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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I don't get the no till. The soils in my area are so compact that your % of successful seed germination will be much lower without that effort. I have a small plot that I manually till up a couple of inches deep each season and then mix in the compost I've been making all year. My germination success rate is much much higher that way

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Seems like tilling might be counterproductive long-term then:

> Tilling and plowing are almost synonymous with land cultivation, aren't they? Yet they actually destroy soil structure, create compaction, and kill the very soil biology that's the basis of fertility, like fungal networks and all those earthworms that make the soil nice and squishy.

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/tillage_practices_have_a_direc...

> According to the Michigan State University Extension, compaction is also a common side effect of tillage – at the soil surface, the plow layer and the subsoil.

The point is to build, over years, the kind of soil that fosters germination. You can mix in additives every year and till, or you can build a small ecosystem over time.

Maximizing the ecosystem health of what's underneath the surface is the point.

That's pretty much the reason farmers till too. But that doesn't stop the cult of no till thinking they know better

The farmers I know, who farm thousands upon thousands of acres, are also no till. Plenty of farmers doing the same.

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