How much to till?

Hello! My in-ground garden is going into its second year. I've got very clay-heavy soil, and tilled fully the first go around. I've been doing some research and noticed a lot of people saying that you shouldn't continue tilling after the first year. So, I'm wondering, how much should I disturb (and avoid disturbing) the earth for sowing this year? Should I stick to the top, or still dig a bit deeper to give their roots room to wiggle? I'll be growing cucumbers, watermelon, carrots, lettuce, peas, beans, tomatoes, eggplant, oregano, basil, and dill, if that information would have impact!

Can you use a fork (regular digging fork, broad fork, etc.) to loosen/crack the soil?  Maybe only rake, or use a Garden Weasel or similar for creating a finer seedbed at the very surface?  This will preserve most of the soil profile and structure, relatively undisturbed.

There's always double digging, but even that will significantly disturb the soil.

I think the goal should eventually be to only minimally work the soil, relying on what you plant, chop-n-drop or otherwise compost, and possibly allow animals to do, to prepare the soil.

A mechanical tool somewhat similar to double digging is a spader attachment (vangatrice, in Italian), but these are rather rare, at least in the US, and especially in small sizes.  However, unlike double digging, spaders do not turn over the soil (at least, that's the ideal).  Last fall, I acquired a tiller attachment for my old gear drive Cub Cadet.  I hope, at some time in the ill-defined future, to convert it into a spader.

Here's a GIF which shows the basic idea of a spader mechanism.  Depending on the width of the spader, there may be anywhere from 2 to perhaps a dozen of these spades, all driven from a common crankshaft.


But, if your plot is reasonably sized and the soil is conducive, I would think using a fork (possibly, a broad fork) would suffice for your heavy tillage.

Shiloh,

It may depend where you are located. For my hot summer arid climate it helps to deep plow the soil the first time and mix it with as much compost or wood chips as possible. I have noticed that everything grows much better on disturbed soil (even without any amendments) - native vegetation is so dense that it's impossible to mow it with a scythe and very difficult with a string trimmer. I do till the soil before planting. If not I would have to deal with a jungle of 1 meter tall natives that grew during wet season. I make holes in the ground and fill it with compost and plant there and water only these spots. Melons, watermelons and other cucurbits grow beautifully in such conditions.
In the orchard I also till between the trees. One year I did not and the local fire destroyed few of my trees.

Tilling can be a quick remedy for compaction, and a quick way to incorporate amendments into the topsoil, and a quick way to weed suppression.  Just remember that it is not the only way toward any of these goals, and it can come with serious side effects, especially when done repeatedly.  For a permanent garden on any but the largest scales, it is a good idea to lay it out in semi-permanent beds and pathways, so that you don't compact the soil around the plants by walking, wheelbarrows, etc.  You can mulch the paths deeply so as to prevent compaction there too, and then periodically rake or move the mulch up onto/into the beds.  I've even done a pattern where I flip the soil from the bed over onto the adjacent path, which has been deeply mulched for a year, so as to bury and incorporate more organic matter.  Once the garden is established and you have a mulching system in progress you likely won't need to till every year for weeds....even things like bermuda grass you can sheet-mulch with cardboard frequently and keep it suppressed.  Clay soil is definitely a challenge, especially for root crops like carrots.  For a bed designated for root crops...especially carrots and sweet potatoes....I would often make "fluff"...finely divided organic matter made by mowing over dry grass or leaves until it's pulverized, and then spread this at least an inch deep on the beds and till it in just before planting.  I think that the longer term program of keeping organic matter coming onto and into the soil might eventually adjust the structure of the soil so as to make this short-term adjustment unnecessary.

The only hard and fast rule is there are no hard and fast rules.

Unpacking clay is usually not a one and done operation. Repeated tilling definitely causes issues with hard pan and loss of organic matter. But it may take several tries to get it to stay loose. Or maybe a couple different methods.

Spend as much time as you can growing cover crops.  

I have two gardens with heavy clay and use two completely different methods with them.

One garden has been no-till since about 2015. I pile straw on top to help manage weeds, and let a lot of low weeds like clover and dandelion etc. grow. I also dump buckets of good loose soil on top the worst areas of clay. It produces well in spite of the clay base.

The other garden is much smaller and I work it hard. Every fall I dig a deep trench and bury huge piles of leaves, sticks, rotting logs, ash, charcoal, kitchen garbage deep in the soil. Over about 15 years the soil has become very light and fluffy with organics. It also produces well, but really not much better then the first garden. But it is a very useful source for buckets of dirt to fill in my flower beds.

