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Old 23-03-2006, 04:09 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
simy1
 
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Default No dig gardens

In regard to leaving spent plants in place, it works if the rotation is
strict. You leave tomatoes in a patch because you know there will be no
tomatoes there next year. Not removing the plants certainly saves you a
few hours work in the Fall.

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Old 23-03-2006, 09:04 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
Farm1
 
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Default No dig gardens

"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.


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Old 23-03-2006, 10:31 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Rupert
 
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Default No dig gardens


"George.com" wrote in message
...

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
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 :-)


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Old 23-03-2006, 10:54 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
lwhaley
 
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Default No dig gardens


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.



I have used a variation on no dig gardening. The city i lived in had
free compost from grass clippings and leaves. I brought home a few
truckloads and just dumped them on the ground to create my planting bed
with no further preparation. I had good success.

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Old 23-03-2006, 03:27 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
simy1
 
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Default No dig gardens

There are certain plants that catch diseases. I leave all greens and
all root crops and all bulbs in place, because they never catch
anything, but tomatoes, cucurbita, beans and cabbage, if I know I am
not going to rotate next year, I prefer to remove. Most of my tomatoes
are healthy, but there is one particular heirloom that is hit or miss.
And the cukes get the wilt.

Otherwise it is efficient to harvest the vegetable, clean it on the
spot, and drop the remains on the ground. It saves you a trip to the
compost pile, and trip back.

Other things I have learned: absolutely mulch at the very last minute
before planting, and preferrably after last frost. If you mulch in
march, because you don't have much else to do, you will have cold soil
in May.



  #21   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 03:31 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
simy1
 
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Default No dig gardens

well, if you get good quality veggies, they will take away a lot of
nutrients. No till eliminates tilling, weeding, and reduces fertilizing
and watering, but you can not grow great chard with leaves compost only
(though you can with manure).
You do need either manure or some chemical fertilizer, at least with
some veggies. Or you need to grow a lot of peas and beans.
Also, no till eventually becomes very friendly to slugs. Now organic
slug bait is available everywhere, so this is no longer a problem.

  #22   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 04:18 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
La Puce
 
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Default No dig gardens


simy1 wrote:
There are certain plants that catch diseases. I leave all greens and
all root crops and all bulbs in place, because they never catch
anything, but tomatoes, cucurbita, beans and cabbage, if I know I am
not going to rotate next year, I prefer to remove. Most of my tomatoes
are healthy, but there is one particular heirloom that is hit or miss.
And the cukes get the wilt.


Just curious, where do you write from simy1?

  #23   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 05:21 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
simy1
 
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Default No dig gardens

southeast michigan.

  #24   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 05:22 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
simy1
 
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Default No dig gardens

southeast michigan.

  #25   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 05:43 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
La Puce
 
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Default No dig gardens


simy1 wrote:
southeast michigan.


I got curious because of the tomatoes you described. You describe them
the way I grew them in the south of France you see, but not as in
England )



  #26   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 06:09 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Sheldon Harper
 
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Default No dig gardens

"La Puce" wrote in news:1143132208.069474.43520
@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

simy1 wrote:
southeast michigan.


I got curious because of the tomatoes you described. You describe them
the way I grew them in the south of France you see, but not as in
England )


Now you see simy1 is an honest to goodness troll, because (s)he lives
below the bridge.

(It's a Michigan joke. To the humor impaired: Look at a map of Michigan.)


  #27   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 06:29 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Ron Clark
 
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Default No dig gardens

On 23 Mar 2006 08:22:02 -0800, "simy1" wrote this
(or the missive included this):

southeast michigan.



Never mind


--
®óñ© © ² * ¹°°³
  #28   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 07:25 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Janet Tweedy
 
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Default No dig gardens

In article , Charlie
Pridham writes


We use a shredder and everything goes back on green i.e. uncomposted. Been
doing it 20+ years with no problems (but I do have thin poor soil)



How would you grow seeds then Charlie. Some things can of course be sown
in post and planted but I've just checked on three to four inches of
shredding and it would seem daft to sow stuff such as spring onions or
small seeds in the material

Janet
--
Janet Tweedy
Amersham Gardening Association
http://www.amersham-gardening.net
  #29   Report Post  
Old 23-03-2006, 11:53 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening,rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
gardenlen
 
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Default No dig gardens

g'day rob,

yes i use them all the time very successful for me come vsit my web site and
see how we do it:

http://www.users.bigpond.com/gardenlen1/

len

snipped


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Old 24-03-2006, 10:14 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening
George.com
 
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Default No dig gardens


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

It is actually in the process of gardening,
propogating, rearing plants using a no dig approach, no tillage of the

soil,
low input, low labour, 'do nothing' process.


"low input, low labour, "do nothing"...in your dreams :-)


comparably speaking

The way my dad and grandad used to do vege gardens of digging in compost

and
manure every year, digging over weeds, spending hours preparing beds

seemed
labour intensive. They seemed to need to constantly put back nutrients

into
the soil as the process of rearing veges stripped the nutrients out.


When you harvest crops, they were created from that soil they grew
in . Unless you replenish what was taken out, the soil fertility will
decline year on year and so will crops.

The method I described earlier in the thread, doesn't require the
labour of double digging, or digging in fertiliser, but there's a
considerable amount of labour in harvesting/collecting or fetching and
distributing the huge volumes of free mulch I use very year.

Fukuoka said
"Whatever the means employed, the natural farmer must secure a nearby
supply of humus that can serve as a source of soil fertility".

Janet.


he apparently spread chicken poop and left in on the soil to be worked in
slowly so yes, I accept the point that I will have to supplement the soil
with pooh or compost or both etc. One of the attractions however is not
turning the soil over year on year once you have gotten it functioning
correctly.

Fukuoka seemed to have a closed cycle system using only what was produced on
his farm. I don't have chickens or ducks so the poop will have to come off
site. I also can't rely on them to deal to things like slugs so that will
need some manual input although my property is low in slug/snail numbers
compaitive to others I have lived in given a zero tolerence attitude. It is
fun going out in the evenings after some rain to knock of the slugs/snails.
Give me an excuse to have a smoke.

I also reckon on some time and work to get the soil good from the start,
rich in organic matter etc but that is the preperation isn't it, not the
ongoing maintenance.

rob


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