Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Uncle Joshua on November 01, 2009, 22:15:31
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Where can I find out about no dig allotments? all I know about it is what I've read in Tony's posts, I looked for some books about it this week but couldn't find anything
Free info on here would be better than buing a book. :)
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Get rid of your perennial weeds; that's vital. Then keep the ground mulched. It's usually used with either flat or raised beds; you walk on the paths between beds, and avoid treading on the beds themselves. If you must go onto them, kneel or stand on a piece of plank to avoid compacting the soil.
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I use straw. Dig out the thugs and plant, then mulch with straw. Soil must be moist though. Looks very tidy too ;D
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www.charlesdowding.com
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charles dowding, what a peach book!! ;)
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we can't dig so everything gets mulched, grass clippings, straw, leaves, our compost and well rotted muck, also newspaper collars covered with grass clippings around the potatoes ;D
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sounds like a very good method manics!!
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tb, have you seen his book "Salad Leaves for all season's"? My wife is beginning to wish I hadn't!
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Correction: seasons!!!!
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no I haven't! (yet) ;) ;D ;D ;D
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sounds like a very good method manics!!
works for us ;D
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I had to search around to find it, but I would recommend this little booklet that has been reprinted from 1949 'Gardening without digging' by A.Guest.
http://www.countrysmallholding.com/book-dvd-shop-book-shop--212850
"But for compost, gardening without digging would be quite impracticable. With its use however, the digging principle is rendered completely out of date from every angle"
Great pics of 1940's men with slicked back hair smoking pipes...basically advocates mulching with compost at every opportunity, lots of pics of prizewinning veg. as a result. Well worth a read! ;D
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No dig works without adding compost but is certainly a lot easier when you have some or can buy some to spread on top.
Mark out a 4' bed and an 18" path, weed it all and spread compost over both path and bed, more on the bed - 3 or 4 inches is good as a first dressing, then half that in years to come as an annual 'mulch'. The beauty of mulching with well rotted compost is that slugs are not encouraged in the same way as when rough mulches are used, such as straw or grass.
Worms should soon be coming up to enjoy the compost and each time they move up and down, a drainage channel is either created or maintained and air can circulate in the soil. My experience of doing this for nearly three decades is that soil and crops improve all the time. Drainage is now excellent on my heavy clay and parsnips are really long and straight.
Green waste compost from the council is a good buy in most areas, even if you pay £20/tonne delivered, the benefits are long term and you are building great fertility, long term, with each addition, as well as not damaging soil by cultivation. One important tip: keep on top of weeds all the time, and after a scary first year your soil will become much cleaner: mine is almost weed free.
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Welcome to the board, Charles!! I have been a fan ever since I took on an allotment, and always recomend your books as a perfect intro to organic, no-dig food production.
thanks for posting on the forum!!
rgds, Tony
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I like the thought of no dig. But still no solution to bindweed. Might try it on the lottie since no BW there. Problem there is a major shortage of worms. Might bus a few over from my garden.
How big a pile is a tonne of compost
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a tonne is a cubic yard of compost (approx)
if you add the compost and mulch, the worms will soon multiply, noo need to import them!
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a tonne is a cubic yard of compost (approx)
if you add the compost and mulch, the worms will soon multiply, noo need to import them!
Or even 1000 litres! In our manure today there were loads of worms even before we built our heaps.
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(http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t87/ninnyscrops/th_DSCF0097.jpg) (http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t87/ninnyscrops/?action=view¤t=DSCF0097.jpg)
'bout that size? :D
Ninny
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Na! That one is tiny ;)
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Sounds great. might order some in the spring,
Site surrounded by gravel, so no worms there. Pigs eaten all worms and slugs. So great no slugs but bad no worms.
No shortage of manure/compost worms. Come by the handful in the manure.
