Discover the benefits of the no-till gardening method and learn how to start your own no-till garden. Once you implement these techniques, there is no going back to conventional ways.
My No-Till Gardening Background
My no-till gardening journey began while living in a condo.
I was inspired by Charles Dowding's videos (more on him later) and started implementing the techniques immediately in my new community garden plot.
Fast forward to today, and I only practice no-till gardening on our homestead.
There is simply nothing better.
I am excited to guide you through the process of starting your own no-till garden.
Follow my step-by-step instructions and start your journey, but be warned: you may become obsessed.
What Is No-Till Gardening?
No-till is also called no-dig gardening. They mean the same thing.
No-till gardening is a game-changer and I'm here to break it down for you.
Imagine a flourishing garden that requires minimal effort on your part.
No-till gardening is a highly effective approach that not only preserves the soil food web and its structure but also helps lock in carbon and contribute to a healthier ecosystem - all while growing an abundance of more resilient plants and potentially even more nutritious food.
The soil in your garden is not some dead thing you need to manipulate through fertilizers and chemicals. It is a living, breathing, miraculous thing.
Traditional gardening often involves a lot of digging and churning up the soil. This is incredibly damaging and destructive.
No-till flips the script by leaving the soil structure intact. When you avoid disturbing the soil, you're letting the ecosystem beneath the surface flourish.
Earthworms, fungi, and beneficial bacteria do their thing, creating a healthy and resilient environment for your plants.
Not only does no-till farming prevent soil erosion and water runoff through the specific techniques it utilizes, but the layer of organic matter on the surface, like compost and other mulches, also acts as a natural shield, retaining moisture and conserving water.
By not digging up the soil, you're not churning up dormant seeds and giving weeds the opportunity to take root and grow. It's a win-win: less weeding for you, and fewer weeds for your plants to compete with.
As the years go on with your no-dig garden, the weeding becomes less and less of an issue.
By not pulling up your plants by the roots when harvesting or at the end of the gardening season (except for root vegetables, obviously) you're allowing the root structures to rot in the ground instead.
As old plant roots break down naturally, they infuse the soil with organic matter, providing a feast for beneficial microorganisms that unlock essential nutrients for plants.
This process enhances soil structure, promotes better water retention, and fosters a symbiotic relationship between microorganisms and plant roots.
When you disturb the soil, it releases carbon into the air.
But no-till keeps that carbon locked down where it can fulfill its purpose — making plants grow.
It's like putting a lid on a pot to keep all the goodness inside. So, by going no-till, you're reducing your carbon footprint while nurturing your garden.
It's all about working smarter, not harder.
Your garden becomes a thriving ecosystem, and you get to reap the rewards while saving time and energy.
And no-dig gardening scales up and down. It adapts.
You can garden this way in your tiny backyard, large homestead, micro homestead, balcony containers and pots, and on a large, industrial agricultural farming scale.
Really.
It's being done everywhere. And the results are often breathtaking.
This is the shortest introduction I could muster for a topic that spans everything from soil microbiology to carbon sequestration to the science of nutrient uptake in plants.
And I will get to more of that below.
What I want you to take away from this is that the no-till gardening method makes growing food easier and better with less work.
So why do anything else?
How To Start A No-Till Garden (Step-By-Step)
All of the considerations and steps needed to start your own no-till garden.
Whether you're starting from scratch on virgin lawn or transforming a conventional garden into no-till, there are some considerations and best practices you need to keep in mind.
And there are debates and differing opinions as regarding best practices — and that's okay. There are actually numerous ways to approach no-till.
My aim is to give you a great framework to start with while avoiding the noise and confusion that comes with starting something new.
As you apply these methods and techniques, you will gain your own opinions as you see your garden adapt, grow, and flourish.
There is no rigid my-way-or-else!
Start Composting TODAY
Maybe you won't build and design your no-till garden until next year.
But that doesn't mean you can't prepare by starting to compost TODAY.
Start that compost pile.
Mixed sources of compost are best, so everything from your kitchen scraps to animal bedding and manure is pure gold.
We use the deep litter system in our chicken coops (as well as for our ducks and geese) as a key source of nutritious compost. Our Icelandic sheep are another source.
But if you don't have animals, start researching: I bet numerous places nearby, including your city, are giving away compost.
Check local horse barns, mushroom farms, and other places. Make leaf mold from your neighbor's bagged leaves. Get onto your local gardening groups and ask them.
Related Articles
- All About The Deep Litter Method For Chicken Coop Health
- How To Shred Leaves For Mulch, Compost or Leaf Mold {7 Methods}
The Healthiest Soil is Built The Season Before
Is the gardening season over where you are? That's perfect!
You can start your no-till gardening beds the season before you plan to actually plant and you will have much healthier soil once the season starts up again.
