Thank you for sharing your experience, @Skandi and @Nollie - and thanks especially to @Fire for those Bruce videos. Irish experience will certainly be useful... I've already had cause to give a wry smile when reading "Make sure you thoroughly wet your cardboard". Not in the west of Ireland, where the rain does it for you...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
It's been interesting to follow Bruce in his adaption of various growing methods for his particular patch of Tipperary - its soils, wind, rain and local availlablity of resources like horse manure and alfalfa.
We used to get huge truckloads of municipal compost delivered to the Allotments free but our council now send our green waste somewhere up North. The site they used is being "redeveloped " it would cost me around £100 to get a dumpy bag of soil conditioner or manure delivered. A nearby riding stable will deliver for around £50 but you couldn't sow or even plant directly into either, much too coarse, so it needs mixing in, by the time you do that you may as well dig. Several people on our site work off raised beds but most still dig, those that don't are mostly on a weed ridden mess, appart from one lady, who is experimenting with permaculture, even she has problems. I agree that no dig is a great idea, but it's execution, is far from simple.
Very interesting videos @Fire, to hear he equally has problems with perennial weeds and also the observations he makes about soil fertility, nutrient imbalances, cropping successes/failures compared to traditional methods when using the CD method.
I don’t have enough soil depth to earth up potatoes properly so only grow smaller salad potatoes such as charlotte and pink fir apple. I plant them in the beds like any other crop then mound up straw on top and that seems to work well.
Re edging, I used Core Edge last year on a new rose/perennial bed, worked out slightly cheaper per metre and looks great. There is very little bindweed in that patch so I can spot weed there. But the damn couch grass, MYOB and other creeping grasses get under it. You need perfectly well-behaved weed-free lawn grass for that too, it seems!
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
I think Bruce is very worth following for his experiments on food growing. He is not an ideologue, no drum to bang. He broadly works within permaculture terms, over seven styles of experimental gardens, including polytunnels and traditional plots that are dug over, so he lots of data to compare between approaches.
Really interesting to follow the discussion here.. this is my second year with an allotment and I have just taken on a new plot with proper clay soil, unlike my old plot which had perfect loam soil.
One section of my new plot also flooded in winter when I took on the key - so the combination of flooding and clay meant I have no choice but to go with raised beds / no dig. Given I will have to build the raised beds fairly tall (40-50cm) to offset the flooding issue each 2m x 1m bed would require about half a tonne of compost to fill. That would work out to be about 50 quid per bed. It soon adds up to what appears to be a very costly affair..
I do miss my old plot where the soil was so loamy and I just went with the tradition digging method which cost me nothing but a spade and a bit of exercise..
Whoever said it's not working because it's on clay? Surely having clay is a good reason for doing no-dig. On my sandy soil my only digging is for a trench for my runner beans. I could almost do it with my fingers.
But from where do all these self-styled experts, TV guys and journalists find all the compost they need? You need to start with at least 1 foot and add say 4 inches each year. If you composted all the "waste" material just from the veg patch you might get 1 inch a year. You need a big expanse of lawn, hedging and trees to make up the deficit. And that's assuming that other parts of the garden aren't needing mulch and compost.
Beware, no-dig may be just a fashion, just aesthetic, to look tidy and give a Villandry-feel to a lowly plot. Is it just a rich person's pastime?
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I think Bruce is very worth following for his experiments on food growing. He is not an ideologue, no drum to bang. He broadly works within permaculture terms, over seven styles of experimental gardens, including polytunnels and traditional plots that are dug over, so he lots of data to compare between approaches.
Do you know how he measures the nutrient content of his soil?
Posts
I don’t have enough soil depth to earth up potatoes properly so only grow smaller salad potatoes such as charlotte and pink fir apple. I plant them in the beds like any other crop then mound up straw on top and that seems to work well.
Re edging, I used Core Edge last year on a new rose/perennial bed, worked out slightly cheaper per metre and looks great. There is very little bindweed in that patch so I can spot weed there. But the damn couch grass, MYOB and other creeping grasses get under it. You need perfectly well-behaved weed-free lawn grass for that too, it seems!
I do miss my old plot where the soil was so loamy and I just went with the tradition digging method which cost me nothing but a spade and a bit of exercise..
But from where do all these self-styled experts, TV guys and journalists find all the compost they need? You need to start with at least 1 foot and add say 4 inches each year. If you composted all the "waste" material just from the veg patch you might get 1 inch a year. You need a big expanse of lawn, hedging and trees to make up the deficit. And that's assuming that other parts of the garden aren't needing mulch and compost.
Beware, no-dig may be just a fashion, just aesthetic, to look tidy and give a Villandry-feel to a lowly plot. Is it just a rich person's pastime?
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."