No Dig or Double Dig

Good point about not enough compost @NigelJ. I seem to spend a fortune on it.

When I bought my house in France 4 years ago I found that the soil is clay. I've dug compost into the flower beds I've made and mulched them every year and at last the soil is getting more workable and better drained. Same for the veg garden, though it wasn't as bad as it had already been cultivated by the previous owner.

After years of digging and adding manure from the local farmer, I made raised beds in my previous vegetable garden in France as I thought it would be easier but the climate is too hot and dry here so they needed a lot of watering as they dried out. Not a good idea in a hot country.

 

Does jiggling count as digging?
I'm a chuck the compost on top and let the worms do the work gardener.
I jiggle fertiliser in where necessary or where I've trodden.

 

I do no dig now after about eight nor nine years of more traditional methods, it's a bit easier and better in many ways imo. My allotment does get free manure and woodchips though, not sure if I'd be able to do it well without

 

I dig deeply when it's a new area / spot, in order to amend my clay soil, but pretty much never again after that. I just add well rotted manure / mulch on top.

 

On the Beechgrove garden some years ago they did their own trials comparing digging and no dig. Dear old Jim Mcoll admitted he was very sceptical, but was astonished at the difference after 2-3 seasons. ( no dig much better). However I agree with @NigelJ you need an awesome amount of compost, you also need to be absolutely stringent about pulling any weeds before they get much more than one or two leaves. Most people that have tried it on my Allotment site just end up with a weed ridden mess, overrun with couch grass bindweed and dock.

 

Definitely as far as I’m concerned

 

One can see that this outcome is possible, due to conflicting levels of attention to detail; if you dig you rotate the wild seed bed bringing to the 'germination level ,a selection of weed seeds of the past. If you retain weed infested grass paths to remain the reservoir of couch, buttercup,dandelion you will have their offspring. With some allotmenteers trying to create countryside rather than producing food, there again is a conflict of ideals.
It is true that if you intend to feed the soil to feed your crops you will require sufficient compost; it can be any of a diverse assortment of organic matter, ideally a balanced assortment and logistics need to be accommodated. It probably will involve 'import' from beyond the plot. If 'wild'/amenity areas can be used for growth of comfrey, nettles,docks (cut before flowering !) even grass then this offsets the amount/volume imported. It also improves the quality of composting on site.
Frequent attendance is necessary to produce food crops; the approach of 'sow the seeds and scatter' will not give optimal results, a daily or frequent passing, with a hoe, to get any errant weed that dare show its face, together with 'clinical' attention to any source of 'infection' pays dividends; ultimately you need to stay on top. But it works.

 

Charles Dowding is the no dig guy here and he has some interesting videos on his youtube channel. The one thing that surprises most is that he only uses a couple of inches of compost on the beds once a year to maintain them. If you only have small beds it's not that much compost really.

He has run a side by side trial with a no dig vs dig bed, with same compost input, for I believe 14 years. The short version is the no dig has performed better with a 10% extra yield. I think a lot of this is explained by the soil having to repair itself, structure wise, before the plants can take off, whereas there is no such drawback with the no dig bed.

At our allotment site we have bindweed and weeds coming in from the neighbours plots but a mulch in the spring does seem to reduce a vast majority of these weeds, although bindweed will always be persistent. I'd love to move over to no dig but it isn't possible with the site, so we try minimal disturbance.

 

I was under the impression no dig was supposed to be less work, but that sounds like more work to me.

 

How can it be ?
If you dig, to bury farmyard manure, it still has to be imported to the plot. If you dig, and later apply chemical fertilisers, you jeopardise the soil life on each occasion. If you grow many more weeds then you have a lot more work in killing and removing them.
I have done both, for thirty five years I dug, as my father did, and know the pitfalls. Now my preference is not to dig , because it is less work and physically I can still cope.
I now understand soil biology and can see that more finess will give efficient results.
The 'work' comes at the time of year which is climatically more tolerable; no more cold March easterly winds biting ones back, rather sedately spreading a light 30mm of compost as ground is cleared in October, to return in Spring to clean ground that is active, ready to receive transplanted ,presown crops from modules etc.
I do not presume to tell others how they should proceed; but am happy to relate, and maybe explain, what I do, that brings results.

 

I don't have access to good manure, or really any kind of manure, I bought a bulk bag of garden compost to try to improve my veg plot a couple of years ago, in excess of £100.
Yes I dug it in rather than spreading it on top, it would have been less than an inch thick if I had.
I just don't think it's practical, I have my own compost, but again it's just a drop in the ocean.
It may work for some, but I don't think it's ever going to work for a lot of people.

 

Oddly enough as by magic this got mentioned on GQT yesterday.

I am thinking of getting half a qallotment, so wondering the direction I would take. The issue on an allotment is getting enough organic material to create no dig beds.

 

No dig, my weedy compost ( nothing pernicious) and a hoe works for me.

 

@pete I meant to say that that is another of the issues, a lot of people mistakenly think no dig means no work, it's just different work.
One of the ladies on my Allotment site has been on a couple of CD's courses. As @infradig says you need to be very diligent, she told me that CD, always takes two containers when harvesting, one for the crop one for any weeds he sees while harvesting, he spends a lot of time making, and spreading compost but even he admits he has to bring extra in from elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against the method in principle, I can see why, and how it works, in my experience, it's just not always practical in every situation in spite of what the advocates will claim. If you can only go to your plot once a week or even less, its likely you will be overrun by perennial weeds, if you don't dig them out.