If your spring gardening ritual includes lugging the tiller out of storage and giving the garden a good once-over with it, you may actually be harming your soil, says Dr. Charles Mitchell, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System agronomist.

Mitchell says there are really only two reasons to till garden soil.

"It should only be done to prepare a seedbed or to control weeds," he says. "Many people think they need to aerate that hard-packed soil and that tillage is the only way to do it. But that’s wrong. Mother Nature has her own way of aerating a hard-packed soil; it's called roots."

Earthworms and soil microorganisms help too, Mitchell says.

"A hard-packed soil is what happens when we don't have the organic matter present for the earthworms and microorganisms to live on and/or we have destroyed the natural, friable topsoil by too much tilling or by mechanical compaction," he says. "By keeping root channels in the soil from old and decaying roots, we keep channels open for soil drainage, aeration, and new root growth."

Earthworms also open up channels in soil. Too much tilling or mechanical cultivation destroys these soil channels and speeds up the loss of soil organic matter.

"Tilling a bare soil also encourages weed seed to germinate and can sometimes make weed control that much more difficult requiring even more cultivation," Mitchell says. "Mulch gardening builds soil organic matter, maintains the channels, and reduces the need for mechanical weed control."

SOURCE: Dr. Charles Mitchell, (cmitchel@aces.edu), Alabama Cooperative Extension System Agronomist, (334) 844-5489