Softening Outdoor Beds W/out Tillage??

Does anyone have any experience with softening fallow soil without tillage?? I have 25 year old horse pasture and I want to grow in ground. I am looking at a balance of Soil Food Web living soils, JADAM, and KNF. So does anyone have experience with softening with Bio-Complete Tea, or using JMS?? I have been using a 30" wide broadfork and I may die doing that . . .That work sucks. I live in Temp zone 5a so I don't have a long summer. I am on the track for my organic cert so no nasty chem.
I have lightly sprinkled in shroom compost, and rabbit turds for fungus and they are covered with hay and straw.
Any help would be appreciated.

Depending on the soil, sometimes just tilling in a lot of organic matter to start, then going no till afterwards can help get things going. Otherwise, broadfork is a great option for a less invasive way to open up the soil, but yeah, an area of any size and that would kill me. Otherwise, cover crops, mulching, green manure, adding compost, etc, and just time will eventually to the trick.

Yup, I'd till once adding all the amendments and prep it to be sustainable for the future.

Really hard to loosen compacted soil by adding things on top. Might take years to see a difference.

You might have better luck from a farming forum. This sounds bigger scale than most people's no-till beds.

Is there a Home Depot around? In some places you can find day laborers. Might be worth a couple hundred bucks to save your body and a week of pain.

How about building separate beds on top. Fill with amendments and topsoil . Eventually everything will work it’s way down. Just a thought good luck .

Temporary electric netting and chickens can clean up the surface decently.

Pigs can loosen the soil for you i hear. Doesnt take long for them to make a mess though.

Personally, I think its quickest to go ahead and till the ground up in the beginning. From there layer up with manure, compost, and carbon layers.

If you have time, you could run a cover crop and let the roots loosen the soil. Probably not enough time for you though.

Could you run a disk harrow aggressively to loosen the surface and then layer up?

Horse pastures here in my location are normally the last place you'd want to put a garden due to the compaction. But, usually are high in nutrients due to constant feed inputs for the horses if they haven't washed away.

I commend your hard work with the broad fork.

Raised beds sounds like the way to go if you only have the old pasture to use. That way you can layer in the humus and compost you need to keep the soil arobic.
Watch out for the horse manure's nutritional value. It's gonna be very high in some aspects so would recommend research into what balance you have in the soil there..

Rurumo said:

Depending on the soil, sometimes just tilling in a lot of organic matter to start, then going no till afterwards can help get things going. Otherwise, broadfork is a great option for a less invasive way to open up the soil, but yeah, an area of any size and that would kill me. Otherwise, cover crops, mulching, green manure, adding compost, etc, and just time will eventually to the trick.

Click to expand...

This

KNF practitioners build robust microbial communities resulting in fertile soils, more plant available nutrients, and reinforce natural processes scientifically to complement nature by adjusting and adapting the practices as necessary.

No till cover crop grown the covered and killed.