No-till vs till comparison

Interesting video here

Differences in Tilled and No Till Soils
ZimmComm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aR5OLgcc0

Plants have grown just fine for millions of years without people gouging up the ground and dumping chemicals.

I guess though that when you get to the point where the growth of plants is tied to survival, you have to take steps to insure a reliable harvest.

I tilled the area where I’m going to plant grass, but that was just because it was a rock garden for the past 20 some years and had become overgrown with weeds. I didn’t put any herbicides down to kill off the weeds and I’ve only put down some sulphur amendments to lower the Ph a bit.

I’ll put down some fertilizer to get things started but after that, it will pretty much be occasional watering during dry periods, regular mowing, leaving the clippings on the ground, hand weeding, aeration, and de-thatching.

That should be plenty.

Yep. But in modern times for a home garden, the land has likely been mowed regularly, which leads to compaction, which causes other issues. And who knows what it does to the soil content.

It’s amazing what that does, our back garden had areas of standing water when we moved in and one round of aerating has sorted it ever since.

Just my opinion mind you, but when it comes to lawns, I think if people would spend more time aerating and de-thatching, and less time dumping fertilizers and herbicides on their grass, they’d get much better results.

Fertilizers give you that initial flush of green, and people think they’re doing good, but that soon leaches through the soil and you’re left with shallow roots susceptible to all kinds of diseases for bacteria that forms in standing water on the surface.

Plus, the best defense against weeds is a stand of healthy grass. You’ll still get some weeds here and there, but if you’ll walk your yard on a regular basis and dig those things out by the root when they first appear, you’ll be a lot better off than dumping herbicides.

It’s amazing what this woman has accomplished in her little slice of China: