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I have rocky, loamy soil with few nutrients and low organic matter.

I planted some fruit trees and attempting a fruit tree guild. I have a root mulch ring around all trees and I used black Kow compost when I put them in the ground. In the guild I planted comfrey (chop and drop), strawberry, marigolds, and clover in the grass surrounding the trees.

What else can I do to improve the soil structure?

No-till/no-dig makes a lot of sense on the surface (pun intended). Killing the microbiology kills your soil. But at the home scale, I just don’t understand it. Breaking up the structure will maybe kill some worms, break up mycelial networks, and if you keep things uncovered the microbial life will die.

However if you’re tilling only small areas at a time and making sure to mulch or cover crop it, I just don’t understand how the microbial life won’t return extremely quickly, if it’s even that reduced to begin with. Worms won’t have far to travel, mycelial networks will happily reform.

It seems like tilling repeatedly at the industrial scale – like tens or thousands of acres – is the real issue, because it will take much longer for adjacent microbial life to move back in across huge distances.

If anything it seems like the focus of no till should be at the very large scale. What am I missing here? I’m happy to be wrong, I just want to understand it better. Thanks in advance

Zone 5b The other two kiwi plants next to it don’t have this. Is it missing something? Too much of something else? Thank you for your input.

Would feeding wood ash to a comfrey plant and filtering the wood ash through the plant make any sense? How much of the nutrients available in the wood ash would the plant be able to uptake? Would too much wood ash harm the plant?

Hello all,

I am looking for a water storage of 500-1000 liters for my parents garden. It can also be two or three smaller storages. Yet, my dad is very much against plastic. He is also looking for a material that is long lasting. Do you have any good suggestions for a water storage material or product?

Thanks,