I have been using my version of this method (I did not know that it had a name) since the 70s. Each spring I layer with paper and then mulch/compost. I have a no spray garden using raised beds. I do have to do a little hand weeding (particularly pigweed) but not a lot. I raised about 1000 roses with only the help of a 2 hour a day late grade school/early high school student.

Glad you posted this! I've been wanting to discuss this very topic.
I've been doing a no dig garden for 8 years -- using hay mulch a-la-Ruth Stout. When I add compost or manure I just lay it on top in the fall and let the worms do the mixing.

HOWEVER, I also have quack grass, and when it takes over the beds I have to dig thoroughly to get it out. And here's the clincher -- when I looked back at my "meh" years versus my banner years, I found that the years I dug where the best production years.

I remember finding on a no-dig discussion board once that someone said the year they tilled their no till garden was their best year yet. Maybe it's the addition of oxygen the tilling offers?

It has all left me a little confused.
My conclusion has been that not tilling is great for the soil food web, and then tilling after a couple years gives you that first-year-garden success. Keeping it no-till (or minimal till as Pat calls it) makes it so that I don't have to move my garden every three years like my lots-of-till neighbors do.

I'd love to hear what the more experienced and more scientifically minded folks have to say about this issue.

No till is one of the primary tenets of square foot gardening. I have been doing it for years and it works (year round here) as advertised. I bring in fresh organic veg any and every day of the year from a relatively small amount of space.

no-till in sandy soils and no-till in heavy clay are completely different situations.

elsia, possibly the reason you found the need to till every so many years and the reason that I did not is because I used raised beds and did not compact the soil by walking in the raised beds.

Henry -- I have raised beds (not built, just using a hoe) and do not walk on them (they are permanent in the garden lay out. Anyone who steps in a bed gets in a lot of trouble.)

I have to dig every so many years because of the quack grass, and what I noticed is better production after that. I suppose it could be just coincidence, like those years it was also warmer or there was also more rain, etc.

I have a minimal-till vegetable bed. It started as a "what the heck, I can't dig that!" because the dirt was so hard I had to dig the planting holes with a pick because I bent the trowel. Seriously compacted AZ desert dirt.

And we had a few trees to prune and run through the shredder, so it got a thorough sprinkling of soil sulfur, a light application of ammonium nitrate because it was crap dirt, a drip system for water, and a thick topping of various tree chips to hold the moisture. It started with about 6 inches of shredded mesquite and palo verde on it.

The results (rosemary, basil, eggplant, tomatoes, okra, squash, and peppers) were really good so we keep adding mulch, and occasionally adding more soil sulfur. I haven't added any fertilizer since the first application because the plants are doing fine, but the mulch was just redone with about 6 inches of semi-finished compost.

I can dig a planting hole anywhere in that bed with a hand trowel now. Over time, the water, the plant's roots (I cut off dead plants, I don't pull them, so the roots decay in place), the decaying mulch and compost, and maybe a few earthworms have made some really decent garden soil there.

I have no tilled in my perennial garden for years with deep dark soil now. As for my field, I do permanent placed level beds and sometimes do a surface tilling in the bed or just flame weed them but I do not disc the whole field up every year like most people do. This means way less work for me. I have the paths mulched with black plastic. I would do grass mown paths but my husband won't let me use a mower. So in spring I can get growing right away. I also can concentrate manure and compost application right onto these beds.
The one drawback I have is pocket gophers running mad. It is a gopher paradise with no discing and all that mulch.

Here is a random pic of my field.
{{gwi:114549}}

little_minnie stated: "The one drawback I have is pocket gophers running mad. It is a gopher paradise with no discing and all that mulch."

H.Kuska comment: I also have that problem except that I call them "critters". Fortunately, there are enough cats in the area such that an equilibrium seems to have been reached.

I too have permanent raised bed which are amended before most croppings, or at least twice a year. We crop year-round and limit rototilling to major soil renovations when we subsoil by hand with broadfork.

When we began on this piece of ground, we contended with remnants of barn and shed foundation, road base and dump/burn pits. Weeds grew no higher than knee level (rather than head and higher), such was the compaction. Roots penetrated only a few inches and spread laterally. Even a tractor and rippers had trouble working the ground. So we opted to build raised beds and slowly double-dug the permanent beds. For several years we composted over the beds in long windrows.

Gophers moved in as the ground and crops improved. We trap daily 5 days a week, now for 20 years on this area.

The experience of superior production for a year or two after serious soil disturbance in no-till situations has to do with increased aeration and the work of denitrifiers.

My rule of thumb about the life of my fungal-rich compost in the soil: half life of about a year; thus the twice-a-year rule of applications of compost. I rarely see worms in surface soil except where moles have not been working. OTOH, after a rainy period the farm surfaces, including permanent paths are covered with worm castings.

Marshall -- that's an impressive success story on your soil

thanks for the explanation of my experience (and the new dictionary word: dentrifiers)

What do you do with all those gophers?
Do you need recipes?

The word should be "denitrifiers", critters that turn mineralized Nitrogen back into gas. Of course there are other bacteria and alga and perhaps other critters that can fix atmospheric nitrogen.

The first two years on the property, I had an old man working as part of the landscaping crew. He had recently remarried and wanted to make his wife a fur coat out of gopher pelts. He made his self-identified quota of 300 pelts in 2 months! The density of gophers were so great that they were the size of small rats. By the end of the first year or so they ones were we catching were twice the original size. 24 years later we are still catching 10-15/week of 7-8 acres.

I do no-till in my hoe-raised beds, keeping a constant mulch of grass clippings with seasonal compost. When I scrape aside the mulch, there are at least one worm head / sq inch rapidly withdrawing itself.

IOW, the worms do the tilling for meâ¦

I have enough irrigation water that when the gophers show up in the beds, I can drown them out pretty quickly.

Oooh, I've tried to flood out gophers. The problem is the presence of decades (or centuries) of tunnel complexes, some 2-4 feet down, marking the soil levels of many years ago. When we have a rainy winter, these tunnels fill and carry water under pressure to the bottom of the valley. The first winters of farming this ground were highlighted by geysers of water shooting 3-6 feet up and cratering the cultivated ground. We've worked to uncover and fill these tunnels (some widened over time to a foot or more in diameter). But some of them continue to be re-excavated by gophers with main tunnels running diagonally under the bed complexes.

Here, its ancient prairie dog tunnels, which can be quite extensive.

I've a couple of old prairie dog tunnel openings that I can pour water down for a week and have no idea where it goes.

And then, some years, they collapse, and I'll be walking along and sprain an ankle with a foot-deep pit in the middle of the lawn.

Some of my tunneling could be old ground squirrel works. They still remain in the area and we do bait and trap along the property lines to keep them at bay.

I've only ever tilled a spot once in decades of gardening, mostly in 5b OH, then here in AL for the past 7 years, so can assure you it's not necessary. Just add compost/OM to the surface when you have it.

Disturbing the ground unnecessarily does more harm than good, I believe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil, not dirt (a vid worth watching!)