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Welcome to the A4A Charles. I'm on clay aswell, and the point Digeroo raised about bindweed is relevant for me - no matter what mulch I put on it still pops up :-\
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Or even 1000 litres! In our manure today there were loads of worms even before we built our heaps.
the types of worms found in muck / compost heaps are not the same types as are found in the soil, the ones commonly found in mucki / compost are usually Eisenia foetida, or Dendrabaena veneta. what you want in the soil is the common european earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris,. there will appear as the soil organic matter increases. ;)
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no matter what mulch I put on it still pops up
Pop hardly describes my problem. It produces miles of roots in a very short time. Goes on a major take over bid is a better description. Particularly loves a good mulch.
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Maybe that's the problem Digeroo - along with feeding the ground I'm feeding the bindweed too !
I know from previous gardens I used to pull as much of it up as I could see / find and it did stop it over time, but the clay seems to hold onto it for longer!
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I'm on clay to, and like a lot of people try to garden organically. My solution was to lay the bind weed on thick plastic and paint with weed killer so it went into the roots and not on the soil. When your digging on clay it doesn't seem to matter how carefull you are, you allways seem to leave tiny bits in the ground. And covering it hasn't made any difference, it just travels underneath the plastic till it gets to daylight. Pity we can't cross it with the veggies we try to grow ;D ;D
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I am on gravel and it loves it as well. I try and be organic but have resorted to poisoning it at times much against my better judgement. Even with the painting or putting into a plastic bag and spraying it still gets into the roots and so the chemical gets into the soil.
I did spray just before planting some raspberries, I just knew it was going to cause havoc otherwise.
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Taurus - I think that probably is the only solution - shame eh?!
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It goes against the grain 1066 but sometimes needs must I'm afraid.
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(very long post sorry, it's something I think about a lot)
I'm interested to see you too Charles. :)
The no-dig book is very well-thumbed from my first year of growing vegetables, but was most impressed by the sowing advice, which works much better for me than a lot of books which seem to have a strong 'plant everything in spring or be damned' bias and the descriptions of seasonal differences. I became a keen advocate of no-dig.
(Got the salad one too, but didn't really get around to using it yet.)
So that was last year, but over winter I read a lot of books and decided actually no-dig is slightly flawed and doesn't fit every situation. My totally no-dig prepared beds, covered in cardboard, a hell of a lot of manure and plastic on top were very under-productive in a dry year. The worms didn't do much work, the ants moved in and it was arrid all season. I've got two other no-dig beds, which I didn't put plastic over and they seem less moisture retentive than the others too. My brassicas in one of those were very small and slow and the marestail (yes, I dug it all out first) loves it to death.
My first beds, which my family helped me with were done with very well dug in shop compost and they went big guns.
Anyway once I read Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by by Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis (Terrible pun which stopped me reading it for a long time)
I began to question the whole thing.
The no dig way seems to assume that all plants use the same kind of nitrogen, whereas there are two types: the fungal type, which is fine to pile on top, leads to an more acid soil - just right for squashes, spuds etc. Other plants use the bacterial form of nitrogen which needs to be broken down by soil bacteria and the more you mix it in the better contact those microbes will have - this is better for alkaline loving plants such as brassicas. That's it in a nutshell - much better explained in the book.
Also, it's not the case that there isn't usually organic matter breaking down lower down in 'natural earth' because there will be small roots growing and dying all the time. So unless you do have plants growing all the time you need to dig stuff in (I think) or use green manure to attract the earthworms. The roots also release chemicals which draw in worms.
So, I think I'll keep my no-dig beds and see what happens to them, but I'm all for digging in (not too deep) or for piling it up these days depending on the crop.
I can't just use compost or manure anyhow because the marestail loves a rich dark mulch - I have found so far that a lighter mulch of straw/hay on top of that puts it off more. I think maybe it reacts to the warmth that darker mulches have.
Anyway, I hope I'm not going to get my head shot off because other forums seem unable to discuss this sensibly. Seems both sides dig or no-dig have some religious fervour about it.
