Planting a no-till garden?

[Johntodd]

Hi! I'm up to trying no-till gardening for weed control and improved soil, but how do I plant seeds in a no-till environment? My garden is huge and getting bigger every year; I have neither time nor "lower back strength" to do all those transplant.

I use an Earthway seeder for now; it works great on tilled soil. But next year I must try something else?

Your thoughts?


Thanks!
-Johntodd

 

[Chuck]

Hi! I'm up to trying no-till gardening for weed control and improved soil, but how do I plant seeds in a no-till environment? My garden is huge and getting bigger every year; I have neither time nor "lower back strength" to do all those transplant.

I use an Earthway seeder for now; it works great on tilled soil. But next year I must try something else?

Your thoughts?


Thanks!
-Johntodd

I think I must be missing something here. I too have a fair sized garden and I haven't tilled mine except for the 1 time when I first built it about 12 years ago. For weed control I use a hula hoe and for planting seeds I use a hand furrow. The hand furrow is just a triangle of steel, kind of like a hoe, that I can dig a furrow with, then plant the seeds by hand and then cover up the seeds with it. Isn't there a little plow looking thing on your seeder? If so it will dig your furrow just like my hand furrower. Just because you don't till your garden doesn't mean it won't get grass and weeds in it. Just keep on doing what you are doing if I understand your question correctly.

 

[Johntodd]

Oh, it's not you who's missing something.

OK, I'll try it no-till with the Earthway; it does have a little plow on it. I guess all I can do is try and then till only if I have too.

Any other tips for killing grass in the garden? I'm going to have to use POAST (Grass-Killer).

 

[Chuck]

Oh, it's not you who's missing something.

OK, I'll try it no-till with the Earthway; it does have a little plow on it. I guess all I can do is try and then till only if I have too.

Any other tips for killing grass in the garden? I'm going to have to use POAST (Grass-Killer).

I am an organic gardener and I would cut my throat before I would use a product like poast. My garden is composed of 3' wide rows. I have 4 rows 80' long, 3 rows 42' long and 20 rows 22' long, a melon bed 20' x 20' and 2 cucumber rows 30' long. I am pushing 70 years old and the only chemical I use on grass and weeds is a little sweat. I can weed my entire garden using nothing but a hula hoe in less than 2 hours and never bend over. You don't need to or have to remove every little single blade of grass or every weed. In fact some weeds and grass are beneficial as they distract insects like grasshopers and some types of caterpillars. Even if you use chemical herbicides you will still get grass and weeds no matter what. I don't know what the active life of poast is but if it is similar to roundup about 2 weeks and then you have a new growth of grass and weeds you have to spray again and then how are you going to not get the chemical on your plants? If the life span is more than that are you sure that you want your food growing in toxic soil. Chemicals like Roundup have been banned in some European countries because they have been proven to be carcinogenic. I may be old fashioned but I don't believe everything the government says about this and that being safe. Especially when Big Chemicals lobbyists are paying off the politicians to keep their products on the market.

 

[Johntodd]

OK, my problem is extreme grass. I have a wheel hoe with an oscillating hoe attachment, and that works great in the row paths.

But in the plant rows I get "extreme grass" attacks. LOL!

 

[Chuck]

OK, my problem is extreme grass. I have a wheel hoe with an oscillating hoe attachment, and that works great in the row paths.

But in the plant rows I get "extreme grass" attacks. LOL!

What is your location? Are you planning to plant a fall garden and if so what? Do you live in a rural setting? How many and the size of the rows or the measurments of your entire garden at this time. What kind of grass?

 

[Johntodd]

west Tennessee, the entire garden season, out in the country on a small farm, 3/4 acre, lots of bermuda grass.

Hope this helps! Death to all Grasses (that are in my garden).

 

[Chuck]

west Tennessee, the entire garden season, out in the country on a small farm, 3/4 acre, lots of bermuda grass.

Hope this helps! Death to all Grasses (that are in my garden).

Bermuda grass is by far the hardest grass to erridicate. If you try to till it under each little tiny root will grow into grass. If you use a systemic herbicide you (MIGHT) get rid of the grass in two or three applications but that means you will not have a garden this year and probably half of next year too. Bermuda grass seed lasts in the soil for years. Bermuda goes dormant at the first frost. IMO the only way to make sure of killing it all is to solarize the entire garden area NOW. You will loose this falls planting but come spring you will be way ahead. If you solarize now all of the grass and most of the seeds will be killed and next spring you can either rake the dead grass into the soil or burn it. I would burn it. Then plant. Solarizing will severly damage the micro-organisms in the soil but by using proven organic methods these organisms will rapidly return. No matter what you do it will take time to completely get rid of the Bermuda, probably 2 years, and by solarizing you can use the plastic over and over, even using it in the winter on certain crops and an early start when the soil is still cold. Hopefully someone else on this forum can explain it better but getting rid of Bermuda is a major undertaking. With the use of thick mulch in the walkways and around your plants the re -growth of the grass is a fairly easy thing to control with vinegar, orange oil and a little dishsoap without the need or costs of dangerous chemicals

 

[Johntodd]

I was just reading about solarizing yesterday! Next year may be the year to do it. I can easily see not having a garden and solarizing for the whole growing season if it gets rids of the grass.

