Gardening: does tilling the soil bother earthworms?

Self-tutoring about gardening: the tutor wonders about breaking up the soil.

Whenever I turn the soil with a shovel in one of the garden plots, the earthworms seem disturbed – some even get cut in two (Sorry!). Yet, tilling the soil is a tradition. Is it really good?

Recent reading I’ve done suggests that hand tilling – hoeing – might be okay, but mechanized tilling might be less so. Apparently such thorough disturbance of the soil can disrupt its galleries of moisture and air pockets, along with the micro-organisms that thrive in them. Earthworms, as well as other invertebrates we might not even imagine but who are important participants in soil, can perhaps be menaced by mechanized tilling.

Roto-tilling initially, to create a new garden patch, might be recommended, but perhaps not afterwards.

One correspondent comments that, to an established garden, the less disruption to its soil, the better.

Source:

bigblogofgardening.com

plantea.com

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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