JRYezierski wrote:
"Allonia" wrote in message Tilling with a Mantis, Honda, Sears or any other
mini-tiller is about the

second worst thing you can do as a gardener. The soil is actually

pulverized

into the finest particles of the soil possible.
This will inhibit any and all possibilities of existing life forms of
earthworms and night crawlers to exist in the soil. Additionally, the soil
will compact to concrete conditions after the first rain!


What are you taking about????

What the poster was talking about is over tilling and especially with
high speed sharp tined tillers. You basically create powder which is not
the best thing for gardening. You can do some reading about "til pan"
and no till gardening and learn about the negatives of tilling. Many
will argue that tillers have no place in the garden however this isnt
always true in the real world. We are small scale organic farmers and in
many cases we use 3PT hitch tillers on our tractors however we are very
careful not to over till.
As you state, one of the best places for use of a tiller is when you
are starting from very poor ground or grass. They are almost essential
in the first couple years unless you can employ countless quantities of
low wage or slave labor. However, if you have the ability to build your
soil heavily in those first couple years the tiller should never see
that soil again once its built up. Of course if you have the time,
energy, and manpower, you can do away with the tiller from the start but
in the real world when you are taking a piece of ground from say red
clay covered with grass to a viable piece of land to grow on, a tiller
is almost a must. This goes for most poor soils. However, tilling in
general is not the best option if it can be avoided. It can be, but on
larger scales it gets very very difficult.

Mark

I have never had any problems with the soil getting compacted after rains of
any type.If what you are saying is true than tell me why the semi-organic
farmer neighbor of mine rototills his fields than plants his
carrots/parsnips and beets in the same field.When he harvests the soil is
not compacted even after a few mopnths of rain or irrigation.
I'm a para with a large garden that has permanent isles/rows. My rows are
about 20"s wide that are rototilled yearly to blend in the compost.I have no
compaction occurring in my garden rows at all.

Frogleg
Another method to make raised beds are get your lumber and construct your
large form for the raised bed.Than dig out the same amount of soil that the
sides of the raised bed are(say you used 10inch wide boards or the sides are
that high)leaving a few inches for the sides to rest on.Than fill in with
some old hay or other compost or even new balled hay where you removed the
soil.Pack this filler and replace the removed soil.You will need to get
additional soil to fill up the raised bed completly.
There you go, you now have a raised bed.
Or as other poster said rake up and mound the soil to have a freeform
raised bed.

Jerome