I’ve always been a fan of raised bed gardening so it may seem out of character for me to talk about tilling a garden. However there can be some good reasons for beginning with tilling a garden. In our case this year we are starting with a completely blank slate for a garden. If anything was ever grown on this property it has been an extremely long time. By tilling our first garden area we are able to quickly break up the sod and plant the garden in the ground.
I’ve started many gardens over the years and while sometimes I’ll chose to do a lasagna garden method often I start the garden with an initial till. Once we start growing plants in those beds we add mulch through leaves and grass clippings and continue to layer it throughout the year. In the fall I would like to put down a cover crop that will eventually be killed off to allow the organic matter to integrate with the soil.
There are many ways to garden effectively and this is one method I’ve found successful!
Are Grass Clippings Good for the Garden
Vego Raised Bed
Propagate salvia from Cuttings
hey everybody I’m Dave with growing the
home Garden today I want to just talk to
you for a second about why I’m tilling
my garden for the first time normally I
grow in a raised bed I really like
raised beds for the most part uh they’ve
got some disadvantages to them but
overall they are really great ways to
grow a garden uh but here for our first
Garden at this new house we are actually
going to be tilling things in and let’s
talk for a minute about why I’m doing
that so you can see here I’ve already
got some areas tilled up there’s about a
4 foot by 30 foot area right here
there’s a smaller bed right there
there’s going to be a bed over here and
I want to extend that one a little bit
further out I’ve got a bit of a corner
Garden started over here and you can see
a couple of fire Rings those I like to
use for rais beds and there’s a raised
bed here and a raised bed there and then
another bed coming across over here and
then in the back there’s going to be and
partially dug in there is an L-shaped
bed that then extends all the way down
the side of where the garden will
eventually go we’ll end up with a fence
and and everything over there on that
side because we’ve got deer in the area
but the reason why we’re telling for the
first time is because of all the grass
saw that allows us to kind of break
through it without having to do any back
breaking double digging uh and also
because I don’t have the resources at
hand right now to do a uh no till
approach there’s a lot of inputs that
you have to add with no till where
you’re putting down cardboard as a layer
and then some compost on top of it we we
just have not had time to build up the
compost uh we could go and purchase some
but then you’re you’re bringing
something in that you don’t know where
it came from necessarily so for right
now what we’re going to try to do is do
inground beds to start with and then we
will gradually add inputs on top of it
we’ll use things like grass clippings
and leaves to help build up organic
matter in the soil because the organic
matter is really really important now
when I was telling this I found a few
rocks here and there but overall it was
really good soil that I think the roots
will do really well with this area has
been vacant since we purchased the
property the only thing that’s grown
here has been a lot of the weeds and the
grass some Clover some various different
things so the dirt actually looks really
good
underneath now we took the excess sod
and brought it over here into a
depression in the ground where we’re
putting in a dry stack stone wall using
just some of what we found here on the
property as far as the rock goes and you
can see here we got it piled up pretty
high we’re going to let this kind of die
off and then we’re going to cover it
with something so that it will continue
to uh break down over time and then the
organic matter will just become nice
soil this will be a perennial bed we’ll
do some things like salvia and Russian
sage and just some things that we like
that bloom that’ll bring in the
pollinators you can see over there we’ve
got some blocks and different uh
landscaping stone that we’ve used in the
the past for raised beds and other
things so we’ll incorporate that back
into this Garden here and of course we
got the fire Rings which we’re going to
use probably for some potatoes and grow
those as raised beds and I I’ll do
another video on how I want to do that
here very soon so overall this is an
initial start but it’s probably the only
time I’m actually going to use the
tiller in this location I may use it in
other spots to start new beds but that’s
how I like to use a tiller is to use it
as a way to start a new Garden rather
than a way to just continually maintain
it because tillers will eventually break
down the soil structure they’ll go as
deep as they can and then create a hard
pan layer at the very bottom and once
you have that hard pan layer it allows
it doesn’t allow good drainage like it
should so for now I’ll be keeping the
pathways between the raised beds as
grass and I’ll use a mower to go in
between them and then we’ll bag that and
then we’ll use those grass clippings as
a combination of compost to fill up the
compost bin or and
to use as a mulch around the plants I
love using grass clippings as a mulch
for my tomato plants it is always done
very well so my overall goal is to have
a lot of raised beds in this vegetable
garden but for right now we needed to go
with something quick that we could
easily get uh ready in time for the
plants to go in it’s uh mid April right
now so we have only a couple weeks left
before we’re going to need to start
planting and we really need to get these
things ready to go and we’re almost
there so I’m Dave with the home Garden I
appreciate you watching hit the like
button subscribe and we’ll catch you
next time
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