I honestly don't know, all my info has come from the internet. I use a pond, hugels and cover crop to skip watering. I don't till because tilling is simply harmful, you don't need to do anything to skip that. I use a cover crop of white clover and bugleweed to keep the soil from eroding away, keep the soil full of roots and thus bacteria, and to keep the moisture in the soil instead of having it evaporate off. Bare earth is really terrible, but everyone has learned through osmosis that gardens are supposed to look bare. In the fall after harvesting I spread the composted manure from the goats, rabbits and chickens on the garden beds. That's pretty much it. The biggest difficulty in gardening is planning (how much to plant of which things at what times), not actual work.