Has anyone else read Teaming with Microbes yet? I couldn't stop reading! I've been telling peeps for 20 years that roto-tillers were harmful... It's nice when the published authorities eventually back up one's experience! I also learned specifically what's going on that makes hay a good choice to mulch the veggies with, while wood-chips should saved for the perennial beds, shrubs, and tree islands... Ok... I'd already discovered the fact... I just didn't know why.
Haven't read it, but I'll see if my local library has it sounds like a good read. I need one for the winter.
But I love my tiller!! Mebbe 'cause I've learned how much WORK digging is!!! and my garden is getting nice and big after about 4 years. But yeah, I read it. Once you read it, you can't stop recommending it to people. I started doing that, too. We have woods on our property; seems like a reasonably good idea to go down to the woods & dig up some woods-dirt to add to various corners of the garden now and then, for all the natural woods-fungi and all the other stuff. Also, I rake up leaves every year off our dirt road. Seems like they ought to be reasonably full of "microbes" of one kind or another. One thing I'd like to learn is how to reproduce the inoculant you buy for inoculating legumes. The people who SELL it must know how to make it! Maybe just add dirt to a packet of inoculant, and give it a few months??
It is to my limited understanding, and I could be wrong, but if you already have legumes growing on your property or if you have grown them in your garden before then you should have the microbes already present for legumes and not really need the inoculant. I don't use it and mine seem to do fine.
Innocculation entails mixing a powdered bacteria with water or slurry and coating your seed. In my part of California the bacteria is readily available naturally in our soils. I understand in over cultivated areas of the south it may be necessary to innoculate. You can probably find the stuff at your local garden center. And a lot of seed is pre-innoculated before packaging. It always pays to read the entire label on a seed pack.
try a spader instead of a tiller. Alot of new organic farms are going to the spader it moves less dirt but still just enough to get the weeds at the surface without disturbing or turning over the soil removing all the micro flaura and fauna that live in the soil.