I'm an inbetweeny.
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earlypea - thanks for such a comprehensive post! I'm not great on the science of gardening, but I did understand and appreciate your post 8)
From another "inbetweener" - has dug beds / has no dig areas / has crates for carrots / etc..... :D
1066
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I have two strips which had beans in them this year and have decided to hedge my bets and have one no dig and the other dig and see how they get on. I am getting older so the thought of no dig is very appealling for the future. But particularly on my lottie where there is a lack of worms.
For beans for example I try and double dig a lot of bio matter right down into the second spade depth. I believe that this is good not only as food but to hold the moisture.
On the other hand digging is certainly not good for the worms and I have chopped up several of the few.
Thanks for your post earlypea. Seems there is a great deal to learn about soil.
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hmmm really interesting. I have been laying council compost/rotted manure on my raised beds since September in an effort to improve clay soil. I've had the plot a year and think I can already see the difference. Elsewhere I have been piling weeds/bolted crops/unwanted leaves on other beds to act as a mulch and the worms look to have been very active so all good.
Charles, one thing that fascinates me is your concept of cleaning the soil to make it weed free. I am inexperienced and can hardly believe that is achievable. paths on my allotment site are couch grass containing all the usually suspects like dandelions, thistles, nettle and I get an awful lot of weed seeds germinating between rows. Other than killing the paths or covering them I dont see how can overcome this problem. maybe i ought to buy the book! I must say that experience from this year suggests that my raised beds will need little digging if I continue to add organic matter and use leguminous crops judiciously.
I'll keep an eye on this thread!
Psi
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PSI you can actually read what Charles has to say about not digging on amazon. The first chapter is there to see.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organic-Gardening-Natural-No-dig-Way/dp/1903998913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257674458&sr=1-1
The rest of the book really doesn't elaborate on that side of things, which is a shame and the reason I bought it.
I don't want to stymie sales, but it's not in depth about that aspect. I'd still get it but for other reasons - sowing/growing advice and varieties.
and there is an article on his website about how to tame an allotment, in case you missed it.
http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/index.php?main=articles/allotments&st=4
I'll just add a review of the book above while I'm here because I don't really do it justice, it really was a penny dropped kind of read considering the way different crops reacted to my various methods.
Snippet saying what I said overly simply above
Some plants, like brassicas and other vegetables, prefer their nitrogen in the form of nitrates and do better in bacterially dominated soils. Others, such as perennials, shrubs and trees prefer their nitrogen in ammonium form and do better in fungally dominated soils. Fungi to bacterial ratios have been observed for different plant groups. Vegetables such as lettuce, broccoli and carrots like 0.3:1 to 0.8:1 while tomatoes, corn and wheat prefer 0.8:1 to 1:1. Orchard trees on the other hand do well with 10:1 to 50:1 and hardwoods from 10:1 to 100:1.
Good compost has per teaspoon 1 billion bacteria, 400 to 900 feet of fungal hyphae, 10,000 to 50,000 protozoa and 30 to 300 nematodes. Compost can inoculate, maintain or alter a soil food web in a given area. Careful selection of compost ingredients can produce a bacterial, fungal or balanced pile.
Mulch ingredient selection can support bacterial or fungal webs also. Even the same mulch material applied in different ways can influence a specific soil food web. Mulch placed on the surface supports fungi while mulch worked into the soil will support bacteria. Coarse, dry material benefits fungi and finely chopped, moist material benefits bacteria.
http://www.goveganic.net/spip.php?article93
BTW - This book is also actually pro not digging except working stuff in for some crop a few inches as most of the work of soil improvement is done by bacteria. But it's more complex than just putting any type of compost on top.
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I'm intrigued. Good stuff to read there - quite enlightening.
ive just naturally dug compost/manure into the beds but it makes a lot of sense to just lay it on the top and let nature do it's thing - not sure why I haven't thought of this before to be honest!
might go and lay for manure over a bed in an hour or so now!