See my articles on improving soil over winter and the best time to add compost to garden beds.
Do you have poor, compacted, clay soils? Literally not a problem — plant tillage radish the fall before and fix it like it's magic.
Although it seems counterintuitive (and we all believe a lot of gardening myths), empty soil is starving and benefits from being planted or mulched continuously.
You can use only compost as mulch or you can use a mix of different organic materials.
We apply compost each fall (an inch) but keep the beds mulched continuously throughout the season with anything organic.
Related Articles
- How To Improve Garden Soil Over The Winter {According To Experts}
- When To Add Compost To Garden Beds {Fall or Spring?}
- Benefits Of Mulch In Your Garden {Ultimate Guide To Mulching}
- Using Compost as Mulch for a Healthy & Thriving Garden
- Tillage Radish: The Best Cover Crop For Soil Health
Starting No-Till In Existing Garden Beds (Raised Beds or In-Ground)
- Stop all tilling and digging.
- Stop any chemical spraying for weeds.
- Stop pulling plants out by their roots and instead cut them off at soil level, leaving the roots to rot.
- Stop tilling compost into your soil. Add it on top as a layer over the entire growing area instead. This also acts as a mulch layer.
- Start mulching your garden beds. Do not leave any soil bare, but rather keep it mulched and planted as much as possible. Bare soil gets compacted, so don't leave the soil bare.
- When one vegetable goes out, put in something else immediately.
- If the gardening season is over, plant a cover crop and let it die over winter. Conversely, mulch the beds and keep them that way.
- Discard any weed seed heads by composting them or discarding them in another way.
- Then, either compost the rest of the weeds separately or use a chop-and-drop method, where you literally chop and then drop weeds directly on top of the existing soil as mulch.
- If your soil is bad, you have several options: plant tillage radish. Do not pull the radish, although you can chop-and-drop the greens above. You can also use other forms of daikon radish or other cover crops, but I highly recommend tillage radish. And if you have compacted and clay soils, I would say it's essential.
- Add a thick layer of finished compost — 6 inches is ideal — and do not till or dig the compost into the soil underneath.
- Use my handy compost calculator to figure out how much you need for your growing area.
- If you can't add that much compost, I highly recommend tillage radish and adding as much compost as possible on top of the soil.
- Add other layers of organic material: grass clippings, hay, straw, and chopped weeds are all fantastic choices. Doing this the season before to fix your poor soil will show great results the following spring.
- If you're not starting the year before but rather the spring you plan to plant your vegetables and crops — don't plant tillage radish as it will not die, and digging it out defeats the purpose. Just add as much compost as possible and continue mulching with as much organic materials as possible. Monitor your plants and consider fertilizing as necessary or adding other beneficial inputs to improve the soil continuously.
- Go in with the understanding that your first-year no-till garden may require additional fertilizing and inputs, weeding, and work in general. It gets better each and every year.
- Use my mulch calculator to calculate your mulch volumes too.
Now, what about sheet mulching?
Keep reading.
My metal raised beds from Vegega. We use a combination of raised beds and in-ground. See my article on the benefits of raised bed gardening.
New Garden Area
Starting a new no-till garden on virgin land is exciting. We started a new raised bed annual garden this past spring (finally!), and it allowed us to do things right from the start.
Sheet Mulching
Sheet mulching with several layers of cardboard (or newspaper, whole leaves, or a combo) and then a thick layer of wood chips is a phenomenal way to suppress weeds while creating clean and neat garden paths.
You can see above in the photo of the raised beds sitting on cardboard what it looks like before we added the wood chips and below what it looks like after they were added and before the hardware cloth was trimmed and covered.
You will still get stubborn weeds poking through, but it is SO minimal (when done correctly) that it's barely worth mentioning. It's been 6 months since we did this, and I've had only a handful of weeds to contend with.
(If you're following me on Instagram you can catch all the garden updates by the way.)
I explain, step-by-step, exactly how we did this over a few articles worth reading: namely, how to lay mulch over grass and what to put at the bottom of a raised garden bed.
- Cut down the grass and weeds using the lowest setting on your mower and sheet mulch as described in the article above.
- Let it Settle: This organic layer needs time to break down and meld with the existing soil underneath. Water it lightly to help the decomposition process and settle everything.
- Plant with Precision: When you're ready to plant, create small pockets in the mulch layer to place your plants. Push mulch aside when planting seedlings by creating trenches.
- Mulch as You Go: As the season progresses, add layers of organic materials like compost, grass clippings, hay, etc. This replenishes nutrients, retains moisture, and builds that fantastic soil structure.
- Resist the Urge to Dig: The key to maintaining a no-till bed is to avoid digging or tilling. Just let the soil structure and ecosystem develop naturally over time.
- Observe and Adapt: Your garden beds will evolve over time. Observe how they respond, and adjust your practices accordingly. You'll likely find that pests decrease and plant health improves.
