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Old September 29, 2012   #11
Redbaron
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Oklahoma
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Worth1 View Post
Tilling comes from plowing to bring nutrients to the top in vergin soil like in the great plains.

The only reason you would want to till is to get rid of weeds and such and to break up hard soil.
Once the garden is in place and the weeds gone I see no reason to till.
Heavy mulch for weeds and no tilling is the best way to go.

Worth
Obviously that is the (un)conventional wisdom. However I will attempt next year to prove even that is false. Next year I will attempt to do a scalable version prototype that never tills even going over sod. I'll attempt to do it in a way that is commercially viable in the worst possible conditions without ever tillng or plowing the land. Instead of virgin plains I will use my lawn. A section of my lawn that sucks. Poor drainage, un-fertile, floods in spring, cracks in summer, has a black walnut at one corner, weed infested, hard pan clay, negligible worms, plenty of pest swarms, drought conditions for the last few years, you name it I got it. AND it will be my first time trying this system. I will attempt to pull off what people say is impossible and I will try to do it organically without ever plowing or tilling. On top of everything I will try to do it at a profit and prove a commercial grower could use the same method for 100+ acres at a profit.

The only reason I am telling you guys this is because after reading this forum thoroughly I realised pretty much anyone here is good people willing to show off both their successes and failures. So even if my experiment is a complete flop, I still may turn it into a model of what NOT to do to raise tomatoes. And maybe even find one guy crazy as me to do it in a bit better conditions in another part of the country better suited to tomatoes. (or any other crop)

If I can get my whole system to work it would actually revolutionise the way agriculture is done here in USA. But that is later. First year I have to prove this part can work. Next I'll need to find a real farm to prove other parts of the system can work. But lets see if this works first.
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Scott

AKA The Redbaron

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labour; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system."
Bill Mollison
co-founder of permaculture
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