, but the clay ground underneath is still...clay.

Maybe in Malaysia. Weeds here are pretty much regular ol' plants, grasses, and vines.

How does tilling reduce organic matter?

I don't know your methods, but around here, mulch has to be regularly re-applied to surpress weeds. And my experience is that desired plants that have to compete with weeds for water (in short supply at some times of year) do poorly, no matter how vigorously they start out.

Reply to
Frogleg

:-) I don't want more evidence. I am as convinced my way is best for me as others are that theirs is the True Path.

Reply to
Frogleg

Actually, no-till is probably much easier to do on a large scale. Many of the big farm equipment companies make machines specifically for the purpose of no-till.

I don't know where you live but you might call your state's extension service and see if they can put you in touch with someone actually using no-till processes. You might learn a lot.

While no single system will work better than all others in all cases, no-till certainly does not result in *lower* yields in most cases. Here's a piece at the University of Maryland (where much of the no-till technology was poineered, IIRC):

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another (PDF) from Iowa State University:
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you don't believe them, here's a farmer writing about no-till:
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Reply to
Harvey Schmidlapp

Hi Frogleg,

I had to go to my land now, I will give more detail if I can find it in my notes when I'm back.

A soil lack of oxygen(water log, compact..) will hinder life form(plant root, earthworn...) to go into it.

Eartthworm don't like low PH soil.

tillage

All organic matter can decopose to become carbon and nutrient. Decoposition go faster when oxygen are available. This is why compost pile are recommended to turn for airation. Tillage do bring in oxygen.

regularly

plants

I'm refer to annual crop, vegetable..., those just take a few months to mature. For perenial, mulch of course should be re-applied. There is something else you had to do to make this work, but I can assure you that it's working at my land.

Sorry! I'm in a rush, will not check my spelling or wording at all.

Regards, Wong

-- Latitude: 06.10N Longitude: 102.17E Altitude: 5m

Reply to
nswong

This is why I said no-till will probably never be a large scale commercial solution, however if you look into commercial farming they are moving as close to it as possible while still maintaining mechanized production to keep the yields up. The subsoil industry is cranking for instance.

The simple fact is what has been stated over and over, that there IS no perfect solution. I cant believe that after a few million years of evolution this cant be "unsaid" but it seems in almost every conversation it must be repeated over and over.

I feel, on a large commercial scale, there is a happy medium between the two practices with a lean towards machinery and away from mulching, but as you move towards the small scale and then down to home food plots, the happy medium can become heavily leaning towards no-till. But, especially in the US, schedules, free time, laziness, and so on mean that turning the key on the tiller will always be the choice over anything that involves manual labor.

Personally on our small farm we lean towards no till for selfish reasons, less and easier weeding, better soils, constant amendment, and so on. With tillage you normally add less to your soils and some of what you add is lost due to the practice. However like I also said, in our large plots we "take the hit" and use tilling in the interest of speed and production but it is crystal clear in practice which is best but we dont have access to large quantities of slave labor to implement no-till on the whole.

Mark

Reply to
Mark & Shauna

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