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[email protected]

I just read a post by Rootbeer Maker and it really got me thinking. He tilled his garden and then it snowed 7 inches. Wouldn't this be perfect for the patch?
Or wait until 2 weeks before planting and keep tilling to a minimum.
If I understand things right, as the temperature goes down in the fall, the living things in the patch go deeper into the soil to avoid frost and cold, maybe not all but some anyway.
So you gain all over. First of all you loosen up the soil which in turn warms it faster, Secondly, the 7 inches of snow will melt and be absober faster and more evenly than
if the tilling never happened. thirdly Nitrogen Nitrogen, the melting snow is full of it and it's going directly into the soil, and evenly for future use and no runoff which you would get from not tilling. And lastly: Your not hurting the needed organisms as they are still deeper in the soil.
I would think the earlier you can get into your patch, the better.
Ive still got 3 and a half feet of frost in the shaded areas, But just as soon as I can, without getting stuck, I'll be tilling!
We're 10 days ahead of last year and nothing but good things in the forcast. Yippy
I'd sure like to hear from the Minimal till growers and they're thoughts.
Eddy

3/26/2005 8:56:00 PM

Huntsburg,Ohio

I would have to say the same thing eddy. Clinton

3/26/2005 9:03:06 PM

Rhode Island

I've always done a shallow till to start! then a deep till with all the fixins and thats it for the season! Even with my regular veggies!

3/26/2005 9:28:37 PM

huntsburg,ohio

Depends if your gonna make mud balls then you'll have mudballs all summer.Plus the ground will be like a sponge and take a lot longer to dry once wet if you leave it sealed it sheds lots of water.i prefer to till a day or 2 before i plant but i have tilled earlier and had it till up beatiful i then cover the area with plastic to keep it from getting wet.Jerry

3/26/2005 10:16:16 PM

huntsburg,ohio

Depends if your gonna make mud balls then you'll have mudballs all summer.Plus the ground will be like a sponge and take a lot longer to dry once wet if you leave it sealed it sheds lots of water.i prefer to till a day or 2 before i plant but i have tilled earlier and had it till up beatiful i then cover the area with plastic to keep it from getting wet.Jerry

3/26/2005 10:16:19 PM

shelton, WA

Eddy,

You don't want to work your soil until it is nice and dry. If it clumps when you work it, you will be set back. Therefore, you should wait until the soil warms up and dries up. This is my understanding anyway.

Mike Golat

3/26/2005 10:18:09 PM

[email protected]

Mud balls aren't a problem most of the time. Generally we have fairly dry soil in the spring. We can get 24 inches of snow as an average for the whole winter, and it's got very little moisture in it, plus the frost dries out our soil also. Our average rainfall is 13 inches and the bulk of that is in June with an average of 5.5 inches. So other than June, we're pretty much a semi arrid dessert.
I can till pretty much the day the frost is gone, as our ground doesn't absorb anything all winter. If we get a thaw in the winter, which we had in feb., all the melting snow runs off because the ground is frozen. So we are left with the moisture from the fall, and that isn't very much.
Now after all that, we have many farmers out here that do zero till, and it works just fine, but they use a ton of fertilizers. I just have a hard time grasping this minimal till stuff.
Eddy

3/26/2005 10:42:41 PM

Chico, Ca

How is snow full of nitrogen? Isn't it just water, H2o; dihydrogen monoxide?

3/26/2005 11:32:17 PM

Omaha, NE (N41-15-42 )

I bet yellow snow has some nitrogen! Actually, here's an article I found talking about how snow adds nitrogen:

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2004/112-10/focus.html

3/27/2005 12:19:19 AM

[email protected]

I bet it does Matt lol
Snow, Rain, and hail all bring nitrogen to the ground, it's not in the water, snow etc so much as it is picked up as the flakes, water droplets fall to the ground. Rainfall, snow etc can add up to 12 pounds of nitrogen to the soil over the course of a season, and depending on the amount of precipitation you get during a year.
I was fortunate to do a bunch of work at a plant that made nitrogen, so we got a free tour and explantion on how it's made.
Check out http://ggweather.com/archive/weacornermar09.htm
Eddy

3/27/2005 2:04:14 AM

Cornwall UK.(50N 5W)300ft.

Traditionally it is the job of freezing and thawing to break down ploughed soil over the winter/early spring leaving a nice tilth which requires less mechanical aid to produce a finished seed bed,If you work down clay soil to far in advance of planting it will 'set' many times I have worked down soil ready for planting only to have rain come along and cause setting to happen you then have to start over again when the weather improves.

