Saturday, August 14, 2021

My No-Till Mulch Gardening

I grew up with a traditional garden - plowing in the fall, tilling in the spring, and tilling/hoeing between the rows during the summer. In Pennsylvania, bare soil means weeds. I spent countless childhood hours fighting weeds in the garden. The work didn't hurt me, but the battle with weeds wasn't enjoyable and the weeds always won. 

When I married, Ed introduced me to mulching. We collected grass clippings from our yard and used them to mulch the garden. Sometimes we also layered cardboard and newspaper. I was amazed at the difference. Covered soil results in far fewer weeds. But it was always a fight every spring to get enough grass clippings to cover the freshly-tilled soil before the weeds grew. We usually loss. 

Over the years I have read about mulch gardening - a method of keeping your garden covered in mulch and not tilling the ground so weed seeds are not exposed. There was an older woman (I can't remember her name) who wrote about mulch gardening in Organic Gardening magazine decades ago, and I found a compilation of her articles. Lasagna Gardening was a popular book that came out twenty years ago. And Back to Eden has made the method popular in recent years. 

I've experimented with various mulching methods through the years, but got more serious the last two years. I'm hardly strong enough to handle our tiller and though my brothers are willing to help, it would be nice to be able to garden without always asking for help.

We have a large yard with many big trees so I started by layering grass clippings and leaves on sections of the garden. In the spring, the mulch had settled and began to rot, and I dug holes in the mulch and directly planted things like tomatoes, broccoli, and pumpkins. I had nearly no weeds. Success! 

But I wasn't sure how well I could plant seeds in mulch. 

Last fall I covered the whole garden with at least a small bit of mulch. This spring I did no tilling. Using a hoe, I pulled aside the mulch and planted onion sets, beans and corn seeds, and vegetable plants directly in the mulch. I had a large amount of finished compost from my compost pile that I added to the planting rows as well.

I was able to plant the entire garden with only a hoe - no tiller needed.

The result has been a lovely garden with almost no weeding. I'm still learning what ingredients such as lime that I'll need to add to my garden to increase its fertility. As mulch decompose, it can lock up certain nutrients which is why some people allow their mulch to rot before adding it to their garden.


Garden in June

After the strawberries were finished in June, my brother tilled under some of the old strawberries, and I planted some late beans and corn. These tilled areas immediately grew a fine crop of weeds. The contrast between the mulched and tilled areas was significant.

Potatoes were another experiment this year. I often have volunteer potatoes grow in the spring from potatoes that were missed in the harvest. I decided to have purposeful volunteer potato patch. 

When we dug our potatoes in the fall, I sorted out some of the small potatoes. We tilled one end of the garden, made rows, and planted those small potatoes. We then covered this section of the garden with leaves and waited for spring.

This spring the potato plants emerged.



Potato patch in June

Not every potato grew, so we had a few skippers in the rows, but it was a lovely potato patch, with no work at all in the spring.


Last week the potato plants were nearly dead so we started digging.


I first pulled out the plants, and since we had not hilled the potato plants, the potatoes were right at the surface under the mulch. This made digging potatoes much simpler, but it also meant that quite a few of the potatoes had green skin from exposure to the sun. The mulch from the fall had rotted down too much to protect them.  We should have added another layer of mulch in the spring to protect the potatoes from the sun. The green on potatoes is poisonous, but we'll cut off the green part and eat the rest of the potato.


But despite our dry weather, the potatoes were a great size - some larger than my hand. We are getting about a half bushel per row (my rows are short), which I think is about average from past years.



When we finish digging the potatoes, I plan to sort out the small potatoes and plant next year's crop. I'll try to be more diligent in adding another mulch layer in the spring, but otherwise, this experiment worked well enough to repeat.

I love gardening, but hate weeding, and mulching allows me to maximize my favorite parts of gardening (planting and harvest) and minimize the least favorite. I look forward to learning how to make this method work better for us.

Have you tried mulch gardening?

21 comments :

  1. I did try mulch gardening, and I am still trying it with some levels of success. I first tried the back to eden method about ten years ago, and struggled to find the right kind of mulch to do it correctly. I also struggle to produce enough compost to layer on the garden, and have had horrible luck trying to purchase it in bulk. I poisoned my garden soil a few times trying to get materials to garden with mulch, and I'm still dealing with the side effects of that. (so many invasive morning glories. so. many.)

    That said, when the stars align and I can get what I need when I need it without herbicide residue? Mulching works for me. I keep trying it because I have no option for plowing or tilling, and our ground here is very heavily compacted from years of having tractors driven across it. I use straw, hay, and even shredded junk mail as mulch, and last year I discovered a source of bulk untreated wood chips. They are expensive, but they last a while. In my raised beds where I have been mulching for years, the soil is soft and deep and I don't even need a shovel to plant in it. In my newer garden beds, the ground is still pretty hard, but the mulch is decomposing quickly and making a huge difference just as quickly. Another year or two and they will be as nice as the raised beds! The biggest thing I have learned in my years of trial and error is that if you have enough compost, put a layer of it on the ground under the mulch (or you can even use it as mulch itself!), but the mulch needs to be thick to smother the weeds. Last year I did three inches...this year it is completely gone and I can't even find the vegetable plants! This fall I am going to bite the bullet and put a full six inches of mulch on all my garden beds after I get them cleaned up. If I can find it, I am going to use straw and plant a cover crop, then smother it in wood chips this spring.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amanda,
      I love hearing your experience. We keep learning, don't we!
      Gina

