I Want to Try Something Else

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Rototillers jerk me around and are heavy to turn. My back becomes sore. What little hearing I have, deteriorates, at least, temporarily. A spading fork tills to 11" quietly and quite easily in my garden soil.


Steve

I have in the past considered a spading fork and really it would be DS having to till because it is just too much for me.

 

[Prairie Rose]

I used to have a small tiller just my size, that we used to cultivate the rows in our giant vegetable garden. Dad bought it because neither mom nor I could turn his big tiller without a lot of effort and being sore for days after. It wouldn't cultivate as deep as the large ones and was like holding onto a jackrabbit on steroids, but it kept the weeds down in the rows. It moved on to a new owner when we quit gardening on such a large scale.

Now I use one of those claws that you step into the dirt and twist. A fork might be a little bit easier, but I can break up the roots on large weeds and invasive plants easier with the claw. I have been using it to keep my daylillies from taking over the yard.

 

[flowerbug]

I will be interested in all the advice you get. I am also in the same situation. I do not have a tiller and no DH. DS will help, but we have been turning by hand, and it is just more trouble than it is worth. It makes me start too late. Gardening is also part of my identity and I have no idea what I would do if I did not garden.

when i redid the North Garden this past summer instead of having to turn the entire area i used a flat bladed shovel to just skim the weeds from the surface to bury. yes, it was still work to do that, but about half as much as it would have been if i'd have turned the entire garden. it does take some strength to get the flat bladed shovel to skim if there are any thicker roots to go through but it did work. once i had it done i could skim the entire thing with the stirrup hoe in a few hours time so i was able to keep up with it until the fall. it has some grass starting up in there in a few spots where i didn't fully remove every little bit and i thought of going out there today and running the stirrup hoe through the worst of it to disturb them so they might freeze and croak this winter (more likely they'll just be encouraged to set seeds faster when they can grow).

it is a pesky kind of grass, very low growing and sets seeds very early and quickly. by the time i get out in the gardens in the spring it has already got seeds on it. fun to weed out of the low growing thyme i have in that garden. i have to get down there with my nose pretty close to be able to see the little threads in the thyme as they are sprouting. still i almost have all of it out of there so i just have to be a bit more persistent this season and i should get it knocked back to where it is only in the lowest part. all seeds flow downhill/downwind or get moved around by the animals. i just have to keep the new seeds from sprouting. and there's some nutsedge in the low part too that i keep scraping off (so it can't build up any reservoirs of food in the roots/nodes/tubers...).

the worst place i always have in that garden is in the edge along the grass. there's a plastic border edge to help keep the mower from throwing seeds around into the garden but it still happens. i need to put some cardboard along that edge on the inside of the plastic to discourage the grass that is there. it has a pretty easy time growing and while i do scrape it as often as i can it would be better if i could just smother it entirely. there were some flowers in that area that i tried to move out of there when i was moving everything else around in there, but i think i missed a few. i'll have a good chance to mark everything i missed this coming spring and i can move them before putting cardboard down. it won't matter if it is the right time of the season or not for moving them because there are so many others it's not like i'll be risking anything rare. this edge is one of the reasons why i keep having happy daydreams of the time when i can finally get rid of the remaining lawn area (not much left less than 5%). it's always such a source of so many grassy weeds in the neighboring gardens. i'd put down weed barrier and smother it with wood chips or turn it into more bean gardens or even put in berry bushes or trees or something else (anything else than lawn!).

 

[catjac1975]

Yes, @Zeedman ,

she did put that into words well.

However, some would say that they can't imagine a year without flowers . Let me just say what I imagine to be true: someone like @catjac1975 .

Steve

Hahaha. Nice.

 

[catjac1975]

I will be interested in all the advice you get. I am also in the same situation. I do not have a tiller and no DH. DS will help, but we have been turning by hand, and it is just more trouble than it is worth. It makes me start too late. Gardening is also part of my identity and I have no idea what I would do if I did not garden.

A tune up may be all that your tiller needs.

 

[flowerbug]

Nearly everywhere I go, things look and feel different. Natural vegetation is different, soil looks different, weather is different. Sometimes, I have only traveled a few miles.

How can gardening be all the same? And yet, we are often trying to grow the same crops. Grandma had columbines, we want columbines. We have discovered creamed peas and new potatoes, we want them every year. Big, heirloom tomatoes! Japanese cucumbers! Habanero peppers!

