To till or not to till, that is the question and it's a question that we all get, no matter

who you are as a gardener it always comes through and it can't spark a little bit of debate.

Now I've done it both ways, most of you know that I've been to Charles Dowding's garden.

So that's a no dig garden, no dig market farm and it's fantastic, it's beautiful, it's exceptionally

productive and Charles has made his entire namesake on no dig which works really, really well

for him.

And I've also tilled my own garden once before.

So why would I have done that if I've seen someone who I consider a gardening mentor

to have never tilled?

Well, let's go ahead and just get into it.

What exactly is conventional tillage?

Conventional tillage practices, it's a widely used process by home gardeners as well as

commercial growers and you are disturbing your soil.

You're breaking up your soil at least five inches deep, sometimes up to 12 inches deep.

We often will use a roto tiller to do this and it's going to break up the soil.

Now what is no tillage or conservation tillage?

No tillage means of course that you are not breaking up the soil at all.

So conservation tillage is a method that tries to break it up as absolutely little as possible.

So you can use discs or you can use very simple ways to break up the soil instead of absolutely

ripping it apart.

And there's just different approaches to why you would do this.

I mean, the no till or no dig method is going to rely on the fact that there is a soil

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