Re: no-till gardening

In a message dated 12/15/99 9:08:00 AM EST, johnsaia@dnai.com writes:

<< I have to
 remain a skeptic, at least as it would be applied to heavy clay soil, and 
especially
 the compacted adobe clay we have in this urban environment. >>

As much as I would like to believe in this method, I remain skeptical, as 
well.  The land around my house is adobe clay.  When I moved in, it had been 
so compacted by the developer's vehicles that one couldn't dig it with a 
shovel when it was dry.  I ruined one shovel in the effort, and keep it as a 
conversation piece.  It was literally as hard as cement.  The only way to dig 
a planting hole was to wet it, dig down a couple of inches, and wet it again, 
repeating the process as many times as it took to get a hole of the right 
depth.  I know of people who rented augurs to drill planting holes for their 
trees.  Where large clods were dug up by heavy machinery, you could see they 
broke with a smooth, glassy fracture.  When winter rains softened the soil to 
a depth of 5 or 6 inches, I tried many different amendments, always digging 
them in as deeply as I could.  I also tried mulching places where I couldn't 
dig, just to help retain what moisture there was.  My experience has been 
that, unless you "rough up" the surface before mulching, to help the mulch 
stick, when the dry weather comes, the mulch will either blow away in the 
wind or float away when you water.  As to recommending that one not garden in 
clay, that would exclude half or more of the people in this state from 
gardening, not to mention cut agricultural production in half.  This state, 
and much of the Western U.S., is pretty much made out of clay, so we need to 
learn how to work with it rather than against it.  Some of the worst clay 
soil I've ever seen, however, is in England, near Bury St. Edmunds.  The 
fields are covered with huge (1-2 ft.), gray clods interspersed with large, 
white flint nodules.  They must use monster tractors to plow that stuff!

I started experimenting with the no-till method this past summer, albeit it 
on already amended soil.  I put down several layers of newspaper around my 
"Minneola" tangelo tree and spread the wilted grass clippings over the top of 
that every couple of weeks.  It seems to have helped suppress most weeds.  
The exception is bindweed, which nothing short of nuclear annihilation will 
kill, apparently.  It positively encouraged the ants, which is not a good 
thing around citrus, as they actively farm aphis and mealy bugs, so I had 
more than the usual number of those to deal with.  The ants are probably good 
for the soil, however.  I must say I like the idea of not having to weed so 
often, so I intend to expand the experiment to include more of the garden 
this year.

Kurt Mize
Stockton, California
USDA Zone 9
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