Soil Cultivating and Tilling

Name: Greenbloom Landscape Design Inc
Address: 165 Geary Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6H 2B8, CA
Telephone: +1-647-500-5263
Price range: 0$

Planting a garden requires healthy soil. In order to achieve this, the gardening experts at Greenbloom recommend cultivating and tilling your garden beds to get the most out of your crops each season.

Cultivating

What Is Cultivating?
- Removing weeds from the garden and loosening the soil to optimize it for the retention and penetration of air, nutrients, and water.
Why Cultivating Soil Is Important
- Helps to break up the dry crust on the surface of the soil, allowing air, nutrients, and water to get deeper into the ground where the plant roots can access them.
- Makes it easier for new seeds to sprout through the surface of the soil.
- Interrupts germination of weeds.
How to Cultivate
- Loosen the top few inches of soil.
- Be careful not to damage or disturb plant roots.
How Deep to Cultivate
- A couple of inches. More than this will cause the surface to dry out faster.
When to Cultivate
- Only if necessary, such as when you can see the soil surface has crusted, and weeds are sprouting.
- Before you lay down fresh seeds.
- When top dressing the soil, cultivate shallowly.
When Not to Cultivate
- If the soil is wet, as this can compact the soil.
Gentle Soil Cultivation
- Useful for cleaning up after dead crops.
- Turn over crops and chop through roots to aid decomposition.
- Use a digging fork or broad fork for aeration.
How Does Cultivating Differ from Tilling?
- Tilling is a much deeper form of cultivation used when preparing a new bed or adding a large amount of organic material.

Tilling

What Is Tilling?
- Deep cultivation used when preparing a new garden bed.
How Deep to Till
- 8-10 inches for a new garden bed.
- 4-8 inches when mixing soil amendments into a bed.
When to Till Garden Beds and Vegetable Gardens
- The end of growing season.
- Autumn tilling is excellent for adding organic matter that will decompose over the winter, providing food for next season’s growth.

Pros and Cons

Both cultivating and tilling have similar pros and cons.

Pros
- Breaks up compacted soil.
- Adds air and organic matter.
- Helps eliminate pests.
Cons
- Destroys natural soil structure, making soil more prone to compaction.
- Reduces soil’s moisture-retaining ability.
- Brings dormant weed seeds to the surface where they can germinate.

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Soil Cultivating and Tilling

Cultivating

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