No dig cultivation

[Toddy]

I've just followed a link on the Dove's farm site (looking for recipe) to Charles Dowding's site.
No dig gardening….it appeals to me on several levels, not only because our soil is saturated heavy clay and for all the years we've lived here the only way I have found to deal with it is by adding every bit of compost that I can. I have three compost bins and I compost everything from veg scraps to leaf litter, from weedings and grass cuttings to prunings and occasional bundles of hay and straw.

http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk

I like the idea of not digging or damaging already soaked soil structure, and there's no getting away from the aches of arthritis some days. If I don't have to dig, I don't. I just pile on top and spread out a bit and let the worms pull the compost into the clay top layers.

Does anyone else do this ?

M

 

[bigbear]

I have last year built raised beds on our allotment so thney will be no dig, just muck and compost on them each year.
the beds where we grow into the ground (as I have not yet built raised ones >) I have turned over to mix in the muck this wonter but am very interested in the no dig approach. Need to have a think and then commit to it I guess......

 

[TallMikeM]

I don't, but have been to a couple of places last year that do it on a commercial scale and am going to give it a try on a garden scale here (having a reorganisation here veg garden wise). It looks really good.

 

[Toddy]

Every place that I have put in edgings I find that I'm just giving the slugs hidey holes and safe dry places to lay more blasted eggs.
I like the idea of walk-on-able paths that don't have anything that they can hide under too.

N

 

[xylaria]

I dig a shallow trench then empty anaerobic wet sludge in trench then cover with soil. It half double dig half lasagne gardening. I was never that successful with no dig. It is simmler to the method that was used in primative strip farming. My garden is wet that to water logged and was very low in nutrients. It is now healthyly clogged with wild plants and veg and doesnt flood.

My paths are where I walk. The grass/wildness stays short where feet go.

 

[Macaroon]

Myself, my brother and his wife took on a third of an acre site forty six years ago. We had had a year or so to think about how we'd work it all whilst waiting for everything to go through and decided we'd have a go at the no dig system. The ground was in very poor heart when we took it on, fairly heavy clay which had been very heavily compacted and very sour, the only things growing were very sparse dock and bramble at the edges.
We made a start on it as soon as we got it, late October, clearing it completely; my brother and I then double dug the whole site and laid about eighteen inches of very well rotted horse muck across the whole site. We had a proper old-fashioned Winter that year and the frost and snow took care of incorporating the organic matter at the surface. The next Spring we planted as much as we could over the site, concentrating on root crops to attempt to open the soil to some extent; for carrots and parsnips etc. we spent countless hours digging small holes and filling them with a sand/compost mix to let them get down and had reasonable success with this.

For the first two or three years we did the same thing, putting huge quantities of whatever good quality organic matter we could beg, borrow or make onto the ground as a top dressing, no digging in at all; there were many occasions when we thought we'd made the wrong decision and we came very close to getting the rotovator in but we resisted. Then in year four, bingo!...........everything we planted from then on was at the least
healthy and more than edible, we even had good surpluses which we were able to barter for the things we needed for fencing, hen houses and all the rest. We got good fruit trees going, loads of soft fruit, tomatoes and salad crops in a smallish poly tunnel, also paid for from barter of the excess.

We worked that bit of ground up until two years ago and fed two families as they grew up and then for a while the beginings of all the families that grew from them; we never dug that ground again after that first big one,
and it never failed to produce very well for us. If I do it again I will, without hesitation, go the same route. Everyone who ever visited always remarked on how the patch always looked in really good heart and it never let us down.

There is now a house being built there and it scalds my heart every time I see it.

 

[sav720]

I've had a sheet mulch test bed set up for a season now and it works great!
I've had to create it at my rents house as I'm landless. Makes great use of green whips trimmed from trees and shredded, saw dust from log cutting, green matter/ food scraps. our yield looked healthier and grew bigger than when grown in the earth. My rents love it as they no longer need to dig, and all the little living composters are more productive alive!

 

[British Red]

I've used no dig, "Back to Eden", double dig, everything except Hugelkultur. They all work. "Back to Eden" is the easiest to maintain if you have access to limitless woodchip (not hard if you are nice to a tree surgeon).

 

[Toddy]

We're on acid woodland clay soil…..adding woodchippy stuff seems to stiffle growth for a couple of years, but adding well rotted (well, a year in a worm worked compost bin) woodchipped stuff, seems to be a very good thing indeed
Unrotted stuff seems to let colonies of mould and fungus thrive in our relatively mild but very damp bit of the world.
Maybe why we have no shortage of the tree rot fungus in the woods.

