Should You Remove the Sod Before Tilling a Garden?
Hey it's Brock here from Rock Hill Farms And today I'm going to tail a garden Here on my own property But I'm going to do it a little bit Differently than I normally do So I've already tilled I think four or Five Gardens for people this year and It's a really simple process I just show Up they tell me where they want it I Drop the tiller and run One Direction And then I run the other direction and I'm done But I know what happens when you do that Because most of the time those people Have an area like this that is just Grass And when I just dropped the tiller into That all you're doing is circulating That grass And you're not even you're not killing It even it's still there you're just Mixing it up so very quickly that grass Just grows right back through into your Garden and you're weeding heavily from Day one and that's the biggest negative To having a garden So I'm thinking what's the better way to Do that and the traditional way is To plow it flip that sod over let it Decompose Under a layer a thick layer of soil And it kind of kills it off but it also Breaks down and enriches the soil a Little bit
Well believe it or not with all my Equipment I don't have a plow I don't Have a disc So a couple things I I want to get Before we do our big pumpkin patch but I thought what how could I do this with The equipment I have first thought is I Take the tiller and set it as low as It'll go and just tilt two inches or Three inches of ground and then come Back with the bucket and scoop all that Loose material out and that would work And it's what I would do if I didn't Have a skid loader but because I have a Skid loader I can easily just peel this Sod off and carry it off and I'm going To take that sod and put it down by the Pond where we've got bare spots So I'm just going to peel this off in The shape of what I need and then before Tilling I'm going to bring some compost Up and I'm going to get some ash out of The fireplace and see if I can do a few Things to enrich the soil just a little Bit So anyway hopefully this all works out And you'll see the garden over time First thing I gotta do is get this gate Out of the way I tore down a big section Of fence that used to run this direction On the property and I had a friend who Wants that gate and I've never taken it To him so anyway let's get started [Music]
[Applause] Foreign [Applause] [Music] So this Garden is going to be really Small Because I just don't have the time and Patience right now to do a big Garden Like I'd like to But this fall we are planning a huge Pumpkin patch at least several Acres so That seems big to me I was really Tempted to do this whole thing with the Tractor just because probably most of The people watching would be doing the Whole thing with the tractor but I Wondered if that was really a good Reason to make it take longer for me and Decided to just try to be efficient Today I was thinking about laying all This sod out in complete pieces like You've seen me do before But decided I didn't want to go that Route I'm going to kind of grind this up With the Harley rake and spread it that Way and I think it'll cause that area Next to the pond to be covered in Grass Pretty quickly Oh Thank you I'm bringing material up right now from Two different piles one of them is Actually mushroom compost from a local Mushroom farm and the other pile is
Composted horse manure that is several Years old so should enrich the soil Pretty well [Music] Thank you [Music] People [Music] [Music] Thank you [Music] Foreign Foreign [Music] Well looks like a tilled garden bed Right Not proclaiming to be doing anything Special or magical here but my idea was That I would be better off if I removed The sod so that the grass is not stirred Into the soil now we'll see how long it Takes for this to be covered in Weeds And like I said at the beginning you Could just as easily do the same thing With the tractor you would just need to Adjust the tiller so that it would make It easier to peel that sod off but I Appreciate you taking time to watch the Video I'll put links on the screen to More of our videos and I'll see you next Time
