Quote:
Originally Posted by Redbaron
Once you have double dug and amended a soil to give it a jump start, as a general rule it is best to use no till and/or minimal till from then on, just top dressing amendments and letting the soil biology, mostly worms, do the tilling for you. Otherwise you could end up in a long term 2 steps forward, 1 1/2 steps backward yearly routine. To do this though you will need to use cover crops and mulches and trust to Mother Nature to build your soil for you. Some people have a hard time trusting natural process to fix their soils. They prefer a hands on approach. It's a whole lot more work, but you can do it and get good results double digging every year too.
Personally it is too much work for me, so I take the Lazy Man's approach and let the worms do the work. But either way can work for sure.  |
Believe me, I wasn't planning on doing this every year (unless it's to build more beds). I'm just trying to figure out what I should do for the first year. I wanted to start building the bed in the fall but didn't get much further than the planning stage so now I'm working on catching up.