NO-DIG DAY 2022

November 3RD is No-Dig Day.




How will you be celebrating this year?

How many of you do this type of gardening?
How many have tried and failed?, and how?

 

I tried a bit of no dig last year, but the ground is so hard now I'm going to have to dig it at some point because I wont be able to plant anything next year without a drill.

 

I've done it for a few years. Should have done it earlier. I guess I'll be spreading compost to celebrate, although I didn't manage to create enough this year to cover all the beds.

 

Like @Hanglow I think it sounds like a good day to turn out the 'resting' compost bin and use its contents to mulch the borders. That said, it's been so mild here that those are still full of growing and blooming plants - plus it's meant to be very wet here tomorrow. Both good reasons for deferring that activity until later in the month

I do very little digging, unless it's a hole to plant a tree or shrub. When I first moved in, I did rather more because the soil here is London clay and it used to form a hard pan in dry summers. Autumn mulches really have helped, over the years - the compost bin doesn't produce that much, but several years ago after I'd had some landscaping done I had one of those massive bags of soil conditioner delivered, and used that to raise the level of the borders a bit. It also hugely improved the condition of the soil and is something I'd recommend to anyone who's struggling with theirs. I didn't dig it in at all - just spread it and let the worms do the work.

 

I do no dig on a veg border been doing it for a quite a while now .

 

What's this 'dig' of which you speak?

 

Forecast for the weather here is also rain for the day so celebrations for no dig day may just be harvesting some chard or kale for part of a no dig celebration dinner.

From looking at my immediate neighbours' gardens it is just me out of the three nearest gardens that have a no dig growing area.

Have used the no dig method for a few years now and find it works well in creating growing space for ornamental and food plants but boosted grass growth at the edges can be a problem. Share the issue with my material for the process not being seed free but find it easy enough to kill these off with the usual manual weeding and hoeing when the weed seedlings are still small. Lucky enough to have a great supply of raw material for covering new growing areas with, as there is a farm yard with horses just next door that produces lots of manure mixed with bedding materials. Have tried to record some of the issues I met with since starting a veg growing area in the linked video play list.

Happy gardening!

 

My pile also doesn't get hot enough, but it's easy to hoe off all the germinated seedlings on the beds in spring during a dry period.. then because you aren't turning the soil you aren't bringing any other dormant seeds up to germination depth, so subsequent weeding is less.

I'm hopeful my second pile I started a week or two ago will produce enough compost by spring to finish the rest of the beds. I'll need to turn it a lot more though and hope for a mild winter. I've got loads of greens as I grew far too many chicories and endives for autumn, I realise I just don't like them as much as I thought.

 

I did my beds last autumn with a thick layer of manure. Soread manure again during the summer. My first go at composting seems to be going okay. When I aerate it there is some heat.