"George.com" wrote in message
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"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
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The message
from "George.com" contains these words:

Has anyone experimented with, made use of, no dig gardening? I'm
interested
snip

I've used it for years (in Scotland). A quick easy way to star is to
cover weedy undug ground with flattened cardboard cartons. (If you live
in a dry climate, do this after a good rainfall). Cut an X and fold back
the card where you wish to grow plants, potatoes etc. Cover the
cardboard with 6" of compostable degradeable material such as lawn
clippings, dead leaves, manure, chopped comfrey, straw, seaweed,
bracken, sheep-shearing waste, used animal bedding, and keep topping it
up as it disappears. If you haven't got quite enough mulch material to
completely cover the newly laid cardboard, use planks or stones to stop
it blowing away, keep it in close contact with the earth, and exclude
light from weeds. Keep adding more mulch material as you acquire it .
Within weeks, whatever mixture you mulched with will be uniformly brown
and the whole thing looks neat and tidy.

. The cardboard smothers existing weeds and prevent germination of their
seeds; by the end of a season worms will have digested all the cardboard
and its covering and enriched the soil. The worm population will have
multiplied, and birds will spend a lot of time turning over the mulch to
find worms, helping to break it down and scarify the soil surface. The
following season the soil will be clean enough for direct seedsowing.
Keep covering any bare soil with mulches and topping them up as worms
take them down. A very few weeds may come through the mulch, tweak them
out and lay them on top of it to die.

exactly the process I intend to use Janet to make my new vege garden but
will be making a raised garden, easier on the back. The chuck anything in
and let in break down into soil is a great process. I can see it taking
some
months to build the soil structure, including some forking and turning,
but
once it is set onew of the issues of the no dig I am attracted to is the
(supposed, and I have not seen evidence to suggest anythign different)
self
regulating process of the soil and the low maintenance than say a double
dug
or intensive garden.

rob


You can always torture yourself by doing a *final*double dig and then
creating no dig raised beds using all the techniques already suggested.
I have seen this done with perennial flower beds and the results are
spectacular with deep rooted plants.
I suppose it's not really that necessary for veg unless you want to grow 4'
carrots :-)