I have been doing that for years and did not know what it was called. The main reason I till in that fashion early in the year is to help dry my very wet soil so I can plant on time.

Larry,

I find myself getting a handful of soil to look for weeds in the white thread stage when I am looking at my garden. Little white threads just under the surface tells me it is time to cultivate potatoes.

They are very easy to kill when they are in the white thread stage.

Johnny

Johnny, I've done it for years too and didn't know that it had a name. I think it makes a huge difference as long as you remember to avoid going too deep. Go too deeply, though, and you'll spend the rest of your year fighting billions of lamb's quarters. (Or, at least that is what happens to me.) I like to do it in January or February when the ground is really cold and the earthworms are down deeper in the earth. If I work the ground too late in spring, I run the risk of hurting the earthworms.

At the same time you're cultivating to uproot tiny germinating weed seeds, you also may be distrupting overwintering problem insects, which is just a bonus.

And, I have to add this, because my mind toys with the concept of no-till gardening, though that isn't what I do. I might someday, though. The raised bed in my garden where I have the least weeds is the raised bed that has two rows of asparagus plants in it, and I cannot work that soil because of the permanent nature of the asparagus plants. The asparagus bed was kind of weedy the first couple of years after I planted the roots, but I've worked to yank out the weeds while they were small and to keep that bed mulched, and it has very few weeds even sprout in it any more. Some of the plants are on their 4th year and some are on their third year. There's probably a lesson in there for me somewhere, but I like cultivating the soil so cannot imagine I'll ever go totally no-till.

At the NW corner of my garden where bind weed has been a huge problem, I don't do the stale seedbed cultivation though because ever time I disrupt one iota of soil there, I get about 200 bindweed plants sprouting. I try to yank them out as soon as they sprout, but the seeds can survive in the soil for 50 years so I'll likely have some sprout every year from now until the day I die...and, after I am gone, the bindweed still will be here. Going low-till or no-till and mulching heavily is the only thing that has helped with the bind weed in that area. I think there's just too many seeds in the ground for shallow cultivation prior to planting to be effective, and those seeds will sprout from early winter through late summer or early fall. If there was a good market for bindweed or pigweed plants, I'd be a millionaire.

Dawn

Larry and Dawn,

I plan to give the weed seeds four chances to germinate. I will run the rototiller every week for a month. I will have it set to till about an inch deep.

According to what I've read, this technique can reduce the weed pressure by 90%.

Dawn,
I don't have any bind weed. That is a different critter. It is even worse than Bermuda grass.

Johnny, I agree. I have to fight bermuda grass that wants to creep in under the garden fence and grow inside the garden, and it is annoying, but I can dig it out, put down heavy mulch, and not have too much trouble with it after that. Even if it creeps back in, it is easy to dig out if you catch it early. That's only because the garden soil is highly improved. In our first years here when it was unimproved or barely-improved red clay that you couldn't dig by hand, the bermuda grass won the battles with me more than it lost them. After 16 years of fighting to keep it out of the garden, I win more than I lose now.

I wonder if I let Johnson Grass and bind weed grow together in a sunny area, just which one of them would win? (I'm too chicken to let them grow in order to find out., because they then might take over my whole garden.)

Keep us posted on how the four chances works out. I think it might work pretty well for most weed seeds.

Dawn