What a great thread - I've just read it through from start to finish so now don't remember who said what….
Last year I started with nothing. We moved to this property mid-summer the year before and the previous people did not have a garden at all. One day last February I got a call from a neighbor to say that her husband had brought "the big tiller" home from work to till her garden and did I want a patch tilled as well. I had to hurriedly run out and select a garden spot (so much for time to plan!) Fortunately, the spot I picked is the exact same as if I had had weeks to think about it. It gets full sun and there is a spigot not far away for watering. And, its not in the way of any other plans we have for the property, but close enough to the house I can run out and harvest what I need at dinner time.
The area he tilled last year wound up being 16x40. Around that we placed a t-post/chicken wire fence to keep the turkeys, chickens, ducks and dogs out of it (also rabbits and deer if they venture that close to the house). We left about 5' perimeter around the tilled area to allow me to get the zero turn mower in there and mow around the bed.
The problem I had last year was that even though I spent hours crawling over the tilled area removing the clumps of grass that had been tilled under, when spring rolled around, almost overnight everything I didn't catch sprouted and the garden area made a good faith effort to return to the grassy area it had been before the tiller moved in.
It was all I could do to keep a few feet clear at either end and grow greens at one end and tomatoes/peppers at the other.
Mid-summer, I was offered a load of cardboard and accepted it. This isn't your ordinary cardboard. It is from HUGE cartons that had clearly held quite a bit of weight and were about 5x thicker than the cardboard boxes Amazon uses. We laid out a trailer load of cardboard over the entire garden area, hoping to kill the grass/weeds that had been thwarting me until then. That was - July-ish - and when I pull up pieces of cardboard now, it looks like it might have worked. The soil underneath looks rich and free of vegetation.
The question I have now is what to do this year. My neighbor will likely bring the big tiller home again and will be willing to re-till it for us. DH's idea was to remove the cardboard, till, then replace and plant right through it, continuing to use it as mulch/weed block. I believe this is problematic for two reasons. First, the cardboard has been rained and snowed on. The dry cardboard was so thick and so heavy it was unwieldy to handle. Now that it is damp, I think it will be a pretty difficult task to remove it. Second, it is so thick it would be difficult to cut holes to plant through.
When I pointed out those things, DH said we could just till it in. Hmmm… I'm concerned the cardboard is so thick it will not till easily. (When I say big tiller, this is a machine that is pulled by a tractor and could be used to till a field ready to plant acres of corn.) He pointed out that the tiller is built to cut through clay soil so cardboard will be easy for it. I'm just not convinced. If it is possible to till it, I love the idea of all the organic material being incorporated over the next year or two.
I'm relieved to hear several people recommend double digging over no dig for "the first few years". While I like the no dig concept, I'm afraid there are still enough weed seeds (and in this area they blow in regardless) around that no dig would only encourage growth of weeds. My plan for counter attack includes planting every square inch of the garden this year so as to leave little room for weeds.
I'd welcome thoughts from experienced gardeners though, as to what to do about the cardboard?
