Not much left to do this fall, but I sure do enjoy the sound of a bucket or barrel of water percolating down through the soil. I've got a theory that any organic system of gardening work, as long as the gardener is paying attention. Double digging, sheet composting, no-till, lasagna ... they all work because we pay attention and make sure they do.

Any way you prepare the bed you'll hear the same sound ... percolating water.

I hear percolating water every week, even in the fall!

The temperatures here are in the 40's, and I can still make several gallons of special aerated compost tea recipes in my 20 gallon plastic tubs.

I still use the teas to be a biostimulant to feed my microherd and my cover crops in my no-till raised beds.

Compost master ... peace be with you.

Now ... which came first, the raised beds or the no-till? Did you double dig once or twice and then go no-till or did you just build up the beds year by year as Ruth Stout would have done?

The first year I went organic, I had about a 20 feet by 20 feet garden that I totally tilled and double digged. (Whew!) I'll never do that again. I could beat the ole timer that suggested that idea!

Now all my other raised beds in my 3/4 acre gardens, are all lasagne style, no-till. Mostly horse manure/sawdust compost and many cover crops was my organic matter on top of the virgin soil.

I love mulching everything in my garden with organic matter!

I could beat him, too, 'cause I remember that guy ver well ... but I'm too tired from digging to make a fist.

I lie. I like digging. It's about the only exercise I get and we can both attest to the fact that its a pretty good work out. That said, the plot is only so big and its pretty much all been gone over. So now I'll lay down the lasagna.

:-)

My first Christmas gift from my husband, when we moved into our new house, was a shovel.

It's the best gift I've ever had from him (besides the kids, and the engagement and wedding rings).

It showed he really listened.

The first thing I did with it was dig a window well, when the IDIOT builder graded the property wrong, and flooded my cold room and basement with the first thundershower after the sod was laid down, blocking the vent in the cold room.

There's nothing like digging a hole in the ground. I think my daughter understands. My son thinks every hole needs to be filled. Hm.

Ah, memories.

Wow ... someone who likes to talk about digging holes ... I thouht I was the only one.

Once upon a time I took a Meyers-Briggs personality type indicator test and was scored an ISTP. Many books and articles have been written about the test, but the very first one I read started with this:

"A hole is to dig". I was hooked. Not that I care one way or another about Meyers-Briggs. I can take it or leave it. But I had immediate confirmation that I at least know something about myself. The important point, for me, is that I love tools and want to use them.

So ... deep beds and double digging for me. No-till is for sissies ... or ESTJ's, anyway.

Until I get older and can't dig anymore.

I to love to work the soil... but I have a definite problem with my tomatoes dying by Labor Day because of the fusarium wilt or what ever is in the soil... so this year I am going to try the lasagna layering in part of my garden to see if it helps... mulching heavy helps but doesn't stop the disease...

I would love to do the no till bed-making. But my yard has about 1/2" sandy topsoil and then its killer clay under that. I'd rather roll up my sleeves and dig and backfill with decent soil and get the garden going than wait (years?) for manure/compost to break down the clay. My neighbor told me that I'm way overdoing it. Dump a foot of dirt, call it a raised bed and be done. (To me, this is the equivilent of building a garden on the sidewalk.) Meanwhile, he wife (the gardener) is complaining that the beds dry out quickly and deep-rooting plants struggle to survive.
The bonus of digging is that when I get down to the depth I want to make the bed, I hit a stoney layer. I've been sieving the stones from clay and using them to make paths. It's backbreaking work but when I'm done the satisfaction is "priceless."

I've got the "new neighbourhood" kind of soil -- where the farm soil was scraped off, the houses built, and then the topsoil scraped off was sold back to us for the "builder's special" sod. Which meant a lot of folks around here got more than just grass, and felt it necessary to spray it into oblivion.

The window-well I dug had to be 3'X18"X2' in length, width, and depth respectively. (I have the Imperial measurements from the window well form I purchased.) I didn't have any pretty rocks coming up as I SHAVED the clay from the sides of the hole a few centimetres at a time. No. I had broken bricks, fragments of aluminum siding, metal construction ties, BEER CANS, nails, screws, plastic twine, and a very short end of cable, which scared the bejeebers out of me, thinking I'd hit one of the electrical cablings leading from the green box to my house, never mind those things are supposed to be 1.5m below the surface, and laid in right after the foundations are poured! So I filled my window well with brick fragments instead of gravel. Idiot builders.

However, I find that layering the garden in the back over my killer clay is just as effective as the garden I painstakingly dug out and filled with amendments, and in one spot, clay replaced with triple mix. I'll dig a hole for a tree, or a shrub, or my saskatoons...