- Your first year may require additional fertilizing, weeding, and pest control — this is normal.
- As the first gardening season closes, use tactics to improve soil, like cover crops, and keep the soil mulched and/or planted continuously.
Remember, this transition might take a bit of patience, but it's well worth it.
There is much nuance and so much more I could explain here but I'm trying to stay to the point.
If any of the above instructions seems confusing or contradictory, please ask questions in the comment below and I will clarify and update the content as needed.
Different No-Till or No-Dig Garden Methods
- Back To Eden | Paul Gautschi coined "back to Eden" to describe his innovative gardening method involving a compost layer topped with a 6-inch layer of wood chips. This may be especially worth further investigation if you're in an area with little rainfall. My article on Back to Eden gardening explains it in detail.
- Ruth Stout Method | I have an article on mulching with hay, an old technique popularized by Ruth Stout in the 1930s. She went on to write books and inspire many gardeners with her no-till method. I have links to her books in that article.
- One-Straw Method | A revolutionary and visionary Japanese rice farmer and scientist, Masanobu Fukuoka, changed how people looked at large-scale "industrial" farming. His experiments saw rice yields that equaled even the commercial farms in quality and quantity. The book The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming is a must-read, in my opinion.
- Charles Dowdings' No-Dig | The man that started my obsession. His YouTube channel is well worth binge-watching, and his books No Dig: Nurture Your Soil to Grow Better Veg with Less Effort and others are must-reads. You will learn so much information contradicting almost everything you may have been led to believe about gardening. Lean into this feeling of having your mind blown.
- Permaculture | no-till methods and permaculture are absolutely aligned. They are fast friends. While we may associate no-till more with annual gardens, we also aim to disturb soil as little as possible in our permaculture food forests and projects.
The above is not an exhaustive list. It's just to get you started on this path.
There is so much that can be said.
Planting In Compost As Soil
You may be wondering by now how you're expected to grow in compost as if it were soil?
After all, researching this topic will bring up numerous so-called experts warning against it on the first page of Google — never mind the "absurd" notion that you could use wood chips as a mulch in your vegetable garden.
Well, we have decades of experience from the people doing it: planting in compost is FANTASTIC and it works. As long as it's finished compost, free from contamination, and ideally, from multiple sources — compost may be the best choice to grow your vegetable garden.
If you're wondering, our own raised beds are only 60% as it is all we could afford and produce. But those beds will be topped up with compost exclusively as the years go on.
If You Don't Have Compost
You may not have loads of compost yet.
Or you may fall short.
That's okay. The point is to keep building and nurturing the soil through planting cover crops and other methods.
This process is slow. You will reap benefits right away, but the real rewards come after the first season.
No-Till: Stewards Of The Earth
I'm not interested in doomerism or collapse fantasies. I think we need to continue and keep striving for better ways.
Moving from the condo to our homestead changed me in the most drastic ways.
Ways I could never have anticipated. My attachment to our small 3-acre property has deepened in a way that feels personal.
I feel obliged to the soil, the native plants, and pollinators in a way I had never had to think about before. The seemingly simple and fun topic of homesteading, gardening, and growing food became something much more significant than my family and I.
When we embrace no-till gardening, we're not just tending to our vegetables or orchards but also being kind to the planet.
You see, the magic happens beneath the surface – in the soil. By not disturbing the soil through tilling, we're allowing it to become a cozy haven for all sorts of beneficial microorganisms.
These little helpers do wonders, including keeping carbon sequestered.
When we till the soil, it's like we're giving carbon a ticket to escape into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. And you guessed it – that's not great for our planet. But with no-till, it's like we're putting a lid on that carbon, ensuring it stays in the soil where it belongs.
By keeping the soil covered, we're protecting it further.
By letting the soil be, we're essentially creating a carbon bank. Imagine you're saving up for something big, like a grand adventure.
The soil is saving up too, storing carbon. This might seem small, but when multiplied across gardens and farms, it can significantly produce food more sustainably.
No-till gardening isn't solely about cultivating plants and becoming more self-sufficient; it's about assuming a role as stewards of the environment. And this is something I really believe in. I think we all play our small part and that it's an important one.
Final Thoughts
No-till gardening emerges as a beacon of mindful cultivation in a world where every small choice can significantly impact.
It's more than just a technique; it's a philosophy that celebrates the harmony between human intention and nature's wisdom. By embracing no-till, we foster thriving ecosystems beneath the surface, fortify our plants with nutrient-rich soil, and contribute to a healthier planet by sequestering carbon.
As we embark on this journey of sustainable gardening, we discover that the rewards go far beyond bountiful harvests—they extend to the very heart of our shared environment. So, let's let the soil rest, let the roots nourish, and let our gardens grow in harmony with the world around us.
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