To Dig or Not to Dig?

[Kaiya]

I don't dig, and I also don't spend hours at the plot. I work full time and pop up every two weeks at the moment - there are weeds but I've found that a good winter mulch, very occasional 'chuck a bit of grass and newspaper on' mulches, occasional weeding sessions (especially to prevent seeding) and the competition of the crops themselves keeps them down. However, I do not aim for a weed-free plot; weeds offer a living mulch, then when I pull them up they are directly used as mulch again, plus they feed the wildlife. Since adopting this more relaxed approach I've noticed a lot of crickets/grasshoppers (not sure which!) and tonnes of bees on my plot.

The decision to go no dig for me is two-fold - partly I like that it seems less invasive, allowing wildlife to live on my plot all year around without major disruption, but mostly it's because even digging up potatoes is enough to throw my back out to the extent I won't be growing potatoes again.

[Two_Sheds]

I don't dig at all (unless you count getting spuds out of the ground).

I let the worms turn and aerate the soil for me, and I help them along by mulching - a lot. I now mulch more than I compost: every bit of usable plant material (weeds, green manures, old plants, stalks etc) gets chopped roughly with secateurs and dropped on the soil surface. It's improved my soil no end.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-straw-Re.../dp/8185569312

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sepp-Holzers.../dp/1856230597

Those two books show how it works on a commercial as well as a domestic scale.

At school the beds we had to use were incredibly poor: basically just sand, stone, couch grass and yarrow. The ground was too compacted for me to dig anyway, so I covered with cardboard. After a few months the soil was workable and less weedy, so I dug it only where necessary to get out the couch grass. Then we put raised beds on top and filled using the lasagne method.

On the flower beds we weren't going to use raised beds, so I sowed lots of green manure, of which alfalfa did the best. It grows so quickly, and we cut it several times a year, just dropping the clippings on the surface. We chop up the weeds too, and leave them as a mulch.
After 2 years, the difference is incredible: even the poorest bed is now supporting dahlias and other pretties.

[Feral007]

No dig, no how. I also have a terrible back now. I do have a teen I can put to work, but we all know how hard that can be!

We have shallow topsoil with rock underneath. So a lot of plants do well for a while and then turn up their toes. So we've started pulling out previously planted bushes and trees and doing again.

The weeds and grass grow like mad things in summer. So we just put down cardboard or paper and then hay, topsoil and compost, and more hay. Then plant into that. It's amazing how little weed comes thru and how well the plants and seeds do. No edging, altho we did plant spring onions around the edge to distract the weeds. And half way thru the season son dug a very narrow trench around it - about 2 inches deep.

This year we are doing all the gardens this way and planting out the avenues between the transplanted fruit trees the same way. Couldn't manage as much garden any other way. It improves the soil underneath too as things break down. And although we don't get much weeds or grass through, we do have a lot of worms.

We are planning to make rounds of chicken wire and fill them with hay and topsoil and more hay to plant the potatoes in - some wire like tent pegs to stop them blowing away in the gales we get and we should be good to go.

[Lando]

I actually enjoy digging so dig most of my plot during the autumn. I introduce fresh humus to the soil and improve airation. The problem I am left with is that I do not want bare soil for long periods of time as I live in the Northwest and we get plenty of rain that leached the soil nutrients.

[gardenpassion]

We live in the Northwest too. (will it ever stop raining - and why is there a perpetual patch of grey over us!!)
I have had the allotment for three years and have dug and manured every year, but with all the rain, the soil is too waterlogged so I am going to have to double dig this season. I don't want to but feel it is a necessary evil to help the drainage.
However, it is theraputic and feels as if the ground is benefitting somehow from an air and turnover!!

[susieq100]

I voted for both because I do both. But I love digging - I spent yesterday afternoon reconfiguring a couple of beds, digging up the 'paths' and turning over the soil. I find digging immensely therapeutic! However I have mulched a lot more this year, my compost making is not very good - I am OK with daleks, but my compost heaps have been hopeless, despite turning, layering etc. So I have a big pile of weeds and rubbish that I am going to chop up, spread on the dug beds and cover with cardboard. I am hoping that the worms will do their work over the winter.

[Mikey]

I've always been an advocate of digging, but I'm starting to employ some no dig principals this winter. It took me a good 4 years to recover 1/4 of my plot from grass and bindweed, with constant turning of soil, and hoeing off new shoots, top dressing, and digging over for winter. I've realised that this is back breaking and the soil which is heavy clay is not great for it. So an area which has been grass up until a month ago, is getting dug over, and covered with layers of cardboard, muck, and compost. Hopefully next year this new area will prove more fruitful.

[Kaiya]

My first trial of something like that was recruiting old grass paths into beds - I didn't even turn them over (too hard!), I just put wet cardboard down and then chucked soil on top. I got some crops out of that ground later that year, although it is shallower so leeks were a bit hard to plant for example.

[Two_Sheds]

It took me a good 4 years to recover 1/4 of my plot from grass and bindweed

Wow. Hard work.

This is how we did it at school, in about 6 months

[alldigging]

There's a not so much no dig as a fold over version of no-dig..

Lazy beds.

Growing vegetables on Leeds allotments - Lazy Beds

[planetologist]

I also do a bit of both with flat beds. There's the roots that get dug, and sometimes the weeds get out of hand in a bed where I want to sow small plants in a block or I run out of cardboard, so in the vegetable plot maybe 1/4 is perennial vegetables and the rest maybe half and half between dug and undug. The other 60% of the plot is perennial fruit and young trees.

[Mikey]

Wow. Hard work.

This is how we did it at school, in about 6 months

You have to bear in mind TS, that I didn't cover it at all in that time, it was dug over and as much of the weeds and roots removed as possible, planted up, and hoed over during the season, then dug over in autumn, and so on. As it was the only section of my plot that I had recovered, I couldn't really afford to leave it dormant. I have some photos on my phone, what did I do with the lead.

[splood]

digging all the way for me - i would have thought it depends on the soil and i can only speak for myself but my solid clay needs stable scrapings by the bucket load and each year it returns compacted and solid

besides which, when i get into the rhythm, i find digging to be the best meditation going

[Normans Mum]

We dig. Mainly because we have had to due to the amount of large weeds and docks that were present when we took over our plot. I'm intending to just mulch this time round and perhaps dig the potatoe bed, but I find when I get the fork and spade in my hands I just can't help myself !

[veggiepatch]

Having just converted our original allotment plot to raised beds due to the very heavy clay pan only a spade or two depth deep, I decided to use this plot as a no dig area. However the plot next door which I also rent will be all fruit. This is not raised beds - yet (hubby needs to make them), so in the meantime it is a digging area, but hopefully this time next year it too will be a no-dig area. I cant dig for long due to RSI in my wrists and a weak back. Although I love seeing a nicely dug veggie plot. We double dug our 1st plot the 1st yr we got it to try to break up the clay pan and get some goodness into the soil.