On Fri, 9 Jun 2006 23:59:02 +1200, "George.com"
wrote:

What do you mean by "no till"? Not turning the soil over each season with
a
rototiller?

no dig, not digging the soil or very minimal tillage, using mulches and
green cover crops.

Geography probably makes a difference in growing tomatoes, but my
favorite growing method was to dig a hole about bushel basket size and
fill it with composted lawn grass from the year before, along with a
bit of lime and magnesium (Epsom Salts). The magnesium helps with
blossom drop, that seems to occur more with composted tomatoes. Set
a tomato plant in the composted material with a mixture of garden soil
and keep the area covered in mulch, either more composted grass or
freshly cut when I ran out of composted grass.

There is a drawback to composting and mulching heavily, it causes the
ground temperature to be a bit cooler and the plant tends to grow
bigger and a bit slower before producing tomatoes. Most of my
composted plants lived through the hottest part of summer and began to
produce again when the weather cooled. At the end of the season the
vine will have grown up over a 6' cage and back down to the ground
again. YMMV

Regards,

Hal Zone 8 Georgia