Hi garden friends,
I have a small, raised garden plot (4' x 9') at a community garden here in San Francisco, CA, USA. The native soil is almost pure sand, as this whole neighborhood was sand dunes until just after WWII, when it was "developed". I've had the same plot for at least 10 years, and have added manure and
compost, etc. In January, 2013, I had to dig the whole thing out to redo the wire lining, because the old one had rusted out and the gophers were eating everything. I decided to try a sort of no-dig, permaculture, fruit/vegetable guild at that time, as an experiment.
I put in scarlet runner beans, chayote, a dwarf blueberry, alpine strawberries as a ground cover, walking onions, garlic, a small herb plot in the center with oregano, sage, thyme, lemon balm, stevia, a prickly pear, and feverfew. I had a few annuals, like kale, which in this climate, live at least 2 years; I only just pulled them out this month.
The chayote took over, and I think it's sucking up all the moisture in the plot. I may take it out this winter. It shaded the beans to the extent that they produced very little, when they usually produce a lot. The walking onions just sort of disappeared; I don't know what happened to them. Everything else did well.
I haven't dug the soil at all in the past 2.5 years, except very minimally to plant a seed or small plant. I do add a LOT of compost whenever I can get, which really gets sucked right into the ground.
So here's what I've observed. The soil is quite compacted and root filled. I have a lot of wine bottles that I use for watering (necks stuck in the ground). It can be almost impossible to get them into the ground in a new hole. I recently dug up a few of the strawberries, as I wanted to move them to a different spot. When I moved them, I forked up the soil in that area to plant them. I noticed that after forking up the soil, the garlic, which had been sitting for months doing nothing, really shot up and grew a lot. The strawberry divides I planted also have grown well and quickly, where as the ones I transplanted to the no till area are quite small and struggling. It's now easy to stick a wine bottle neck into the ground in the tilled area.
So, is no till such a good idea? I'm beginning to wonder. Thoughts?