I plan to continue both garden as I have been. I think in your case it would not be a bad idea to plow or dig in a huge amount of organic stuff for one or two years. After than you can probably just apply mulch on top and be fine. But if you just put organics on top now I expect it will also work fine.

To avoid tilling, if you are using transplants, just dig a hole and stick in the plants.

for seeding, this:

https://permies.com/t/120293/garden-scale-drill-seeder#970283

As mentioned, wood chips are your friend.  Get as much as you can ... as there is no better way to add organic matter.

Hello Shiloh and welcome to Permies!

How much organic matter can you gather together?  Can you get a bunch of good straw?  Better yet, can you get any wood chips?  The reason I ask is that at the point that you are at--which mirrors the point I was at many years ago--I would not rototill any more.  In fact, my aim would be to pile organic matter on top of the soil and build the soil up from the surface instead of tilling down.

Like you, my soil is a heavy clay.  Mine is a heavy brown clay that gets sticky when wet and absolutely, impenetrably brick-hard when dry in the summer heat.  Superficially, this seems like terrible soil for growing veggies and when I first started my garden so many years ago, I broke ground with a tiller and then tilled in every bit of organic matter that I could find.  I put in peat moss, leaves, straw, wood chips, and even grass clippings.  I was astonished at how all that organic matter just seemed to disappear once tilled into the soil.  And I tilled in LOTS of leaves!  I used to rake my neighbor's leaves under his huge oak trees and I got three to four wagon loads (4'x8'x3') of shredded leaves that I piled onto two garden beds about 6'x12'.  This mounded up piles of leaves before I tilled them in, just to watch them disappear!  Later I piled them on and left them, hoping that the worms would drag them in, but still, they just disappeared.  The ground did darken a bit and maybe crumbled better ever so slightly, but make no mistake, it was still heavy clay.

My real breakthrough was when I discovered the magic of wood chips which I broke down with mushrooms--specifically Wine Caps.  This actually built the soil UP as opposed to tilling down.  Today, I make all of my own topsoil with wood chips.

So this is a long post and maybe wanders off topic a little bit, but If I were in your shoes, I would do everything in my power to find those wood chips.  Even if you don't go so far as to do the mushroom thing right away, your soil will love you for having the wood chips on the surface.  I would pile the chips on in fall and leave them over winter and the worms would crawl in.  By spring, there was no clear boundary between wood chip and soil--the two had merged together.  And the soil beneath finally looked like a nice, fertile loam.

Perhaps it is too late to do anything this season, but maybe you could do as little tilling/disturbance as possible.  Maybe consider just digging fertile holes and fertile trenches for planting and let the roots then wander about and break up the soil as they wish.  In fall, you can pile on the chips or other organic matter and let the worms go to work.  Then maybe re-evaluate in spring.

I have thrown a lot at you and take from this what you wish.  If you have any further questions or need clarification, feel free to ask.

Good luck!

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Hello Shiloh and welcome to Permies!

Like you, my soil is a heavy clay.  Mine is a heavy brown clay that gets sticky when wet and absolutely, impenetrably brick-hard when dry in the summer heat.  Superficially, this seems like terrible soil for growing veggies and when I first started my garden so many years ago, I broke ground with a tiller and then tilled in every bit of organic matter that I could find.  I put in peat moss, leaves, straw, wood chips, and even grass clippings.  I was astonished at how all that organic matter just seemed to disappear once tilled into the soil.
Eric

This is EXACTLY what I saw! No amount of added organic matter seemed to make a big difference for years and years. Hard in summer, sticky heavy clay in spring and fall. It did grow nice veggies but was a real pain to work with.

What seemed to make a difference was when I started burying wood-rotting logs and sticks and fireplace charcoal ash. A year or two of that made all the difference.

You might consider, as an intermediate step, using a chisel plow/vibratory plow/middle buster, as did P. A. Yeomans when he quite famously rehabbed his first farm in Oz.  This technique became his "Keyline" plowing method, with plows built especially for the purpose.

Planting deep-rooted annual species (daikon?) in the resulting furrow (or perennials which can be heavily grazed off or mown at intervals - maybe cereal rye, or heritage wheat) can help to loosen your soil and deposit organic material deep within the soil profile.

When Yeomans started, his soil was so poor (rotten slate) that he used some chemical fertilizer (ammonia) in the furrow with his first planting or two.  Knowing what we now know, he might have been able to use a compost extract from fungally dominant compost to achieve the same end goal.

Anyway, food for thought.