- Maya Angelou
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Orchids at the Denver Botanic Gardens |
Free guides showing how you can grow, preserve and cook your own food along with musings and random stories! Straight from the world’s best urban farmer whom grows over a year's worth of food in the backyard of a typical house.
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Orchids at the Denver Botanic Gardens |
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu
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Freshly tilled and broadforked yard! |
To till or not to till? That is the question.
Some like to till, some like to broadfork, some like to do both, and some like to do none of the above. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you likely don't have the slightest idea what that means. That is perfectly okay and expected, don't even worry about it! These are just ways of breaking up the ground so the dirt isn't so compact which gives the future plants room to grow. For now we're going to stay away from the debate of to disturb the ground or not to disturb the ground (it really is the question though). If you are just starting out and converting a lawn (or very compact ground) into vegetables then tilling is inevitable. There really aren't any ifs ands or buts about it, regardless of the debates around it. Tilling is going to take the existing grass, turn it back into the soil, while also mixing up and aerating the dirt. Then when you go over the same area with the broadfork, you are breaking up this soil even further giving roots of plants more room to grow. Say you're going to move into a house but when you open the front door the house is jam packed with useless stuff and you can't move in. Going nuts, clearing and cleaning that house is the same thing as tilling and broadforking. Once you're done there's room to move-in and be comfortable. It's out with the old and in with the new. Tilling and broadforking is basically the first step in restarting and rejuvenating your yard, you're pressing the reset button and starting from scratch. Once you have your vegetable garden established though do you really need to keep tilling and broadforking the soil? THAT is exactly where the debate generally starts up and can turn into quite a heated conversation, depending on who you're talking to.