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  2. It sounds great! And I have definitely considered it, but here in MD we have a fly that loves to lay its eggs in rich humus material. Then a nasty little root maggot hatches, and eats all the sprouted seeds/baby plants. So I don't know how I would really be able to do mulch gardening. 😕 If a brilliant suggestion comes to mind, please share it with me. 🙂

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  3. We are just starting on a no-till garden this year. We've been adding layers of dirt, manure, sand, hay... This is only the second year in this garden and some things are growing and a lot are very poor. It was a deserted piece of ground. We hope when the layers have time to decompose we will have better success. But I'm fully on board with no tilling and hoeing because those jobs are too hard for me. But I can put layers of cardboard and hay! Also the earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi will thrive if we do not till! And I actually think I'll learn to like gardening.

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  4. I believe you're thinking of "Gardening Without Work, For The Aging, The Busy, and The Indolent," by Ruth Stout. Ruth Stout published four books, to my knowledge, on gardening, and much of what she wrote in the book mentioned here is what you wrote in this post, Gina.
    This is an excellent post, by the way!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, that is it. I couldn't remember her name and I got rid of the book on one of my book purges.
      Gina

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    2. My new daughter in law has this book and made a garden this year by simply mowing the grass very short and then keeping thick layers of hay over the area. She grew beautiful vegetables!

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  5. In Australia, a lady named Esther Deans pioneered the no-dig gardening method which seems similar to what you are describing. This link is from the Gardening Australia tv show, which might give you some ideas for your vege patch: https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/no-dig-garden/9429424
    Good luck with your gardening!

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  6. I'm glad to hear of your "volunteer" potato success! Here in SC, we dug our potatoes in June (just a raised bed full), and a few weeks ago I noticed some volunteer sprouts. Now there are a good number! I have no choice but to ignore them, as I'm 37 weeks pregnant with twins, expecting them within a week, and my feet and legs are puffy beyond belief! It's also 90 degrees and about 90% humidity every day! No hilling up or mulching happening here. So we'll just see what we get when it's time. Since we don't expect frost until solidly November, I hope we'll get a few more potatoes. - Mary Kathryn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow! Two potato crops in one year!
      Best wishes on the twins!
      Gina

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  7. This year, while my garden didn't happen (major cancer surgery, but I am recovering well!) my daughter's has expanded more than ever. She discovered no-till gardening some time back and has expanded her garden into a small business. Gibson Farms includes a CSA and she also sells to a local company that has started an online shopping service where people can purchase organically grown produce and have it delivered if needed. The recently began raising bees! My daughter and her husband, a K9 officer, also board and train dogs. She has turned her garden into a beautiful, relaxing and fruitful area over the years by finding some beautiful items very cheap (she is a bargainer!) at yard/estate sales. So wrought iron birdcages, picket fences and benches to sit and take it all in are common! I discovered your blog a couple of years ago when looking for a sourdough recipe (still trying to figure out how to make a good starter!) and check back in now and then. I really enjoy it and hope you and your family are doing well. Take care

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  8. Timely article! I've started laying carboard and mulch/straw to try to keep the weeds away. I love the ideas that everyone gives. Just curious, because I keep seeing people using grass clippings, does it not make grass come up in the garden? Thank you for your blog and ministry. You are very inspiring.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as you don't have grass seeds, grass will not sprout in your garden. I have never had this to be a problem. The stems of grass cannot regrow.
      Gina

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  9. Deep mulch can work well, but it depends on where you live and what type of soil you have.

    If you live in an area with frequent rain, mulch is a great place for slugs to hang out, and emerge after dark to eat your plants. Slugs especially like the leafy plants like lettuce and spinach. I think this is more likely to be a problem on clay soils.

    If you have had trouble with squash bugs destroying your squash plants, the mulch and plant remains are a great place for the squash bugs to overwinter.

    Last year I lost my spaghetti squash, cucumbers and watermelon to a particularly bad infestation of squash bugs. The zucchini produced, but I lost a lot to the squash bugs. In the fall, I worked the grass clipping mulch into the soil, and did not have mulch on the soil through the winter months (not ideal, but it was the lesser of two evils). This year, I didn't plant spaghetti squash or watermelon, but the zucchini and cucumbers are growing great and I haven't seen any squash bugs.

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    Replies
    1. This is a good point. There are creatures that enjoy mulch material. Sometimes it is a choice between weeds and slugs.
      Gina

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  10. Thank you for posting this. I think I need to try this. Otherwise the garden is too much for me to handle. Even a small one. Enjoy your choice of books too!!! Thanks

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  11. Loved this post, Gina! I am also trying some of these things and loving it!

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  12. Thank you for this article! So encouraging as we are in the process of turning our garden to a no till plot! We are currently trying to decompose a huge pile of old hay bales by turning it every day to spread on top of the cardboard.

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