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I've layed the council compost on top of some of my empty beds and will nature do the work, others on the site dig it in, I just don't see the point, I dig all my beds, I nearly forgot welcome Charlie boy. ;D ;D ;D
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If anyone has Nectar points (From Sainsbury's etc) you can get Charles Dowding's book for 2450 points. I've just got his "Salad leaves for all Seasons" for the same.
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Thanks for that Caroline....excellent idea!!! ;) ;D
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Thanks for the welcomes :) it is great to see a lively debate on matters that are definitely not considered enbough.
Cowpea your post is interesting and is borne out to some extent by results from my dig/no dig experiment, where late season brassicas are the main vegetable to grow bigger for soil being dug. But most vegetables on the no dig beds grow better, especially in spring and early summer, maybe because the dug soil is still overcoming its trauma of being dug, then recovers after about midsummer - only to be re-dug in November!
Total yields off the dug and undug beds are almost identical. What about quality? I have sent some samples of each to Surrey University, for analysis of minerals, results in March I think. Salad and spinach leaves in the spring have a much glossier, healthier appearance on the undug beds.
Going back to brassicas, in the rest of my undug garden I have superb calabrese, purple sprouting and swedes, so it is not as though they do not grow without digging! This year they have loved a thin mulch of cow manure.
Re cardboard, I advise using it in first, weedy year only. Yes, full mulches do encourage ants. Compost is best mulch for sure.
Re bindweed, it never goes away but I have found a much diminished vigour over the years as I mulch and then its roots come nearer the surface so I can pull them out, which I do regularly. There are sometimes no easy solutions, but persistence can bring us to a point of relative ease.
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Cowpea :D is that a freudian slip or another unusual edible to investigate?
I'll be interested to hear the results of your mineral analysis. I realize size does not always equate with balanced nutritional values and whopping great brassicas may be too high in nitrates, although the larger results from using rock dust rather confuses me on that one. :-\
I noticed another difference from digging in - carrots. My no-dig carrots are extremely vigorous and handsome and have good flavour, but my brother-in-law's dug in with heaps of leaf mould carrots are exceptionally well flavoured so I hope to be doing a half bed test of that this year.
Sowing some crops direct seems to suffer from no-dig for me too - root brassicas and beetroot don't always do very favourably. Maybe the very top layer is too acidic/fungally dominated for them?? Plug plants would have their roots put straight through to a more soil, but I do prefer to sow a lot of crops direct because I've no greenhouse.
I do visit your site and see your photo records of your comparisons from time to time. It would be good if you could be more detailed - For example, exactly what do you mean by 'digging' on your dug beds? How far down, what exactly do you dig in?
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For those of you who are interested in Charles' no-dig ideas did you notice he's got a new forum up?
http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/forum
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thanks for the link, earlypea.
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First of all, sorry for mistaking your name earlypea! Cowpeas are edible and much grown in Africa.
I have just posted an article by Val Bourne from December's Grow It! magazine, where she compares digging and not digging: it is under articles on my site. She is a digger at heart but is now having a go at being an inbetweeny.
I think that it is difficult to give up digging when you have always done it and earlypea makes a good point about the relative difficulty of sowing some seeds directly into a mulch of compost. It is another skill to learn, achieving a good undug tilth. This year I have had some failures, mainly carrots, but other carrots came up well as did spinach, parsnips, leeks, mustards and leaf radish all sown direct.
Psi, it is possible to get soil clean - I have achieved it on many different plots with horrible weeds present in the first few months. A year of totally light excluding mulch is the most drastic option but is worth it for long term ease and success.
Earlypea, when I dig my dug beds I dig a trench 9" deep (put that soil in a large wheelbarrow), spread compost/manure at the bottom of this trench, then turn another trench-worth of soil onto that, then fill the new trench with compost etc, until reaching the end where the last trench is filled from the wheelbarrow. More work than spreading compost on top!
