Ran into a retired farmer at the hardware store who changed my view on soil

I was grabbing some compost at the Ace in Lubbock last Saturday when an old guy in overalls stopped me by the bagged manure. He pointed at my cart and said, 'Son, you're buying dead dirt.' Turns out he'd been no-till farming for 40 years and never once turned his soil over, not even for a garden. He showed me a handful of his own soil from his truck bed, and I swear it smelled like a forest floor after rain. That five minute chat made me cancel my rototiller order (which was $220) and start looking into cover crops instead. Has anyone else had a random conversation like that completely shake up your gardening approach?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_wesley16h ago

Read somewhere that no-till soil has way more mycorrhizal fungi than tilled dirt. Sounds like that old timer was proof it works.

rowan_hunt813h ago

Heard the same thing @the_wesley, seems like keeping the soil undisturbed really helps those fungi thrive lol.