Getting the spring beds ready with a broadfork

I had made the commitment to begin to relearn the old methods of gardening. I sold my tiller and bought a broadfork from Gulland Forge last year as a first step.

Tillers do speed up the work, however, the damage they inflict on the soil and problems created later just don't make sense to me.

As a tiller works, a number of detrimental effects occur. The first is that, as it works, it is tearing the weeds and then turning them back into the soil. In effect, you are planting weeds in your garden. A broadfork lifts the dirt and loosens the weeds as they sit for easy removal. Nothing is turned back into the soil.

The second problem a tiller creates is damage to the soil. The rototiller actually kills many of the beneficial organisms the soil contains, the very creatures that we depend on for good crops. Worms are the most obvious victims, however, fungi and microscopic organisms are also destroyed in the process. A rototiller will destroy air pockets in the soil and actually cause unnatural drying. All the creatures God,in His perfect design, need air, moisture, and food to survive in our garden. A tiller damages this ecosystem.

The final problem, that I've mentioned before, is the creation of a hardpan. Imagine the layer of the dirt just below the lowest tine setting on a tiller. As the rototiller turns it's tines, it scrapes that layer again and again. That layer is effectively "polished". It becomes a hard, solid layer that water and roots can't penetrate down, nor beneficial organisms can penetrate up from. The tiller separates the bed from the earth in effect.

Using a broadfork isn't the easiest or quickest method to garden prep. The pictures here show the course of three beds in various stages. The first picture is a fresh from winter bed that I just began to fork. The two beds pictures in the second photo are near finished. They've been forked, weeded, and raked. We are planting peas in one of them tonight.

This picture shows our small rhubarb bed. I used my broadfork in it even with a perennial like rhubarb. It's easy to maneuver around the plant, and they appreciate the aeration of the soil.

Finally, using a braodfork brings lots of good exercise (who doesn't need more of that), and most importantly peace. I love being in the garden, working hard, listening to nature, talking with my wife, or simply praying. It seems like the way God intended it.

I've provided a link to a Gulland Forge video. In the presentation Larry demonstrates spring garden bed prep.

Gulland Forge video 

Getting the spring lettuce planted

This weekend we dodged some rain and dealt with cooler, wet weather to get the kitchen garden, lettuce bed ready and planted.

This bed is right outside our back door and provides wonderful salads until about mid-late June.

I worked the bed with my braodfork to aerate the soil and lossen the compacted winter soil. Then it was raked to a nice soft loam.

I have sworn off tillers because of the damage they do to the microbes and other beneficial parts for the soil, and because of the hard pan it creates.

We planted five varieties of lettuce in this bed. We planted Ideal Cos, New Red Fire, Simpson Elite, Red Salad Bowl, and Buttercrunch.

The Ideal Cos and New Red Fire came as pelleted seeds, that really makes spacing them easy. Lettuce seed is so small that even using a hand planter, like I have pictured, it is difficult to use.

We always try and get the family involved. My daughter loves to plant (hates to weed), and my oldest boy was down in the main garden with the broadfork.

The only other big result of the weekend was getting the front bed weeded, forked, and raked. We are always trying different things in this bed. We've had luck with pumpkins, pickling cukes, and even flowers in the past. This year we considered hot peppers, but have decided to do this bed in cabbage and dill.

Dill acts as a great companion plant. The cabbage worm doesn't like dill much and it keeps them at bay.