"Maryc" wrote in message
...

George.com Wrote:
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

rob
I got the Lasagna Gradening book. So we tried it. Here in Arkansas
however we have this grass that takes over everything. We tried puting
the composted wood chips free from our city on top but the grass just
grew all through it. So this winter we have put black plastic over the
whole garden hoping to smother it out. I will have to let you know when
it is closer to spring, whether it helped or not.

shit, that post has resurfaced after a while. My raised/no dig gardens have
been in 2 seasons now. They got filled with a combination of everything from
soil and compost to horse poop, old hay, coffee grounds and grass clippings.
Worms mixed everything together nicely. The beds, of which there are 5, have
been planted with a good variety of crops and minimal digging, some initial
earthing up of potatos before using straw and a small drill to put seedlings
or seeds in. Mulching has occurred across 1/2 the garden over peas and
tomatos though still haven't quite figured about mulching around smaller
stuff like carrots, lettuces and the like. With the lettuces mind I planted
them tightly so they formed a living mulch. Crop resiudes have been left on
the garden to rot apart from potatos and tomatos. I have had early blight in
the tomatos (crap season for them so far, few I know are getting them
ripened outdoors) and some potato issue I haven't identified. I am looking
at the Ps & Ts to see how they go and what might be afflicting them. As they
can be temporamental my intention at this point is to dry and burn the crop
residue and re-apply as ash later on. Whether the residue is ok to leave on
the garden may depend what I find through the rest of the season. If I want
to be careful all will be removed, dried and burnt. I am still uming and
arring about cover crops over winter. I have come up with several refeences
that say garlic and mustard are good ways to naturally fumigate/sterilise
soil so I am thinking of following tomatoes with garlic in winter and maybe
putting mustard across other beds, maybe the potatos. If it works ok I may
rotate tomatos around with garlic to follow. I reckon a root crop should be
ok to follow a fruit. Not too worried about green mulches as I have several
piles of horse and chicken poop aging away, that'll suffice for next springs
nutrients. Maybe just leave the straw in place and mustard/garlic over
winter. I am coming to the conclusion of rotating tomatos and potatos every
season, 4 growing spaces, tomatos followed by a year of somethign else,
followed by potatos, followed by a year of something else and then back to
tomatos. Every 4th year maybe garlic following on from the tomatos. Not sure
whether I really need to rotate other things yet, time will tell.

rob