No dig gardening

I listened to a farming program on the radio this morning advocating the no dig system. Strips of soil covered with 12 ins wide coverings of alternate wood chips and farm yard manure. Plants are put into holes in the manure and covered with netting tunnels.
It was admitted it is a very labour intensive method and could take many years to establish throughout the country. I wondered how long it would be before the country ran out of wood chipping and farm yard manure if we all switched to this method overnight. Hand weeding seemed to be advocated as well.
The big plug was protecting and improving the soil structure but what about invasive weeds like brambles. How do you get rid of them without digging the roots out?
A big land owner has donated a 7 acre area for research into the idea, he admitted they have the College of Agriculture next door whose students help during term time but they struggle with workers during the holidays when the students go home etc. I cannot see how this would be a viable venture commercially for the future.

 

I wonder if there is a middle way. Rather than double digging whole beds, if gardeners just made a small hole for a new plant and then let it expand its roots into the undug bit around that would reduce overall disruption to the underground ecosystem, but still give a new plant a favourable start. Also, going for long term planting rather than forever changing things might help. So out with bedding and in with long lived perennials.

 

The problem with "no dig", is that most veg are annuals.
Yes, by all means replace annual flowers with perennials (I think all of ours are, although some just self seed). But surely we need to dig and add soil improvers occasionally!?

 

I have tried to experiment with the no dig vegetable plot idea and found it works well on a small scale but not sure how it would be practically scaled up to 7acres or more to allow a big enough growing operation to be competitive with conventional vegetable growers where the economy of scale seems to be vital to the enterprise being economically viable. Here in Ireland the trend has been for most of the smaller vegetable growers to be going out of business with only the larger operations that can have an element of mechanisation and input from many lower wage employees contributing to a low labour cost per vegetable produced and packaged and shipped for distribution to markets. Even just washing root vegetables without it being some way mechanised adds a lot of labour hours to the volume of vegetables that need to be sold to make a business viable. The cost of 7acres of netting tunnels described on the radio would not be cheap either and it could take a good deal of investment and innovation for a vegetable grower to successfully transition to a no dig system. I posted some videos of how my small no dig vegetable plot developed here.

Happy gardening!

 

But surely we need to dig and add soil improvers occasionally!?
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Well actually, no, the worms and other microorganisms should do the work. Top dressing with organic matter should be enough if there's enough vitality in the soil.

I can only see worth in back breaking digging if the soil is hugely compacted and lifeless.

I did use no dig at an allotment for two years and the only negative is the cost. Especially when prices of compost have exploded. But it made it possible to grow good plants and also virtually get rid of a massive bindweed problem.

I will probably go for raised beds for the pottager in my new garden but intend to disturb the soil as little as possible.

 

That's true. Maybe digging when absolutely necessary, but not when not.

 

I think no dig works just as well for perennials as it does for annuals. I know many garden designers are now planting borders this way.
There is certainly no need to dig in mulch each year, just pile it on top and the worms do the work.
I think it has been shown beyond doubt, that digging the soil is not good for the micro biome.

 

There is a lovely chap called Huw Richards on youtube and I don't know if he coined the term but uses "minimal disturbance" as his phrase which basically means you only disturb the soil when you have to. Charles Dowding has a decade old no dig vs dig experiment in his garden and he found that with no dig (where the same compost is used on both plots, about 1-2 inches of mulch a year and no fertilisers) yields were higher and there was more carbon in the soil (think 4% higher).
I don't know about industrial scales but it does seem to work with the old back yard plots and it does create healthier soil from what I have seen.

 

Huw's veg growing book is really nice too, if anyone needed a solid introduction to veg growing I'd heartily recommend it.

 

I've been no dig for decades. I've only recently realised it was a 'thing'. I thought it was just me being lazy.
I jiggle the soil now and then, especially if I've trodden on it. Does that count as digging?

 

Depends how deep you jiggle, I guess.

I've only ever dug holes the size I need to plant something out, mixed in some multi-purpose ... and let it get on with it.

 

Many of your questions will be answered here:
Richard Perkins | Making Small Farms Work
& here:


I have been using the philosophy of No-dig for 10 seasons now, on two different sites, and have not had any reason to alter direction from this.

 

Only deep enough so that it looks like I've dug it @ViewAhead ,
I will confess to digging a hole to plant something, now and again but I normally leave it up to the self seeders. They seem to know what they're doing - apart from teasels who tend to settle in somewhere really stupid.

 

So far the only results I gave had to no digging in my garden,due to health problems, is a garden full of brambles and field grass, smothering any plants that dare to try and grow.
I can just see the flowers of my first peony peeping above the top of the grass, also the buds of some iris. The weed matting I put down to create paths has disappeared under a thick thatch of grass

 

With respect, your garden is not a result of the no-dig philosophy; rather that of reduced gardening .Perhaps you will be able to enlist some help with the natural incursions until you may resume gardening activity. Or just be ahead in the 'rewilding' stakes.