The First Till

-Mahatma Gandhi

“To forget how to dig and tend the soil, is to forget ourselves.”

Perception influences everything.

From the time I was a little girl, my father always had a garden growing in raised beds when we could. Raised bed gardening was really all I’ve ever known with the understanding of how industrial farming worked on a large scale of in ground planting later on. It wasn’t until a few years ago while we were still in California, that I learned of “No Till” gardening. I was listening to an episode of Bear Grease Podcast by Caly Newcomb that was dedicated to soil building and the introduction of how to do it with no till gardening. I was fascinated. Now, I don’t know if it was my perception of what I was hearing or if majority of information on no till gardening tends to lean heavily on the methods that the name suggests but, after trying it here KY, we failed quite miserably with Nitragin deficiencies and hard to work with dry and dehydrated dirt + the expenses in compost that we didn’t have time to build ourselves. Our failure to grow thriving plants in ground started to create a fire in me. I dove into more information which helped my “ah-ha” moment and though it may be common sense to some, I wanted to jot it down here in hopes that new to the method folks like myself, could have a resource without having to put in so many hours to find it. One of those recourses I wished I knew sooner is nothing more than the simple statement that your soil needs to built FIRST before you can do No Till, and if you do not have months to wait for the soil to build economy by having a crop or two go through a mediocre or poor performance stage (such as ours) than a FIRST TILL must be performed in order to enhance the soil enough to not have to till again.

If your soil looks like the top photo in the split picture, it’s lacking organic matter and good economy and needs to be built before you can begin with the no till method! If you are like me and have passion for working with land, the idea of having to till is a bit discouraging but as someone told me, you must have longevity in mind. Long term vs short term.

The Idea Behind First Till

Heavily compacted soils (like clay) or soil that is very low in drainage, is dry, crumbly and light in color needs to mended or be amended so that the nutrients can be added at a deeper level to then begin the process of healing. If you think of gardening like building a house, you need to start with a strong foundation in order to have a strong house. This long-term thought approach leads to strengthening and building so that over time, you no longer have to till. In other words, never till is sometimes not the answer in every situation.

What To Do

Whether you choose to use a spade, a tiller, a tractor or whatever you have, the idea is to till up 4” - 6” inches and fill with rich organic matters. Go back over to lightly till, mix or harrow everything up to help inject some good matter / create good economy, help airate and begin the foundation. Create a bit of a mound on top then cover with mulch to help protect the soil and begin planting.

LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES

I very much dislike the social norm to ridicule, condescend or pick apart other’s mistakes. Mistakes are made from someone operating on the information they had in that moment with variable situations that took place in between. Mistakes can and should be viewed as a bitter sweet gift that reveals the ways in which not to do something again and should fuel you in your quest to betterment.

Double Dug Beds

You can read what double dug beds are in my other post here. Double dug is a quite a bit of work but if you are limited on space and time, its the right move for sure. Here’s where we went wrong. In our chaotic move across the country, we were short on time and rushed into the situation forgetting that when creating layers for compost (sticks, leaves, logs ect), they need time to break down, at least a few months. Forgetting this I layered them in this way. I should have instead refilled with native soil a quarter of the way and then churned the compost inside to aerate similar to what you would do with a first till.

Take away… If you layer and compost, cover with mulch or plastics and allow to sit and decompose.

In Ground Planting

We were curious about attempting a few plants in the ground and so, we dug individual holes, filled with some organic matter and planted.

Though we did get growth, many of them suffered from nitrogen deficiency.

Take away… this could have worked out if a similar thought process as the rest of this article was applied. Dug a bit deeper and churned in the matter.

Mound Planting / Never Till

With my watermelons and pumpkins, I simply created a large mound 6” high by 12 to 14” in width made up of a combination of native soil and organic compost. Go figure that these are the plants that did the best!

PLAN

In several weeks we will be ready for fall planting and we’re very motivated to first till and attempt in ground for majority of crops, especially those that will have to be grown on a larger scale to create feed for the animals. This is also exciting because majority of the crops grown to feed our goats and chickens are also used as mulch later on.

I hope you have found this article informative and as always if there are more curiosities, comment bellow