to till or not to till ... that is the question

It started with a bunch of boxes from our local market... I removed the tape and we all hauled them up to the new garden site. This year has us moving garden beds up up to where the chicken shed is being built and where the drainage isn't a problem. Last year we used a rototiller and tilled four new beds -- three in front of the house and one up here on the hill. It was back-breaking and majorly time consuming. Afterward, we started reading about the benefits of no-till agriculture and we thought maybe maybe we could make new beds this way. No-till means that you don't use a rototiller to chop up the soil - at all - so you don't lose the beneficials in the soil and you end up with all the nitrogen and nutrients from the sod as it breaks down ... just to put it simply.


We started in late March or April when the snow melted. I found it best to overlap the pieces of cardboard as I lay them out. Not only to prevent grass growing through, but also to keep the cardboard in place as I worked.

Even with the overlapping, I needed to need to secure it with rocks. It was a windy day and I learned this the hard way.




In the end we had two beds -- side by side ... you can sort of picture what it will be like...then all that was left was to haul over some dirt. Amazingly enough the sod we pulled out of those four beds last year had composted and we found ourselves with an enormous pile of wormy beautiful dirt! Just what we needed...thanks momma earth.



Greg hauled up many wheelbarrows of the broken down sod until we had about 6 inches on top of the cardboard and I made out some beds!


I put in three sisters (corn beans & squash), carrots, golden beets, salad mix, napa cabbage, green onions, and brussel sprouts, fertilized with some fish emulsion and ... poof!

Below is the "finished" bed ... I do still have to get up there and put some more cardboard or paper down and mulch again between the rows with hay since the grass has grown through a bit, but it's pretty darn sweet and the work was less than starting a bed the traditional way.

It's doing so much better than it's sister bed, although that bed went in later. I am so curious to see this little experiment and how it grows. I will let you know :)


in joy!
Em