to till or not to till, that's the question. one way to look at is check the yields that result from dig vs no dig. Charles dowding did exactly that. for seven years he had two plots, one where he dug and one where he didn't. in each one he added the same amount of compost and grew teh same crops on both sides.
Overall, the nodig plot harvest 10% more. but here's where it gets interesting. those yields were not uniformly spread across the vegetable types. if you dig into the data, you'll see, some did quite worse with dig and some did quite better. guess which ones did better on dig? Potatoes, Rutabagas, carrots and parsnips and cabbage all did better in Dig! roughly to the tune of about Potatoes 21%, carrots 21%, Rutabaga 14%, Cabbage, 11%, broad beans 10% better. it's all published in his books. Everything else did better with no dig. Shallots especially did 33% better with no-dig, ales 21% better, onions 22% better with no dig.
The no dig method has taken on a life of its own, almost a religion. It's probably a mistake for most people though. "One dig" is almost always going to be superior, given soil that has never been used for gardening before. Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment.
I thought that was always the case. Dig as required to get your soil to the correct type for what you want to grow, then let it be and don't dig.
Digging to turn the soil seems like an old adage that has been passed down through generations, but modern scientific studies are now showing it provides very little to no benefit for yields.
A friend of mine retired from the military and moved to my neck of the woods in the Ozarks. Having lived in Eastern North Carolina for most of his 20 years in, he had gotten used to sandy soil with nary a rock. Prior to that, he was in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and I don't think he dug many holes there.
After closing on their new house he asked me for a shovel, for which to install a mailbox. Of course I'd help my friend out. "Sure, buddy!" I said. "Here's a shovel, post-hole digger, pickax and a rock-bar. That should get the job done." After I explained to him that yes, you need a 20 pound pointy chunk of steel to dig any sizable hole around here, he still didn't quite believe me. However, once he got the mailbox planted, he adjusted his beliefs accordingly.
On the rare occasion that I have to dig a hole somewhere with actual dirt, I always find myself amazed at how easy it is. Those times help me understand scenes in TV or movies that include someone digging a hole. Those scenes don't ever depict someone deciding to move whatever it is they're putting in the ground because they hit a massive stone at 8 inches into a 24 inch hole, and there ain't any getting through it. The scenes don't depict the Herculean effort required to just plant a tree. Those shows don't show the absolutely back-breaking labor it takes to be a landscaper around here. And before I had the chance to do the same kind of work in actual soil, those scenes just didn't make sense.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that complaints of rocks where you expect soil invite other Ozarkians. That was something that shocked me about the Midwest in comparison; even with a concerted effort, I couldn't find enough of a rock to fill a slingshot.
Our house sits on a small basalt volcanic plug and the solid dark rock lurks not very far under our garden - 100m north of us and its sandstone, 100m south and it is limestone.
Digging a hole of any depth would probably require explosives!
When it's wet, but not saturated - like 1-2 days after a rain - you can decompact the soil with a strong metal broadfork and leave the soil in large block aggregates. This keeps the soil structure and maintains some fungal web connections. Add nutrients, wood chips, stick and sand below aggregates and in cracks. Cover with compost and plant clover to cover.
Clover fixes nitrogen and roots help stabilize the voids in the soil. They sell seed mixes called "ground cover mix" that includes other plants and will help keep the soil from recompacting when it rains and keeps weeds at bay.
"If you mix sand into clay, the clay particles will fill in all the open spaces between the sand particles and often the clay will act as a ‘glue’ sticking all particles together, ultimately resulting in a more dense soil."
Oh yeah, just top up the compost every year. Where are you getting that compost from? Wood chips you say? You'd have to denude ten acres of forest to make enough compost to Dowding one acre of field.
He's a soil vampire, sucking in fertility from somewhere else to feed his own garden.
You have a strongly held opinion but you don't know anything about the subject.
Compost material can be easily acquired for free. Grass clippings. Wood chips from tree surgeons. They will literally drop it off on your site for free. They have truckloads to get rid of every day. Restaurants. Coffee shops if you are doing it on a smaller scale.
In my parents' farm the compost comes from cleaning up the forest around it (trim branches, vegetation, dying trees, etc) mixed with the chicken and goat manure plus whatever else gets mixed in there (food leftovers, ashes, coffee grounds, etc). Of course it's at a small-ish scale (less than 1 hectare) but my parents definitely don't denude 4 hectares to do so.