And since I do bokashi and make my own biochar, I can have the soil up and running again real soon.

 

[Chuck]

I was just reading about solarizing yesterday! Next year may be the year to do it. I can easily see not having a garden and solarizing for the whole growing season if it gets rids of the grass.

And since I do bokashi and make my own biochar, I can have the soil up and running again real soon.

You do realize that solarisation is not an overnight solution and bokashi is the opposite of microbiological composting. In fact anerobics are detrimental in the short term. I think you will find biochar is useful in the long run but not so much in the near term. Solarization will remove the grasses but if you want a garden in the near term you will use aerobic composting and not anaerobic IMO. Also anaerobics will produce unwanted gasses on young plants and will retard growth, especially on tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. Not so much on melons, cucs, squash and okra. If you start now with the solarization you will have now, August and Sept, the hottest months of the year, plus the winter months of zero moisture to kill that bermuda. In the spring cut slits in the plastic to allow planting plants and sowing seeds. When it gets hot remove the plastic and use manual weed and grass removal techiques IMO

 

[Johntodd]

Chuck, your post caught me by surprise.

I've found that bokashi and biochar (B&B) have had absolutely and undeniably wonderful effects on the garden. We went from average production to over-the-top give-it-away-before-it-rots (and take-some-out-of-the-back-of-the-truck-because-it's-making-the-wheels-rub-the-fenders) production after introducing the B&B.

But I did my research first, and found that I should combine the bokashi (which in my case is mere kitchen scraps) with the biochar ASAP and then age.

So, in my 55-gallon bokashi lidded barrel I make layers of char and bokashi. Sort of like a nasty lasagna. At the end of a full year (in the fall for us), all I have is a visibly dry* charcoal product to shovel into the garden. By combining the B&B together, I am causing the char to "pre-charge" with nutrients, same as soaking char in a barrel of pee.

When we started putting this into the garden we got not only a much better yield, we also got healthier plants that were disease-resistant and insect resistant. Insect damage dropped to near zero, and mold/mildew/blights disappeared altogether. In previous years, I've grown about 1000 sq. ft. of wimpy and diseased corn stalks. These past two years with the B&B, I have grown bountiful, delicious, bug-free corn.

But all this soil fertility is assisting the weeds and grasses, too. This is why I call it an "extreme grass attack".

I've both blessed and cursed myself. I'm currently thinking of not having a garden at all next years so I can solarize for the entire season. I guess I'd till in this year's bokashi in the fall and then seal it all off with plastic until 2016.

Thoughts?
-Johntodd

*By visibly dry, I mean it looks dry. If I put a piece of the charcoal on a paper towel, a lot of moisture wicks into the towel.

 

[Chuck]

I admit my knowledge of this is limited. I have been doing a little reasearch after reading your posts and find it very interesting. Previosly I had only heard a little about it on radio and a couple of organic gardening sites and they didn't seem too excited because of the anaerobic composting. I do a lot of experimenting in my garden and I would like to try this on a side to side basis. Where did you go to find out your online research data? Biochar is unheard of around here. How hard is it to obtain? Is it online only or is there a wholesale distributer for it?

As far as your grass problem I still think solarization is the best approach. Bermuda is just so hard to eliminate that anything you do will not be easy

 

[Johntodd]

Chuck, here's the video I based my retort on:

Mine is a 55-gallon drum done similar to that. So I make my own from deadfall and tree trimmings. Mine is larger sized wood than his so it takes most of the day for me to make a load. Worth it, though. Once the retort is up and running it just needs an occasional stir every hour, for which I use a rebar.

As for anaerobic, that was the whole point of bokashi. All I know about it are the results I get in my garden; I've only been gardening 5 years (currently on my sixth), with no prior experience, so we tried what we tried along the way and this worked great. IDK about other gardens 'cause IDK anything outside my own!

If people are interested, I can start a "Making BioChar At Home" thread.

 

[MindyT]

Is Bermuda grass like crabgrass? I have never heard of it before, but it sounds just as annoying as crabgrass.

 

[Chuck]

Is Bermuda grass like crabgrass? I have never heard of it before, but it sounds just as annoying as crabgrass.

Bermuda grass is a Southern lawn grass, really nice if you don't garden. If you do it is a nightmare and many times harder to get rid of than crabgrass.