I am now off to harvest some nice hearts of red cabbage, grown as a second crop after early potatoes, and to prune some apple trees, even though they have barely lost their leaves.
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Earlypea, when I dig my dug beds I dig a trench 9" deep (put that soil in a large wheelbarrow), spread compost/manure at the bottom of this trench, then turn another trench-worth of soil onto that, then fill the new trench with compost etc, until reaching the end where the last trench is filled from the wheelbarrow. More work than spreading compost on top!
You see, I find that a very odd way to do it considering there's not much soil life down there. I know I'm a only a shallow digger and would attempt to mix compost/manure into the first few inches where the soil is most active.
I don't believe the diggers even do do that. Don't they mix it in with the soil so that it's broken down? I know a lot of them mulch and then mix it in in the spring and then mulch further in the summer. Isn't what you are doing 'trenching' which would only be done for beans (not with manure)?
Anyway, in essence you don't seem to be replicating the digging that I see diggers do.
(Don't worry about the Cowpea - I find I quite like it!)
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I tried doing that (with autumn leaves) when I first had my plot. After a year, I found I was digging up the same old leaves, apparently unchanged. Once they were on the surface, they disappeared quite fast. This went on for a couple of years, and eventually I tried mulching. The same dead leaves go on this time of year, and disappear completely by midsummer.
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if you employ the no dig method on your allotment how do you harvest your potato's ;D
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Ive grown no dig potatoes under plastic........the spuds actually grow near the surface and ya really dont need to dig!! But grown under thick mulch they do tend to develop deeper. So yep need a spade to get them up.
The term no dig means.... no cultivate.....as the top few inches are full of living organisms and micro organisms. Its a perfect balanced substrate for growing plants into.
But even no dig needs spade attention for deep rooted weeds and harvesting some crops ;D
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I've layered more manure and seaweed on my raised beds - loads of worm action and slowly being taken down into the soil - looks like it is working. I am now hopeful for planting into the perfect soil come spring! Just hope I can resist the temptation to dig!!!
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I've layered more manure and seaweed on my raised beds - loads of worm action and slowly being taken down into the soil - looks like it is working. I am now hopeful for planting into the perfect soil come spring! Just hope I can resist the temptation to dig!!!
snap, manure and compost but no temptation
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The same dead leaves go on this time of year, and disappear completely by midsummer.
Mine have disappeared already, but then I found them - everywhere except where I'd mulched with them ::)
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Thanks to everyone for all the comments enjoying this thread.
I had decided to give it a go with one bed. But I am concerned that the worms will not take it down deep enough to retain the moisture in the soil during dry spells.
I wonder perhaps whether this method depends on the type of soil and the position of the water table.
Certainly a lot less trouble than digging it in. Still concerned by lack of worms.
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Still concerned by lack of worms.
Digeroo, I think you mentioned in other threads that you use liquid feeds on your vegetables, sorry if I'm mistaken about that.
If that's the case it is said that because some of those are made up of mild 'salts' they may either kill worms (think salt on slugs) by scorching them or the worms move away from earth treated with this kind of thing, depending on the source you read.
It's hotly contested and I've googled around trying to find whether this is based on research or not so I can't say for sure, but could that be your problem? That is part of the no-dig idea.
I had a serious deficiency of worms myself in spring and summer whether dug or undug but now it's cooler and WETTER they've been breeding like rabbits.
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I use very little liquid feed, mostly comfrey. I did use some on one patch of beans which had turned yellow, but actually that patch has more worms than elsewhere.
I have been bussing them in. Taken a handful from the garden and then found that piles of rotting leaves are full of them, so taken some of those as well.
The basic problem is that the land had had pigs on it which had eaten all the worms, and it is taking a time for them to wriggle back.
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I'm really sorry, must be mistaking you for someone else. It was their carrots, some feed with undecipherable initials BSB or something.
