Sallygarden Smallholding - The Forum For Sustainable Living

I'm very interested in learning about no dig methods of crop production, for obvious reasons! Does anybody practice this?

I'm wondering if it would work on clay soil. I suppose there's only one way to find out.

I use this method as much as possible. Unfortunately though our garden used to be a grazing field for cows/sheep so we have miles of bindweed all over it. As a result I haven't been able to "dig over and remove all perenial weeds and every trace of even the tiniest piece of root" - oh, how easy it is in the books!!! I use a lot of black plastic sheeting - not very eco I know but I reuse it and although it gets smaller and smaller it serves at least three purposes through its life!

My potatoes are on a no dig patch this year for the first time. I just keep piling on manure, last year's leaves, dried grass cuttings (not many of those) and more manure; I am not pulling soil up as the books say, just adding more all over. This is an experiment and I'll let you know how it goes. I'm hoping the result will be the most fantastically fertile soil for next year!

I have plastic under my tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines and peppers. This helps enormously with the weeding problem and to be honest is about the only way we can keep the weeding under control (we both have day jobs at the moment). Last year was dreadful because of the rain, but otherwise this has always been a great success as it also helps with keeping the soil moist - although we do still water when it's really dry.

Clay soil - well I imagine you can add stacks of manure and straw. I did this in our last garden and it worked well. But I mean STACKS of it. So maybe you will have to create your no dig areas on a rotation and just add one more each year. But I'm a fan of no dig as apart from anything else it's easier on the back!

Good luck

Thanks Jean. We have some WWOOFers arriving next week (voluntary workers who learn sustainable/organic living and get food and accommodation in return for their work). I think we'll work with them to try making a new raised bed with the no dig method. I know lots of people use newspaper as a mulch to keep down weeds, but I'm reluctant to use it because of the heavy metals and other contaminants in the ink. I wonder if reused cardboard boxes might be less polluting to the soil?

Spuds are a great soil conditioner. That means that if grown in a bed previously not cultivated, once harvested, the soil is left in a great condition ie light and crumbly which is perfect for other crops to grow on.

In the days of not so long ago we always had a stack of packing boxes from the company. These are a great mulch but the problem was getting them wet in the first place. I resorted to soaking them in the moat for an afternoon - but they had to be REALLY submerged - before using them. I gave up in the end, a) because they were hard to cut through for planting; b) because the company went and so did the boxes!; c) because they were a nuisance!

However, I suspect you are more resourceful than us and have a great deal more patience. I planted some more potatoes last night on a patch which was cultivated along the side of a newly planted hedge. ie waste ground for now. Anyway, they are under plastic.