It's a very good thing if what we want to grow has some adaptability, or the varieties someone has bred fit with our gardening circumstances. If they can't be grown successfully, should we be surprised? If we move a thousand miles, can we practice gardening the same way as before? I once had gardens separated by about 30 miles. About the same climate, very different soil.

Mulch in 2' paths over certain weeds hardly detered them. They traveled to the beds. Deep mulch over potato beds meant I had the most amazing crop of voles and rodent-damaged potatoes.

Rototillers jerk me around and are heavy to turn. My back becomes sore. What little hearing I have, deteriorates, at least, temporarily. A spading fork tills to 11" quietly and quite easily in my garden soil.

Even "best practices" aren't always possible because of expediency, physical limitations, etc. Experience hopefully leads to "the best we can."

Steve

yes, the best we can, gotta work around others at times too and what they think (especially when they're the land owner ). for a path that already has weeds, 2' would certainly not be much of a smothering as you would also need to put the edge down a ways into the ground itself on each side. the depth depends upon the type of weeds and their root structures.

some grasses we have here will go down 2' in solid clay. it is fun to dig them out of gardens when they try to invade. the best results i have for controlling them in a natural way is rhubarb and to once in a while pull any roots/plants that think about trying to get through it. it's not 100% but close enough. i've always wanted to put an edge to keep that grass out but as of yet that task hasn't gotten high enough on the list yet to be a priority.

must wear ear protection!

i hope i can always have gardens to work in. even if i have to crawl. for those of us getting older and facing some issues perhaps they'll have exoskeletons to keep us going we'll be like the borgs but maybe not so plugged in. we'll see...

as for how things can differ even within a short distance, when you have up and down micro climates along with differing soils yes... for us the microclimate varies because of the shape of the land around us. it is mostly flat here but there are some hills at the edge of the valley. it affects how the rains can fall or storms change depending upon how strong they are. for us the soil difference from here to just down the road can go from our heavy clay to mostly sand, no rocks to some rocks, etc.

 

[catjac1975]

it would be really good to know which specific insects you are having trouble with...

to me it takes much more effort to till than to use a shovel to turn over a garden (i don't dig up an entire garden that often - my normal routine disturbs about 5-10% of a garden when i'm burying garden debris at the end of the season - i may surface scrape the whole thing but i'm only skimming the surface and in the harder clay areas i'm just cutting off weeds at the surface). tilling also may not really bury the bugs/stuff but spread it out through the whole soil layer being tilled, so if you are trying to get rid of things by burying, well it may not actually accomplish that.

that all said, if you are going to till the sooner the better IMO as that gives any of your mulch and buried stuff time to break down and for the soil community to sort itself out again.

the vegetable gardens i keep here are mostly left bare soil during the winter months. not because i think that is a good idea, but because Mom thinks this is how it has to be to look tidy. to me it looks sick. i want cover crops, i want to leave plant debris and mulches on top of the soil as it will protect from the wind and the rains and ...

if you can get it tilled quickly enough and get it planted with winter wheat or winter rye (the grain not the grass) it might get a chance to grow some before spring. then turn it under several weeks before your spring planting has to happen.

my own vegetable gardens have a few bugs here or there that i don't particularly like, but they are not annoying me badly enough i care to do much about them. i hand pick Japanese beetles here or there, but i'll never get them all.

i also don't think it a good idea to use pesticides or other biocides including many that people say are ok for organic crops. well, no, i like the various creatures i have around so i don't want to put something out in the gardens that might harm some of them that i care about. i'm willing to do things selectively and very targetted (manual removal only) or just change what i grow if i have to.

i also have areas in the gardens which are spaces used to protect the beneficial bugs during the off season since i have no cover on many gardens for the winter. as of yet i do not have aphid problems. i don't have too many other problems with too many bugs either. squash borers and squash bugs, yep, we got those, i try to grow resistant enough types and rotate plantings to different areas when the populations get to be too high.

