\nWhenever 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?\n<\/p>\n
\nRecent 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.<\/p>\n
\nRoto-tilling initially, to create a new garden patch, might be recommended, but perhaps not afterwards.<\/p>\n
One correspondent comments that, to an established garden, the less disruption to its soil, the better.<\/p>\n
\nSource:\n<\/p>
\nbigblogofgardening.com<\/a><\/p>\n \nplantea.com<\/a><\/p>\nJack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 …<\/p>\n