Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:

the money spent on the tillers (two, several hundred each)
could easily have financed my seed, tool and hose buys for
the next 10 - 20 years.

That's something I've never done. The closest I've come to a power
gardening tool is my dad's Derald-powered push plow. As you know, by
"tilling" (as distinct from "rototilling"), I mean using hands,
four-tined spading fork, or shovel, pretty much in that order of
priority/frequency. Hands and/or fork blend in a pretty standard blend
of amendments plus a healthy dose of alfalfa and a fair share of
whatever compost may be available along with whatever volume of
legendary horse dung looks "right". Sometimes, though, I just push back
the mulch and plant, just like Ruth Stout.

it was done long before i moved back here, and both
were destroyed along with other equipment before my
time. now all that extra dead metal and wasted space
hogging stuff is gone and we're down to one large
weedwhacker which i've not needed to use since 2006, the
lawn mower and the hedge trimmers (which are useful for
chopping back the green manure patch).

there are some gardens here that i can do some work
in without having to use a shovel, but other than those
most of the rest of the gardens would break your hands
if you tried to stick your fingers in them. they are
getting better as i keep putting good organic stuff in
them and the worms do their magic, but like you said
before it takes time.


Harvesting compost from my "everbearing" compost pile and digging
in the garden with hands are, respectively, my two favorite gardening
activities. The shovel gets used, maybe once each year to loosen the
soil deeper than the reach of the fork and every two-three years to dig
deeply enough to cut invasive tree roots that the fork won't handle. As
you observe, tools, tillers, and such put earthworms and insects on
which I depend heavily to maintain the garden's health at risk. Hell,
no: I AM NOT OBSESSIVE with this damned gardening jones, it's just a
phase....:-)

it's a good phase IMO. respect for the earth is
something so many people either don't care about or
they just have no connection to it at all. go outside?
what's that? bugs? eww! etc. *sigh*

the other thing that gets me cranky is to watch the
farmers around me turn their fields into dead subsoil.
when i was a kid, when the farmers would plow the birds
would follow along behind so they could get the bugs
and the worms - now when they plow you don't see the
birds out there much at all. wish i could afford to
buy them all out around us and do a community farm
and gardens space, but i don't have that kind of $$$.


songbird