GRO4US

Last year I made a token attempt at gardening around this time of the year, or a little later. Yes, I know that isn’t the time to make a garden but we were starting even smaller than this year. That year’s work wasn’t much success at all. But this year we’ve got a bed with potential problems, which I decided to use as extra space.

It didn’t work.

Cucumbers and zucchini are large plants that take 3′ x 3′ worth of space each—neither of which I like. Because I wasn’t sure how this bed’s soil conditions were, it caused severe blossom-end rot that prevented any harvest of big beef tomatoes, I figured it could serve as a backup bed. So, I planted two rows of carrots, none of which sprouted, and two zucchini plants; I started some cucumbers in planters and then moved them out to the same bed.

The result was a dismal failure of slow death from pH imbalance. The plants paled, wouldn’t grow, and produced nary a blossom.

Or so I thought.

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Tilling is a traditional part of both gardening and farming, but how helpful is it? After reading my books on gardening, especially Weedless Gardening, I’ve found a number of tidbits that contradict this habit.

To till, or not to till—that is the question.

1. Sowing Weeds

Did you know that there are 140 weed seeds, if not more, in a pound of dirt? Some even call this amount a “conservative estimate.” Farmers often till their fields at night to combat germination of these seeds, but grasses and large-seeded broadleaf seeds sprout well at any time of day. It only takes a breath of air to awaken these seeds! If you till at night be sure that you don’t have any light at all: small-seeded annual plants can germinate in moonlight or even the light from a flashlight.

But what about existing weeds, you ask? The trouble with existing weeds is that they’ve got roots, and all plant energy is stored in the roots—that is why you can hack a bush or tree to pieces and watch it regrow within months. These roots are chopped up when you till; being chopped sends what is left of a plant into a sprouting tizzy. This is why you cannot get rid of dandy-lions without getting that cursed taproot. I admit that you may kill a lot of weeds this way and add to your organic matter a little, but it is still counter intuitive.

But this is hardly the worst.

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