Absolutely mulch is a haven for insects. We till a smalll amount of leaves into the soil. I use grass clipping for mulch-It makes a great weed barrier.When I used leaves to mulch my cucurbits I got a relentless assault by squash bugs. Since stopping that I have been able yo keep them at a minimum. I also have been using a weed barrier to cut down on my weeding. A cheap barrier will not do the trick. I bought a big roll guaranteed for 30 years. Weather that is true or not, I have been able to reuse it for 4-5 years so far. I use it on sweet potatoes as they are so hard to keep weeded because of the vining habit. I used it on squash and melons for the first time last year and it was a big boon to my melons nd cucumbers. Squash loved it too.

 

[flowerbug]

Absolutely mulch is a haven for insects. We till a smalll amount of leaves into the soil. I use grass clipping for mulch-It makes a great weed barrier.When I used leaves to mulch my cucurbits I got a relentless assault by squash bugs. Since stopping that I have been able yo keep them at a minimum. I also have been using a weed barrier to cut down on my weeding. A cheap barrier will not do the trick. I bought a big roll guaranteed for 30 years. Weather that is true or not, I have been able to reuse it for 4-5 years so far. I use it on sweet potatoes as they are so hard to keep weeded because of the vining habit. I used it on squash and melons for the first time last year and it was a big boon to my melons nd cucumbers. Squash loved it too.

we've been growing cucumbers in well established gardens that don't have much in the way of weed problems. yes, there are some but we are able to keep up with the weeds by using the stirrup hoe in between the vines, hand pulling whatever we need to do and then the cucumbers fill in enough that there's not much light getting down to the dirt to give the weeds an easy chance to grow quickly.

the squash we also have been mostly growing in established gardens so the weed pressure isn't too bad. again the stirrup hoe in between and sometimes moving the vines scraping and then moving them back. the vines can run quite a ways off into the surrounding pathways or gardens. some might get weedy. the vines themselves will root from the nodes so i don't want a weed barrier in the way of that. it is how they can survive being attacked by borers.

i did find out last season that the squash bugs did like some neighboring cardboard i was using to smother some grasses and plants along an edge. it was closer to the plants than i really wanted it to be, but that was that garden. this year we'll probably go back to where we had them two years ago. they have a lot more room there to run and the neighboring area is pathway or thyme on all but one side. i'll try to get the grass turned under this spring but i may not be able to get the whole area done. other projects in the works and i really need to get the edge redone so i can have my bean garden back...

 

[so lucky]

Regarding the kind of bugs I have problems with; mostly stink bugs, harlequin stink bugs, cabbage looper and sometimes aphids although they are controllable if I see them. It's the stink bugs and harlequin bugs that decimate my tomatoes and cole crops. (Providing they survive the cabbage loopers)
My DH tried to get the tiller going, but has pronounced it dead.
I have two more dry days, then it will start raining again, and I doubt I will be able to get any tilling done till late spring. But maybe I can get DH to help with turning it over with the spading fork, and not do the tilling this year again.
In the past I just turn over the "row" and leave the paths alone. Roots from some fairly near-by trees always necessitates doing a lot of cutting with tree pruners or a small saw, so there is a lot of getting down on my knees, then back up. The ground has been built up some, in the low areas, along the rows to avoid drowning the roots. So the garden is pretty uneven. One reason I want to till is to redistribute some of the soil.
I don't have a problem with burning off the entire garden. I have thought of trying to find a torch thing to kill small weeds in season. Hmm. Maybe I'll ask Santa for a flame thrower.

 

[catjac1975]

Regarding the kind of bugs I have problems with; mostly stink bugs, harlequin stink bugs, cabbage looper and sometimes aphids although they are controllable if I see them. It's the stink bugs and harlequin bugs that decimate my tomatoes and cole crops. (Providing they survive the cabbage loopers)
My DH tried to get the tiller going, but has pronounced it dead.
I have two more dry days, then it will start raining again, and I doubt I will be able to get any tilling done till late spring. But maybe I can get DH to help with turning it over with the spading fork, and not do the tilling this year again.
In the past I just turn over the "row" and leave the paths alone. Roots from some fairly near-by trees always necessitates doing a lot of cutting with tree pruners or a small saw, so there is a lot of getting down on my knees, then back up. The ground has been built up some, in the low areas, along the rows to avoid drowning the roots. So the garden is pretty uneven. One reason I want to till is to redistribute some of the soil.
I don't have a problem with burning off the entire garden. I have thought of trying to find a torch thing to kill small weeds in season. Hmm. Maybe I'll ask Santa for a flame thrower.

BT for cabbage looper.