KentPfeiffer said:The simplest thing you can say about tilling versus no-till is that tillage is a process that steadily and inevitably converts soil (a living community) into dirt (a dead growing medium). In general, plants grow infinitely better in soil than they do in dirt.
The opposite is also true. When I started my garden, my "soil" was dead in that it had no plant organic material in it. The house pad was carved out of a slope. The garden area was four feet down from the natural top of the slope. The previous owners had covered that area with weed barrier and decorative rock.
The soil consists of tightly compressed rocks with clay and silt in between them ... more rock than clay, but it has perfect drainage. It can rain hard for days and there will be no puddles.
The first year after I had the rock scraped away, weeds would not even grow in my garden. There are still areas I have not cultivated that won't grow weeds after ten year.
In the beds I have created, I've mulched twice a year. Initially, I could not dig a planting hole with a shovel. This year, I planted bulbs with a hand trowel. I have gobs of worms and I can see the fungi mentioned in the podcast when I work in any of the beds. The soil is not where I want it, but it is alive.
Smiles,
Lyn
