I stated planting my hugel mounds. It felt and looked weird. It wasn’t clean bare soil, just chopped down cover crop. It is normal to plant in tilled bare soil, but I haven’t tilled at all this year. I’ve planted in soil that was mulched with leaves over the winter, soil bare after the chickens had scratched for a few weeks, tucked in plants next to existing ones, planted through sheet mulch and now hugel mounds with a chop and drop cover crop. I’m not in a hurry to get out the tiller: everything I did was much simpler.
It didn’t feel wrong. In some ways it felt and looked more right than what we normally do. So often in gardening we are trying to move against succession. We try to maintain sterile mono cultures of annual plants, where nature wants to progress into perennials. Nature avoids bare soil and monoculture, so I’m avoiding it in my own garden as well.
I might be stuck with small unproductive plants and weeds come summer. The rain and hail that has been pounding us since I planted isn’t helping either. But if it fails, I’ll just adjust my system. But for now I’m enjoying the experiment. And wondering why in the world I own a tiller.
Liz Braithwaite 