3/27/2005 3:06:41 AM

Picton,ON ([email protected])

In commercial agriculture, the reason for minimum or "no-till" is for two reasons. One to cut costs. Tilling soils is very expensive! The second reason is to conserve organic matter. Every time you till you break up aggregates and expose the soil to more erosion. Ploughing was invented for several reasons. 1) To incorporate plant residues and manure. 2) To aid in drying out of soils earlier in the spring and 3) to loosen tight clay soils.
If you have heavy clay to clay-loam soils, they are usually slower to warm up in the spring and have poorer drainage. They should be ploughed in the fall if possible and worked down in the spring when they are dry. The tiller is on of the worst implements on soil structure and organic matter. Be very careful of roto-tilling damp clay soils, you can do a lot of damage that can take several years to repair. Although you may be itchy to get out and stir your dirt, be patient! On the other had, If you have sandy soils, you will do very little damage to the soil structure with early tillage, however you are still exposing the soil to erosion and organic matter loss. You may also dry these soils out too much increasing the need for supplemental irrigation. The use of fertilizer, is not more or less important with either tillage system. Raising the organic matter will reduce the need of adding commercial nitrogen supplementation. Usually we say the are 10 lbs / acre available Nitrogen for each % OM. i.e. a 10% OM soil has 100 lbs available Nitrogen. Once you reach 10% OM you will likely not see much benefit from additional N applications, other than some early season water soluables.

3/27/2005 9:34:08 AM

Lloydminster/AB

Eddy, most of my patches get tilled only once, right after the weighoff and I think that is why my worm count is getting higher every year. My soil stays quite soft all year. could be from all the peat I have put on. Btw have not been able to see the soil since the second week of October and have two and a half feet of dense snow left ,sloughs that have had no water in them since the 70's are full! Two to three weeks behind at least! Don

3/27/2005 11:34:13 AM

Anamosa, IA [email protected]

Tilling also kills your worms and destroys the macropores in the soil. That will mess up the soil's internal drainage, reduce water and nutrient infiltration and increase runoff.

My soil is a creek bottom silt loam that tends to be a little wet in the spring but holds moisture well in the late season. For years I have grown my tomatoes and other vegetables on raised ridges. I built them with just a fork and smoothed tle clods with a rake. The ridges warm up quicker in the spring, and because you aren't wakling on them you have less compaction problems. I started growing my pumpkins in a similar manner. Fall 2003 I built some raised mounds and planted directly on them. I started with a hole and added manure, compost and 10-10-10 as I bult them up. Some areas were just tilled, fertilized and planted. The raised mounds out-produced the others by far. They even helped keep my plants just above a flash flood that made the rest of the soil a soggy bess for 3 weeks. Last fall I made some more mounds. This spring I will just add to some of the smaller mounds, Scrape the weeds off the mounds with a hoe. The rest will get a burndown shot of glyphosate, some Preen and corn gluten for pre-emergence control, and mulch with straw and grass clippings. The rest of the weed comtrol will be hand pulling or additional glyphosate treatments as needed. By staying off the soil as much as possible and letting the worms grow, I hope to see improvements in the soil and pumpkin size.

I have seen demonstrations and actual core samples from Iowa farms showing the difference between conventional tillage and notill side to side on the same soil type. The difference in soil structure, infiltration and yields was impressive in favor of notill. It takes quite a few years to see the difference, but I am convinced this is the way to go, at least for my soil. I have grown notill sweetcorn and notill soybean deer food plots for years and they do just fine.

3/27/2005 11:49:31 AM

Montoursville, PA

If no till is being considered please refer back to the article and consider all parts of the process. Pumpkins grow nicely for the vine management tecknique most growers use. That is to bury the vine. No till advocates strongly advise a healthy mulch or cover crop on the soil at all times. Bare soil should never see the sun or the moon. :)

Between the mulch and the soil surface a mini composting action will take place. The zone where actual composting is taking place would be perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. The point is the composting or conversion zone is always in action even during freezing weather. In no till the cover crop growth would be cut down and become the first portion of the mulch for the year. Any good mulch material would be added as needed throughout the summer.

This leads to the consideration of tea. Five gallons of proven quality aerobic tea has the equivelant of fourty cupic feet of quality compost. The equivelant means quanity of bacteria, fungi and living critters from amoeba to nematodes. This is not related to anaerobic tea at all. Aerobic teas are worked into a condition above or beyond the value of anerobic teas. Anerobic teas from manures are just fine but they have to go through the conversion in the patch before the additions are going to be used. The aerobic teas deliver a whole army of living biological players ready to make the conversions from existing materials in the patch.

It of course does no good to input anaerobic elements to the patch if the biological community is not up and running, in good health, so that conversions may begin.

It of course does no good to input a biological package as represented, by aerobic tea, if the soil is to cold or contains elements that would kill the new biological players.

3/27/2005 12:09:27 PM

Ohio

Here is a neat article about Permanent Beds and No-Till.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/2003_June_July/Build_Fertile_Soil

3/27/2005 2:50:39 PM