No dig disappointment

[Penellype]

Well I've only got his 'New self-sufficient Gardener' from 1978.It doesn't mention the Chinese but says '...if one plot of land is using this technique it is robbing another plot of land which is either being flogged with chemicals or being left unproductive.'

In our system of growing crops in open land, this must be true, whether dig or no dig. Not only do we grow non-native crops, many of which are small and fairly widely spaced, but we also eat a fair amount of the organic matter produced. In a more natural environment the no dig soil would be mulched to a reasonable depth by leaf litter from trees and undergrowth, all of which would go back into the soil. Grassland has a similar natural cycle if left to itself. In order to achieve the same level of mulching on cultivated land, organic matter has to be imported from elsewhere, be it leaves from trees, compost or animal manure produced from eating grass, hay and grains and straw/wood based bedding grown somewhere else. At some point there must be somewhere that is missing out. This is why you should not collect leaves from within areas of natural woodland. The past exploitation of peat is a good example of what he is talking about.

In our somewhat artificial environment there are sources of organic material that do not rob the land as such - leaves that fall on concrete being and example, but in reality the world is now set up in a way in which if gardeners did not use some of the organic material produced it would probably go to landfill. This includes leaves collected from public places, green waste etc. With regard to my horse manure, I am talking about using enough to fill a couple of hotbeds 1m x 2m x 0.3m deep once a year. The 20 horses at the stables produce more than this daily, and the remainder (including the wood shavings imported from elsewhere) go onto the farmer's land. That land is not going to miss my tiny little portion, and the wood shavings are a waste product from timber grown elsewhere for other uses, which opens up a new can of worms...

It is impossible to live in the modern world without exploiting some of the planet's resources, probably far more than is "comfortable" if you start thinking about it too much. But there is absolutely nothing that individuals can do about most of it, except be conscientious and avoid doing unnecessary harm yourself.

[rary]

The Chinese also have a long tradition of using night soil as a fertiliser so there's another unused organic source you can utilise.

Where do you get the unused from

[4Shoes]

My own experience shows that for bringing grassland into cultivation either the plough, or the pig's snout, is essential. The next year, if you still wish to keep that land arable, you can often get away with cultivating only, or even harrowing or other shallow cultivations. The idea of very heavy mulches of compost is fine - providing you can get the compost. But the land itself will never produce enough vegetable material to make enough compost to cover itself sufficiently deeply and therefore you will have to bring vegetable matter in from outside.

This was exactly my thoughts when I asked the question "Where do you get all the material from" https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...ial_98087.html

Now a couple of weeks on or so on, with many threads and discussions regarding many aspects of no-dig I feel we are all in a better position with knowledge to cultivate our gardens as we see fit.


I think the bottom line is...

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink or should that be
You can lead a person to no-dig, there is effort and there is no free meal.

I'll try a couple of beds this year and perhaps build it into my crop rotation planning. But with a new vegetable plot the layout, shape and even location of some of the beds will change over the next couple of years, so initial dig is here to stay.

Now where were we regarding potatoes - Ah … here

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...-season-2.html

Eyes wide open. Thanks for all the advice.

[Snadger]

This is from Natural-Way-Of-Farming-Masanobu-Fukuoka

That is essentially all there is to the method of natural farming I call “direct-seeded, no-tillage, winter grain/rice succession in a clover cover.” Were I to say that all my method of farming boils down to is the symbiosis of rice and barley or wheat in clover, I would probably be reproached: “If that’s all there is to growing rice, then farmers wouldn’t be out there working so hard in their fields.” Yet, that is all there is to it. Indeed, with this method I have consistently gotten better-thanaverage yields. Such being the case, the only conclusion possible is that there must be something drastically wrong with farming practices that require so much unnecessary labor. Scientists are always saying, “Let’s try this, let’s try that.” Agriculture becomes swept up in all of this fiddling around; new methods requiring additional expenditures and effort by farmers are constantly introduced, along with new pesticides and fertilizers. As for me, I have taken the opposite tack. I eliminate unnecessary practices, expenditures, and labor by telling myself, “I don’t need to do this, I don’t need to do that.” After thirty years at it, I have managed to reduce my labor to essentially just sowing seed and spreading straw. Human effort is unnecessary because nature, not man, grows the rice and wheat.

I've read his book too!

[veggiechicken]

I have pdf's of 2 of Masanobu's books and John Seymour's self sufficiency - that's how I found the references so quickly as they're searchable - and I copied and pasted them to here.
John Seymour's book is also on the bookshelf as its too nice to read on a computer screen.

[rary]

You dig, you leave the soil uncovered. You don't dig, you leave the soil uncovered.

You dig, and bury the compost and leave the soil uncovered. You don't dig, you spread the compost on the surface.

There seems to be a misconception that digging makes the soil more fertile. It doesn't. Both methods need the addition of compost to replace the fertility removed by cropping the plot. So to say that the no-dig method is not viable because you can't make enough compost to cover the ground is misleading.

If you dig the ground you still have to add compost, but you have also chopped up worms, broken their aerating tunnels, broken up and disturbed the fungal spread that mainstream gardening is finally coming to realize is important to plant and soil health, and sunk the compost to a level not readily accessible to early root growth of seeds and seedlings.

