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PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:42 am 
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I read in another post that tilling in compost was not good. I have hard clay and have been working the recycled sewer compost into my beds, mixed with sandy topsoil. Have I done the wrong thing?? I'm trying to have slightly raised beds 3-5 " around post oaks. Is this going to disturb the oaks????


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:27 pm 
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There are two responses to this question. Tilling in compost and other amendments to create a raised is a good idea. We often do this in a vegetable garden or around the foundation for landscaping.
Tilling around tree roots and adding any kind of soil on top of them is one of the worst things you can do to the trees, especially post oaks.
Tony M


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 5:41 pm 
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I have been tilling compost into my garden for three years. I started out the first year only able to till about 1 inch deep. Each year I have been able to go deeper. Last fall I was able to till about 5 inches deep. The compost seems to be breaking down the hard clay into a good fertile workable soil. Each year I see improvement in my garden with more at harvest time. So I guess I would say that tilling compost in is good. My compost is not completely finished. Thats why it gets tilled in in the fall to complete the process over winter. In the spring I till in molasses, corn meal and humate only. This year I was able to get about 5 dozen cucs from only 2 plants. The first year I was lucky to get 3 cucs from 4 plants.
Don't forget the folair feeding.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 16, 2004 10:01 am 
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Thanks for the tips, my flower beds are the only areas that actuall got tilled. my wife wants dirt that SHE can dig in. The trees only get scratched around on the surface to clear away weed, briars etc.. then
I add a blend of compost and sand to raise the ornimentals up a few inches. This is mainly to keep the weed eater away from the tree bark.
Some trees only get mulch around them.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 4:00 pm 
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So are you guys talking about a motorized tiller or tilling in by hand??
My husband has a tiller on his tractor. I have him till my compost pile before I spread it. It shreds it so much better is more manageable to spread. I hope this doesn't ruin it. What do you think? Deb


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 Post subject: Both
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 11:02 am 
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I till my compost with a tiller both in my new beds and also at my topsoil pile. I try to loosen the clay where my new floewr beds will be, then top dress it with compost and retill. To raise it higher I mix compost and topsoil before bringing it to the bed. My truck load of mulch turned out to be very corse and not chipped fine enough to use un worked.

I hand scratch around my trees before adding the compost/topsoil blend


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 1:21 pm 
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The reason you don't want to till the soil is that the microbes in the soil have already established their camp there. When you till, you are disrupting the neighborhood. You are bringing the deep living microbes to the surface to die and sending the top dwellers to the depths to die. You are also destroying the natural tilth established by the bacterial glues and the fungal strands sent through the soil. You are also destroying the tunnels dug by worms and other crawlies in the soil that allow water and air to plunge to the depths.

Now you are thinking, "but my soil is rock solid and no air or water is getting down there now anyway." That's probably true. The reason for that is the soil has not been cared for well. You have likely lost the diversity of soil microbes you need to have nice soil. Typical forest soil has nearly 50,000 different species of soil microbes. Typical healthy farm soil has around 25,000 different species. You can kill those off using chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, soaps, and poor management of water until you only have 50 or so species left. That's not enough to have healthy soil.

The way you recover from poor soil is to cover the area with compost. If you are talking about turf, you cannot cover it without smothering the grass, but for beds and areas you want to be bare for the garden, then you can smother away! Apply an inch of excellent finished compost along with 10 pounds of organic fertilizer per 1,000 square feet. Cover all that with several inches of mulch and your soil should be considerably better within 6 months without tilling at all.

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 Post subject: tilling
PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 7:46 am 
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I'm confused but that's not unusual. What I want to do is grow lavendar on 4 acres of flat open 'pasture' that's hard-as-a-rock black clay near Bonham, TX. The last 2-4 years it has only been mowed w/grass(?) left to decompose. Back farther than that, I don't know what was done except cotton many yrs ago. Appears to be mostly johnson w/maybe buffalo? We can borrow a tiller for our 8N tractor but have not tilled b/c we have no clue. I've been on websites of lavendar farms & know black clay is not what they like & it needs to be amended to have good drainage. I'd like to start to get the acreage prepared, guess we need a sprayer for the tractor? Spreader? Was going to cover w/molasses & cornmeal 1st. Anyone have ideas?
Plano Patty

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 07, 2004 10:45 am 
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Since the lavender question is off the present topic, I gently suggest you open a new thread with your question. Otherwise nobody will find it buried down here in a tilling thread.

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PostPosted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 4:14 pm 
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Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:
The reason you don't want to till the soil is ... Apply an inch of excellent finished compost along with 10 pounds of organic fertilizer per 1,000 square feet. Cover all that with several inches of mulch and your soil should be considerably better within 6 months without tilling at all.


I am in complete accord with your suggestions

I write because my wife and I are having a disagreement. she would like to use our precious compost on top of the ground in our beds. One of her reasons is that it looks good, so dark and rich. My argument (which is somewhat intuitive although I believe it is backed up by some sciences) is that if the compost is exposed to sun wind etc. it's precious qualities will be substantially diminished. My approach is to cover with mulch as you suggested above. She says that using it as a top dressing is equally as
beneficial?


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2004 11:02 am 
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If you wash the microbes off the compost and onto the soil early after the application, you have a good chance of making both you and her happy. Nature typically does it this way.

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 Post subject: Tilling in compost
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 4:07 pm 
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Umpy

I really dont see where tilling in compost would be a problem, after all it is a soil amendment. I cleaned a flower bed out two years ago and put the compost/soil about four in. deep on top of the roots of a Fruitless Mulberry tree that I had cut down & I could not believe the results. It has
been the greenest area in my lawn.

JHENRY


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 10, 2004 8:52 pm 
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I'm half way through a book by Edward Faulkner called Ploughman's Folly. You can read the entire book for free at

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/flknreh/

He makes a number of points about not plowing. One good one is that of all the research ever done in agriculture, nobody has ever proved that plowing is a good thing to do. It has been done for thousands of years so it must be good, right?! He says that all agriculture science is flawed simply because it always starts out with the premise of a freshly plowed field - a freshly ruined field.

Faulkner is not a scientist, but he does do some experiments as examples to prove his points. He uses cover crops heavily along with a light disk harrow to knock down the covers and barely scrape the soil surface. Even the disk harrow is more than I like to see, but I've got nothing if not an open mind, so I'm still absorbing the book.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:00 am 
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My thoughts. Tilling compost and other amendments into the soil in the beginning is a good thing and recommended. Tilling soil that has been brought to a healthy condition is a bad thing. It messes up the microbes and fouls the structure that has been created. Tilling in tree roots is always a bad thing, if you care about the trees. If possible pocket plant the plants or use a turning fork for the mixing. The absolute best method of bed preparation is using the air spade to mix the material. The blending of materials is thorough and tree roots aren't damaged at all.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:13 pm 
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Howard, the only use I've seen discussed for an air spade is to clear soil from around tree roots. Could you clarify how it is used to mix material into the soil? It seems like it could make quite a dusty mess. Is there anything similar that your average homeowner could use? Perhaps something using water.


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