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To Lisa Burton and any others in on
this subject,
Lisa, your big
garden sounds like it was wonderful, productive, and healthy.
Does anyone
remember the fine little book by the neat old lady in the Midwest, Ruth Stout?
She just used to mulch and mulch and mulch, with old ruined hay or straw. When
weeds popped up through her deep mulch, she'd yank them out and toss them onto
the mulch as just that much more mulch. By all reports, she had terrific
gardens, friable soil, lots of earthworms, few pests, and she never
rototilled, plowed, double dug, just kept on mulching.
Always made lots
of sense to me.
Tom
t*@earthlink.net
----- Original Message -----
From:
A*@aol.com
To: G*@topica.com
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 5:04
PM
Subject: Re: [GWL]: Rototilling - What is
the alternative
Bill and Andrew,
I'm from the old-fashioned plowing faction, myself. For over 25 years
I had a huge, extremely productive vegetable and flower garden, much too large
to either use the no-till methods being discussed here, and too large to
rototill as well.
Every spring I'd have the garden plowed and
harrowed, put black plastic down immediately over the entire surface to trap
soil moisture in and prevent weeds (silo covers are great for this purpose)
and plant through holes or rows cut in the plastic. (Rainfall reached the
plants both through their own individual planting holes and through slits I
cut in the plastic wherever "ponding" occurred.) In the fall I'd get rid of
all of the plants and plant debris, take up the plastic and, every other year,
have a roughly two-to-three inch layer of wheat straw rough-plowed into the
soil, to deteriorate over the winter. My soil was always light and fluffy. I
never had to water -- even in the years of worst drought -- had almost
no problems with plant diseases, and the soil's fertility was absolutely
fantastic -- I never fertilized anything, either the garden generally or any
plant specifically -- ever. It simply wasn't necessary.
I'm sure the
method's being discussed here would work for small plots, but for large ones
the size of my former garden, it would be almost impossible for one rather
small woman to physically accomplish without major garden help, which I did
not have. Under these circumstances, practicality has to be the ruling factor.
Although it's been ten years since I moved and left that beautiful sunny
garden behind (I have shade now), the new owners of the property have
continued to keep it in production, following the same methods I used, and it
is still marvelously productive and healthy.
As to no-till farming
methods, this is commonly seen in our area in cornfields. I don't think most
people realize that, in order for no-till corn production to work, in addition
to drilling the seeds into the soil, a weed-killer also has to be spread
simultaneously to prevent weeds from overrunning the field. This is why, if
you live in an agricultural area where this is practiced, you will see fields
of browned grasses or weeds with nice neat rows of corn sprouting among the
devastation. On hillsides, the no-till method can be useful, since it prevents
erosion, but on flat or very gently rolling land where erosion is not a
problem, it does nothing but add herbicides to large amounts of acreage, and
for that reason, I oppose it in these areas.
As for double-digging --
oh my aching back!!!!! I tried it once, and never again!
Lina Burton
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