There is a school of thought who believe you should never till your garden. Look up the 'no-dig method'.
Sheet composting is where you spread your compost on the surface of the soil and wait for nature to mix it naturally.
There is a school of thought who believe you should never till your garden. Look up the 'no-dig method'.
Sheet composting is where you spread your compost on the surface of the soil and wait for nature to mix it naturally.
I don't know anything about the no-till method but we till ours every year after planting season to rough it up. We like it to be ready for any nitrogen rich snow that might fall in winter. Then we do it again just before the growing season.
We do the same thing. We always have tilled it every spring. I have never heard of the no till method either till now.
We till ours every season. Although we are trying to use more mulch and less chemicals.
a vegetable garden and a rose garden are two different things... In the rose garden you need to make sure you do a bang up job preparing the bed with lots of organic matter before you even plant the roses because that is the last chance you have... you can't till around the roses..
After that all you can do is mulch, put compost around the roses, keep all the leaf litter cleaned up ,weed ,prune and keep an eye out for fungal diseases and bugs.
I turn over my vegetable garden soil in the fall to add new organic growth to the soil and some more peat moss. Then, in the spring it is soft as butter to dig in for new plantings. My roses, bulbs and perennials I leave alone, though. I am definitely into no-maintenance and low-maintenance gardening!
Rose White, author
"Easy Gardens A to Z"