Author Topic: No dig or not no gig?  (Read 3786 times)

Plot69

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Re: No dig or not no gig?
« Reply #20 on: October 03, 2018, 12:36:23 »
It's bare soil than been raked and walked on. iPhones don't take the best footage, especially in bad light, it's not really silver. I do have a bare unmanured patch st the end but it's for my raspberries. I need to get some more mature manure for that.

I'll give up on the idea of no dig, have to think of another name for it.

Also notice I cocked the title up, "no gig", where did that come from?
Tony.

Sow it, grow it, eat it.

Paulh

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Re: No dig or not no gig?
« Reply #21 on: October 03, 2018, 23:35:20 »
I don't think spot weeding should prejudice "no dig". What "no dig" relies on is putting a deep mulch of organic matter on the bed rather than digging the bed over. Scraping away a bit of the mulch or surface soil, getting a weed out with a hand fork, and replacing the disturbed soil is affecting a bare percent of the bed.

If you've got perennial weeds in things like rhubarb, gooseberries, currants, blackberries or fruit trees which have space between them, you can take the mulch aspect a bit further: weed what you can in the autumn or early winter, apply fertiliser, and water if necessary, then cover the ground with spread out cardboard boxes or equivalent thickness of newspaper. Overlap the pieces by a couple of inches to hinder the weeds growing through and take them up as near as possible to the plants. Cover the card / paper with the mulch. That should stop most of the weeds getting through and their roots will die off. You'll probably have to still deal with the weeds right up against the plants but that is more manageable. A year later, you'll find that the cardboard / paper has rotted away under the mulch and you can proceed as you want.

 

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