The top two feet of my garden beds are fairly good, if very clay rich, soil, then there's a layer of mucky clay for maybe six or eight inches, and then it's solid blue clay for several feet. Below that it's coal, clay, sand, clay coal, sand. We're slap bang in the middle of the old Tropical rain forest inundation area here. Further along there are huge areas of sandstone (three local quarries within living memory) and at the edge of the village there's loads of fine sand, but we're on the clay bit.

I have slate step stones out to the bird feeders…right now those slates are covered in an inch of gloopy mud that looks like the best potters slip clay
Fine for playing in, making stuff from, but a pain in the neck to try walking on.

M

 

[British Red]

If you turn woodchip in, it does lock up nitrogen for a few years, if you leave it on the surface it prevents evaporation, keeps weed seed off the surface, and slowly rots in. Works well on a light loam or sandy soil, but I haven't tried it on clay.

 

[Robson Valley]

"Zero Tillage" is becoming a much more common farming practice here, year by year.
Do remember that the root systems of all plants are living things which require oxygen.
Some sort of aeration is essential, even if it is no more than the "loft" given to the soil
by stiff compost additions.

In our huge forestry operations, soil compaction by the logging contractor is inspected and measured.
Excess will require, by law, remedial hook disturbance after which comes required replanting.

 

[Bowlander]

Glad I found this thread, going back to veg after a year off through a slipped disc. I've got unlimited access to cow manure, poultry manure and woodchip/pony/goat manure. Back to Eden sounds like a plan.

 

[Toddy]

You are one very lucky man
I live so close to my neighbours though that they'd complain about the smell. Even the dried chicken manure I tried had folks sniffing suspiciously :/

I honestly think that if I don't have to dig, so much the better. This heavy clay is a sticky mess to work.
Fertile though if I can open it up any.

Good idea to try if you've a history of back trouble, this back to Eden stuff

atb,
M

 

[Bowlander]

My neighbours have a midden between us and them, its sheep and cow manure so smellier than ours!

 

[Robson Valley]

The valley bottom in and around my village is an untold depth of glacial clay from the melt-back
of the glaciers in the last ice age (8,000 - 10,000 yBP).
We got all new water mains so I've seen 12' down, right in front of my house!
It's gray and the consistency of potter's clay.
My yard was "crowned" with 40 loads of good soil. So it's quite sandy and easy digging.

What I see my neighbors do from time to time is to hire a tractor-mounted PTO cultivator/rototiller
to work in a few truck loads of manure from local ranches. Judging by the results, I'd do exactly the
same on that same land.

 

[British Red]

With unlimited manure, my technique is to put it on 4-6" deep and rotovate it in (only the well rotted stuff). Do that for five to ten years once a year and your soil quality will be incredible.

 

[Toddy]

Not living cheek by jowl with neighbours though.
The gable wall side of the garden is surrounded by trees of the woodland walk alongside the burn, back and front and other side butt onto neighbouring gardens, and they aren't huge gardens.
I keep three compost bins going and I compost everything that the worms will eat. That compost is both fertile and full of organic debris that opens up the clay in the beds and pots, but the lawns are generally lucky if I can get an all over forking and sand brushed in each year. If it's too wet, even walking on them to cut the grass leaves a mess.
What we do grow crops well though.

M

 

[British Red]

I was thinking of Bowlander . The stuffs available and the neighbours don't mind...like here. I thinks its a wonderful opportunity. I get a weird satisfaction now picking up a handful of soil from the veg beds. Its light, free draining but holds moisture, rich and easy to dig. Deep rooted thistles can be uprooted with thumb and fore finger the stuff is so soft. Mad to be boastful about dirt of course, but mine has cost five years of sweat and I am proud of it.

Sounds like Bowlander can get his even better!

 

[Toddy]

I do take your point, but I don't have an acre of garden, iimmc, and neighbours like to open windows and not smell sharn. The soil in my beds is easy worked too, but if I don't keep at it, then it reverts back to clay
It's a double whammy; Lanarkshire blue clay soil and a lot of water.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

Organic matter is going to decompose just as sure as the sun comes up in the east (on my planet).
That indicates that it will need to be replaced at intervals. So be it. I can do that.
Heaps of sand and gravel cannot hurt. The inherent mineral texture of the soil has to change.
I've got marble-sized rocks in my veg garden which I ignore.