Tree surgeons/arborists are always trying to get rid of chips
An acre? Charles Dowding is a market Gardner, not a farmer, but he has done it on a scale of a few acres.
His compost is a mixture of
1) homemade. When you are trying to expand a plot growing stuff to compost can help. Grass clippings, waste from the garden etc. This is a minor source of very good compost.
2) woodchip, see above
3) green waste. This is other people's garden waste, normally composted poorly by a local authority. You want it some time before you use it so it can compost more fully
4) farmyard/ horse manure
5) spent mushroom compost. Actually I never saw him use this, but it is very common.
One farmer I saw said the secret of no till is 'other peoples carbon', you are correct. But some people have carbon to get rid of.
The dirt in my part of Virginia is almost suitable for pottery straight out of the ground. Just need to filter out the feldspar, quartz, and gold first.
> Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment.
If you start with Charles Dowdings 6 inches of compost on top, that is not necessarily true. The soil comes to life as worms go mad pulling that compost down into the soil.
It actually works rather well. Year 1 can be very good. Year 2 even better.
The real disappointment in Year 1 is the amount of weeds that find 6 inches of compost no barrier at all! With digging you can get a lot of perennial weed roots out, and hoe off the annuals. With no dig you have to pull them.
I'm not a idealogue, so actually suggest glyphosate before compost...but people don't normally like that suggestion.
The biggest difference in no-till is water infiltration and retention. The next is ability to work land earlier with equipment that would sink in tilled soil when wet. Another is less equipment passes, for fuel use as well as owning the equipment needed to do those passes.
On the con side, no-till trades diesel for spray costs.
A general rule of thumb is when you switch corn from to to notill for the first seven years yields will be worse, but in the eighth year and after they are better.
I have a really hard time believing someone can keep all other variables constant for 8 years to definitively say that yields will be better because of switching to no-till, rather than any other multitude of factors.
Universities study this. They study the common corn/soybean rotation. I have no idea how they control variables - likely by having many farmers report their results and using stastics
Sure they could develop it in a weekend, so could anyone else. but once a product has the initial userbase, that's not something a competitor can just copy. user acquision is the limiting factor to success, not writing code.
that's not the job of a company. companies are suposed to be profit centered, their purpose is to make money.
what you're talking about is the role of government. govt should be supporting policies like you are suggesting, by for example allowing for universal basic income or uniersal basic land or services, etc.
Why? This is asserted throughout this HN thread as an obvious truism, but it seems precipiced on some dramatic right wing free market concept of how the world works that I can't tell is coming from the libertarians of hacker news, or is some kind of USA concept.
Why should society let the concept of a company exist if it is actively detrimental to society at large, for the gain of a very few?
The biggest limiting factor is user acquisition. Just because you can build a competitor in a weekend doesn't mean you can easily acquire a user base. it's dam hard to get users even if your product is twice as good and your giving it away for free!
there are still tribes in the amazon that have very little money, like the hazda. they may not call it retirement but they don't need to go to the office everyday.
Serious question, what makes us so addicted and dependent to money that we can't imagine any way of life without a lot of it?
Here is the crazy thing, I went carnivore after I retired because one thread that worried me about shitty insurance is the risk. Now, I'm pretty sure if I only eat meat and work-out, then I might not even need insurance. Like, my labs are phenomenal.
By taking away the fear and the addiction, I've got a level of calm and control of my life that makes me realize the "modern world" is deeply sick.
Cancer happens all the time and your immune system deals with it. Look into the recent evidence of how keto deals with cancer. I'm telling you, I live in a world without fear and it is awesome.
I'm well aware of keto and cancer. I spent 5 years in ketosis, I trained semi professionally as an athlete (4 hours a day at a professional MMA gym), I spent years helping people get into keto and lose tons of weight and improve their health.
Keto helps with some cancers that are powered by glucose.
It does nothing to help with any other forms of cancer, of which there are plenty.
i think you can get a pretty decent prius from 5k to 10k and a fantastic nearly brand new tesla model 3 for 17K. That's what i did. it was 8 years old, practically brand new, FSD prepaid included! it drives me to work and i only paid 17K for it!
you don't need to eat ramen. there are many cost effective options out there: oatmeal, beans, rice, you could grow your own fruits and vegetables, etc.
and as for the medical disaster: heart attack and stroke are actually preventable with a plant based diet (keep your LDL under 80 and you'll vastly decrease your chance of a heart attack). i know a lot of people will hate on that, but those are the facts and any evidence based nutritionist can tell you this.
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