As far as I can see, the only benefit of digging is to let a lot of air into the soil, (which the worms were patiently doing with their tunnels and pulling surface litter down into the soil), for removal of perennial weed roots, brick ends and the like, and for exercise (and backache). Lifting potatoes is all the digging needed.

As not everyone is organic, some gardeners turn over the soil to loosen it up spread their chemical feeding and then plant, watch how many of the farmers work that way

[toomanytommytoes]

I'm sure Charlie mentioned in one of his videos that he can't produce the amount of compost he needs so he imports cow manure.

There are few videos where he shows his big piles of imported compost etc. His home composting set up looks like it has a capacity of ~4 tonnes though. In my opinion, after the initial smothering of weeds, you don't need to add huge amounts of compost to a bed every year. We only use about half to one inch of homemade compost/worm castings for each raised bed in the autumn, then the rest of the year mulch with free resources like leaves, coffee grounds, grass clippings and comfrey.

[Jay-ell]

The so in the New Territories isn't as good yet as the soil in the Jungle. Just dug up the 2nd crop of spuds which have been heavily mulched this year with grass clippings and straw.

Alit of the spuds were growing in the mulch rather than under the soil so didn't need too much back breaking work digging - I think I used the fork about three times, mostly just my hands (still and 8yo at heart when it comes to playing in the muck).

The surface yah a couple of inches of black crumbly soil from the break down of the mulch and the poor soil underneath was also a lot better than last year.

I also planted some spuds in a bed of what was originally the same poor soil but has been heavily mulched this year and last. The soil is far far better than it started - I got the bulb planter down all the way to the top of the handle with little effort. Of course it now has a heavy mulch of grass and straw on too if it which will hopefully break down over winter and reward the worms for their hard work.

Of course, as I've planted these spuds deeper they will need a bit more digging out - more fun for the 8yo me.

[Snoop Puss]

^Really enjoyed reading that, Jay-ell. A 'like' isn't enough to reflect the big grin on my face. Thanks.

[Kirk]

Sounds like it depends on the actual purpose of "no dig".
If the expectation is that you lay compost, manure etc then do not dig and simply repeat the action over a couple of years then it seems that "digging" is performed by an assortment of worms and other bugs as well as rain and wind and weathering to mix the top material with the lower.

In effect the human or whatever does not dig, something else in effect does it, but over a somewhat longer period. Likely to take a few years for reasonable incorporation and even then likely never really deep.

In all the few thousands of years since we started on the route of agriculture and away from hunter gathering if "no dig" was efficent and productive it seems odd that just about everywhere digs and ploughs the ground that crops go into.

If you don't want to dig and decide to add layers of stuff and let it mingle naturally over time that is a different matter and decision. And one I can understand. Although it seems a bit of a matter of scale.

I would still expect the "artifical" layer added by people to remain as a somewhat seperate strata to the underlying soil and never fully intermixing. That is what I find on a raised bed of only 15-18 inches depth. Upper half is good soil, lower is still harder and poorer. Digging seems the only way I can really get stuff down to it.

[Snadger]

No-dig works for me because I can add organic matter whenever I can scrounge it. The initial dig will have been done and there shouldn't be too much weed growth during the winter so the areas that have no crops should be covered in the coming months.

If I can scrounge enough loose material I will also add it around the growing crops.

[hamamelis]

Sounds like it depends on the actual purpose of "no dig".
If the expectation is that you lay compost, manure etc then do not dig and simply repeat the action over a couple of years then it seems that "digging" is performed by an assortment of worms and other bugs as well as rain and wind and weathering to mix the top material with the lower.

In effect the human or whatever does not dig, something else in effect does it, but over a somewhat longer period. Likely to take a few years for reasonable incorporation and even then likely never really deep.

In all the few thousands of years since we started on the route of agriculture and away from hunter gathering if "no dig" was efficent and productive it seems odd that just about everywhere digs and ploughs the ground that crops go into.

If you don't want to dig and decide to add layers of stuff and let it mingle naturally over time that is a different matter and decision. And one I can understand. Although it seems a bit of a matter of scale.

I would still expect the "artifical" layer added by people to remain as a somewhat seperate strata to the underlying soil and never fully intermixing. That is what I find on a raised bed of only 15-18 inches depth. Upper half is good soil, lower is still harder and poorer. Digging seems the only way I can really get stuff down to it.

Actually, worm tunnels -for the commonest earthworm species- will go up to 3 metres deep when they can. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario in that they won't tunnel into very hard, poor soil, but once it starts getting tunnelable (is too a word) worms are better than allotmenteers at maintaining deep soil fertility. Who digs 3 metres deep?

There can be a huge worm population if they're able to build up (the deep dwelling ones are far less mobile than the magically appearing compost worms and don't live where their tunnels are disrupted too often), so once the system's working properly it's fast, but if you just stop the digging and mulch, there's not going to be so many worms, fungi or micro-organisms there at first, especially if the site's been treated with herbicides or pesticides that kill or deter worms. It takes time to get going.

[rary]

What other way apart from deep digging do you get the fertility deeper into the soil if you have no worms

[Logunner]

Spread it and they will come...

[roitelet]

I don’t dig but about once a year I plunge a long tined fork in the ground and lean on it a bit to aerate the soil and then mulch. Seems to work.