I tried it this year but I really bungled it.
The key to establishing productive no till beds is adding a lot of organic material over the cardboard/newspaper/existing grass, and being patient.
They won’t produce well the first year unless you add a lot of topsoil and compost right away (like 8-12 inches).
Most beds won’t hit their stride for a few seasons. They often need topping up with more material in years two and three, as the underlying stuff breaks down. I like to start new beds in the fall so they’re more established by spring.
All of this is to say, no need to undo your hard work so far. Just add more stuff on top (and maybe sow a cover crop in the fall to keep the soil biology alive.) Good luck!
I did it this year too. I had a whole dumpster load of compost delivered to my house, and had a pandemic’s worth of Amazon boxes in cardboard. I also had some fallen tree branches that I cut up.
The areas where it went cardboard -> branches & twigs -> leaves n crap -> compost, are the areas that are doing the best right now. In areas where it was just cardboard -> compost, it took much longer for my plants to get established. However, eventually they did! The big key was making sure to keep that cardboard wet. If you wet it down really good, and then wet the compost on top, the roots have a much, much easier time digging in there. Bonus points if you can add a couple inches of mulch on top of your compost.
Now I’m finding there’s so much compost that it’s making the weeds go fucking nuts, it’s wild to see how “life finds a way” in some areas.
But yeah, it worked out decently, just required enough water and time. Also thyme. No, seriously, using creeping thyme was a great way to help get the compost & soil to do its thing and firm up so that it could hold other plants.
Thank you for this great reply. About how long did the beds take to get established?
Probably 3-4 months? I had things planted, but they didn’t really start taking off for a couple months there. One side I didn’t put anything in to grow, and it’s completely overtaken with volunteer morning glories and passion flower vines. Burying soaker hoses about an inch under the mulch helped to loosen that cardboard up so my other plants could break through with their roots.
I have no idea what I’m doing but we started a no till garden last year. We put down cardboard and then got a chip drop to spread mulch on top (~6 in) and let it sit. We got a ton of rain over winter and then started planting for the first time this March. Nothing else was added except some kitchen scraps and yard clippings for compost.
So far it’s been really hit or miss. Radishes, lettuce and cabbage went wild, onions didn’t do so well except for some small green onions.
We have tomatoes, cucumber, and watermelon all going strong right now but tomatillos and peppers have all failed to sprout or quickly died. We also have some dill, cilantro and borage that got a slow start but are thriving now.
I don’t feel qualified to give advice but everything I read said this is a really slow process. It takes years to really cultivate healthy soil with good microbes from nothing starting out. We had a setback because earwigs absolutely love the rotting mulch and they made their home in some of our cabbage, but it’s all beneficial in the long run, so the plan is to take what we can get and keep learning.
I try to but I do bokashi compost so I have to dig a little. I try to minimize the tilling because that dormant seed activation is so real! Covering with straw is far less headache inducing
Most of the sources I’d found on the subject seemed very cultish (“You have to do everything exactly my way or else you’re wrong!”), which was also what I found when I looked into the square foot gardening method.
I find this very off-putting, so I rejected both and simply continued using what has worked for me in my raised beds and so far I’ve been happy with it.
For me, that means adding some compost to the beds each year after scraping off any mulch from the previous year that hasn’t started breaking down into soil. After adding the compost (usually just a bag of black cow and a bag of mushroom compost per 4x4 bed) I turn everything over and break it up well with a spade shovel, smooth it out, plant, and re-mulch.
I’m only doing 4 beds and a few containers, so I use starts instead of seeds. As such, I fertilize each one at planting by adding granular fertilizer, bone meal, and crab & lobster meal to the bottom of the planting hole, stir it in with the dirt, and plant over that.
I have, with some raised beds. What went wrong with yours?
Do you still practice it in those beds? I always wonder how it is after some time. So you yank old plants out or hoe them?
I failed to follow directions. Classic me. I put down dead leaves, then cardboard, then “some” compost and dirt. Well the roots were unable to grow through the cardboard and dead leaves layer. They all got stunted. So I pulled it al up and started over. I still want to try again, but I guess I should skip the cardboard and triple the compost layer?
Disclaimer: I don’t have that much experience, this is only my second year.
Last year, when I started, I put cardboard and then a layer of branches and leaves. Then soil on top. The soil layer was still quite thick (12-15 cm). This is inside a wooden garden bed frame to hold the soil. The ones I tried without the frame couldn’t hold enough soil and I kept running into the cardboard when planting and the plants seemed also stunted. But the beds with the frame did pretty well. I planted a mix of perennials (strawberry, thyme, chives) and some annuals (carrots, lettuce, beets). I had another bed with tomatoes, basil, maybe cucumber along with thyme, lemon balm and oregano.
I didn’t remove anything from the bed over winter. The annuals had been harvested or cut down at soil level (not dug out).
This year I found the vertical height of the soil reduced, probably due to some compaction and decomposition of the bottom layer of compost. There were earthworms in the soil. The reduced soil level allowed me to put some new soil on top. The perennials were still there after surviving winter. I planted some new stuff in the new soil (different from last year but still mixed around) and it seems to be doing well so far.
I am a bit weird in that I don’t mind ‘weeds’ growing now and then, I mostly cut them at the soil level and use them as compost. I let some of them flower like buttercups, oxeye daisies, dandelions, yarrow and others. I’m only strict with invasives (I’m in Sweden so lupines are my nemesis for example).
If you don’t have a lot of grass or weeds poking through you can skip the cardboard. Actually, I’m not sure the cardboard is beneficial at all. I mostly did it because I was trying to follow instructions. :)
Very interesting. Well it seems to be working well for you then. Glad you said that you’re doing this in raised beds since mine are not raised maybe it wouldn’t work as well. You say lupines are nemesis for you? Crazy! I’m trying to grow some right now. I can’t imagine them being so much of a problem wow
I think the raised beds are important to keep enough good growing medium above the decomposing layer.
