Why don’t we till our garden? – An ecological garden (sometimes also called a permaculture garden) models itself after natural cycles and ecosystems in an effort to make mother nature our partner instead of our enemy. For example, natural ecosystems are never tilled and all soil additions happen at the surface (leaves fall on the ground from the trees and stay there – no one comes and buries them in the soil). In this environment, a host of mostly microscopic organisms does the very complex job of breaking down organic matter into plant food and soil humus. Some microbes even live on plant roots – the plants produce sugar (food) for the microbes while the microbes digest material in the soil into food for the plants. So what does that mean for our garden? It means that we want to let these microbes do their work of feeding our plants so that we don’t have to! We do that by always adding compost and grass clippings to the top of the soil. We don’t till because that would disturb the ecosystem that our partners need to thrive. We constantly add organic matter to feed our partners and they turn it into the best plant fertilizer there is. In exchange, we get healthy plants and delicious food without the time spent tilling and fertilizing. Sounds like a good deal to me!
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