Thanks for the ping! Good information here.
We are BLESSED to live in ‘The Driftless’ corner of SW Wisconsin - the glaciers missed us, so while we have hills and a good number of rocks, we also have great soil.
My secrets to great soil? Composted Mule Manure, compost from our household veggie and lawn scraps, and lots and lots of straw piled on top of garden beds for weed control, moisture retention and aesthetics. It breaks down beautifully, and I just pile more on top each spring season after planting.
I don’t do any tilling in my raised beds - too many earthworms in there and lots of good microbes and such. They know what to do on their own.
That said, Beau does till our big garden where we plant sweet corn, rows of flowers for pollinators, potatoes and winter keeping squashes. That area, too, is covered in straw for the reasons stated above. He only adds manure where I direct each year as those crops are rotated, so the potatoes don’t get too much nitrogen.
We composted cow manure from the barn, and we also built our chicken coop right in the middle of our garden (on the edge), and fenced in the whole garden, with a fence going down the middle. One year, the chickens use one half of it, and we garden on the other, the next year, we switch sides.
Had some of the best crops I've ever seen, with very few bugs.