Thanks for this post, Daron Williams! And great blog post too, by the way!
And thanks to all the folks who added valuable insights here as well.
I'm a big fan of Charles Dowding and his no dig videos, thanks to Morag Gamble, an Australian permaculturist who stole my heart with her barefoot
gardening...
Since we live on heavy clay (is there any other kind?) in the hills southwest of Eugene, Oregon, no dig is pretty much a no brainer for
garden beds.
But we do have tunnelers so I'm excited to try Faye Streiff's suggestion of gypsum.
Faye, one question I have is how would you 'put down' the gypsum for the no dig bed? Just spread around under the
cardboard when you start? I'll cut the grass short before I sheet mulch, but not sure the best way to apply the gypsum.
We don't have PermaTil here, but we do have pumice and I wonder if that might not also be helpful. It's not so sharp as the baked crushed shale, but its volcanic rock and its other benefits mean I'm using it in our tree nursery beds already so maybe it would help?
I also like Al Marlin's idea of storing the potatoes in a box of coir, since I use that quite a bit to build our gardens.
I'd love to get good potato crops like we used to get when we lived over by the McKenzie River in that amazing loamy river soil... But hey, maybe this is my year! I'm sure going to give this a try outside the main garden and I
think I know just the spot!
Thanks everyone for all the good information in this
thread -I've actually re-read it all about three times now. Every time I find some new morsel I'd missed.