How To Till A Garden Manually
By Heather Rhoades These days, tilling dirt is a matter of personal choice. There are some people in the world of gardening who believe that you should be tilling your soil at least once, maybe twice a year. There are others who believe that tilling your soil at all can be harmful to your soil in the long term. For the purposes of this article, we are assuming that you wish to know how to till a garden on a yearly basis.
Without question, using a power tiller is the quickest and most efficient way to till soil. However, for small jobs, it is sometimes easier to till the soil manually. When it comes to any gardening project, the secret to producing quality crops is having a fertile soil. Any types of garden require good and rich soil that will.
When to Till a Garden Before you can learn how to till a garden, you need to know when to till a garden. For most people, the best time for tilling dirt is in the spring. Before tilling your soil, you must wait for two things: the soil must be dry enough and warm enough. If you don’t wait for these two things, you may cause more harm than good to your soil and plants. To see if your soil is dry enough, pick up a handful and squeeze it. If the ball of soil in your hand falls apart when poked, the soil is dry enough.
If it stays together in a ball, the soil is too wet for tilling. To see if the soil is warm enough, stick your hand or a finger a few inches down into the soil. If you are unable to keep your hand or finger in the soil for a full minute, than the soil is not warm enough.
You can also simply measure the. You need the soil to be at least 60 F. (15 C.) before tilling and planting. How to Till a Garden After you have determined when to till a garden, you can start tilling the dirt. Mark out the area where you will be tilling your soil. Start at one end of the marked out area with your tiller. Much like you would when you are mowing the lawn, go across the soil one row at a time.
Slowly make your rows. Don’t rush tilling your soil. You will only be tilling the dirt in each row one time. Don’t go back over a row. Excessive tilling can rather than break it up. Additional Notes on Tilling Your Soil If you plan on planting cool weather crops (like, or ) next year, you’ll want to do some of your tilling the fall before. The soil will not be dry enough or warm enough to till in the early spring when these plants need to be put in the ground.
Knowing when to till a garden and how to till a garden will help your garden grow better every year.
Turning your backyard dirt into rich, loose garden soil is a gradual process and one that's helped a great deal by mixing and digging the soil. Many gardeners turn over the entire garden bed with a rototiller, but you may not want to spend the money to rent such a large piece of equipment. Organic and natural gardeners mix their soil with a process called double digging, and you can use it to convert your entire garden from hard dirt to soft and useable soil. It moves the soil around better than traditional digging, and gives you the best chance for a weed- and rock-free garden plot. The Method Dig a trench in your garden 12 inches deep. Place all this soil into a wheelbarrow or on a nearby tarp. Dig down another 12 inches, using a garden fork if needed to loosen the soil.
Turn over this second 12 inches. Spread compost over this second layer.
Move over next to the first trench and dig a second one, placing the dirt from the second trench into the first one. Continue in this manner until you have double dug the entire garden, filling in the last trench with the dirt removed from the first one. The Results Looser soil with a layer of compost inside will give your garden a growing boost all year long. The clump-free soil is ideal for root crops, so carrots, onions and beets will grow large and free of twists or knots. Vining plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers and melons can dig their roots deeper into the soil, giving them a good base to hold onto vines with heavy produce attached.
When To Till Your Garden
Weed seeds will have been buried deeper in the ground, so you may not have as many weeds to pull during the growing season. Finally, the deeply tilled soil is easier to clear out at the end of the growing season, giving you shorter chores in the fall when it's time to pull the dead plants from the ground.