"George.com" wrote in message
...
Has anyone experimented with, made use of, no dig gardening? I'm
interested
in your experiences and opinions, how you got started, successes or
failures
etc.

My definition of no dig involves:
minimal tillage of the soil, short of scratching the surface to sow
seed or
harvest root vegetables
leaving spent plants in place to degrade in the garden, add
nutrients to the
soil or self seed
using surface mulches to suppress weeds and add nutrients that
slowly leach
in to the soil
using green mulches like legumes or clover to add nitrogen to the
soil
crop rotation to protect the integrity of the soil, for instance
following
leafy plants with root crops etc

Thanks in advance for your contribution

My experience (in Australia) is that the beds tend to dry out in the
searing heat of midsummer and they are then a real devil to moisten
again. They work reasonably well if you can keep them moist. My
advice would be to use lucerne (aka alfalfa) in slabs as the base, and
to put in pockets of potting mix or good compost where you want to
plant seeds/seedlings. Prepare the bales of lucerne by leaving them
to sit in the garden for a while and "mature". By that I mean to
start rotting down. I put them direct on the soil and let them get
wet as I turn on the sprinkler then turn them every month or when I
remember so that a new surface is then presented to the soil. If you
can do this where the no-dig bed is to go then you will start to
notice the build up of worms (and the worms will aslo start to
colonise the rotting base of the bale) and you'll notice an increased
richness of the soil where the bale has been sitting. This makes it a
bit easier to get the bed going. Also I never use newspaper on the
bottom. I've found it doesn't work for me and stops the microgoobies
from starting to work in the bed.