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you may find this book interesting?
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1357&viewtype=image&pageseq=1
worms need partially decayed plant matter to live / breed in. by adding more leafmould, compost, partially rotted manure, etc, you will increase the population (of worms)
the fertiliser you were on about is Blood, Fish & Bone (BFB), and yes, it will 'burn' worms epidermis. ;)
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the fertiliser you were on about is Blood, Fish & Bone (BFB)
Thanks, another mystery solved.
The book link is fun, never seen the original before just quotes - but I think it'll be another million years before I evolve the right neck muscles to read it online :)
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I find the whole no dig debate really interesting, but have a problem in that we have no worms - there is a serious problem with NZ flatworms on our site and any effort to increase the number of worms seems to increase the number of flatworms as well. Is there any way around this? My knowledge of no dig is fairly limited, but I assume you need worms for it to work?
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you may find this book interesting?
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1357&viewtype=image&pageseq=1
worms need partially decayed plant matter to live / breed in. by adding more leafmould, compost, partially rotted manure, etc, you will increase the population (of worms)
the fertiliser you were on about is Blood, Fish & Bone (BFB), and yes, it will 'burn' worms epidermis. ;)
I'd have thought a worm would eat BFB..... it's just ground-up dead things after all.....
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I've been wondering the same about the BFB? Could upset the balance of the soil but I don't see how it would burn worms? I was referring to those toxic looking liquid fertilizers like Miracle Grow/Growmore.
Something else I've been wondering for a while is whether cheap bagged compost with 'added nutrients' has a bad effect on worm populations. Does anyone know what form those added nutrients are in? Sometimes I run out of my own and think that's better than nothing. It never has a very positive effect in comparison to home compost, but that could just be the lack of beneficial bacteria/fungi rather than some other problem with it.
Greenstar - I was reading (in the book "Teaming with Microbes") that NZ flatworm populations are increased as a result of spreading steaming manure on beds rather than letting it age fully. Apparantly it's a big problem in some parts of the US. Didn't realise we had them here. Can't remember what else it said, maybe I'll look later...
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you may find this book interesting?
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1357&viewtype=image&pageseq=1
worms need partially decayed plant matter to live / breed in. by adding more leafmould, compost, partially rotted manure, etc, you will increase the population (of worms)
try it and see? put some BFB in a hole, drop a worm on it and watch it try to get off of the BFB.
whilst BFB may be good for plants, organic matter is definitely the best for worms
the fertiliser you were on about is Blood, Fish & Bone (BFB), and yes, it will 'burn' worms epidermis. ;)
I'd have thought a worm would eat BFB..... it's just ground-up dead things after all.....
try it and see. drop some BFB into a hole in the ground, add a worm, and watch it try to move away, pretty pronto!!
Organic matter is what worms need, not concentrates, whether organic or not. Guano is organic, but will burn your skin!!
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I am rather concerned about the suggestion that BFB upsets worms big time. Though having said that I have used it in the garden and still have a plentiful supply of wrigglies there.
Is there a way to use it that minimises the worm damage. Does it also upset slugs? What is the alternative?
Certainly my carrots seemed to love BFB. Best carrots ever.
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If BFB is applied at a normal rate, I'd have thought any worm repellent qualities would disappear pretty fast as it rots.
NZ flatworms are a more serious problem. Have you got absolutely no worms, Greenstar, or only a few? The flatworms appear to like damp, clayey soil, and in such conditions they do wipe out earthworms. In drier conditions and sandy soils, earthworm populations can recover, or the flatworms can die out. Digging makes the problem worse.
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NZ flatworms are a more serious problem. Have you got absolutely no worms, Greenstar, or only a few? The flatworms appear to like damp, clayey soil, and in such conditions they do wipe out earthworms. In drier conditions and sandy soils, earthworm populations can recover, or the flatworms can die out. Digging makes the problem worse.
why?
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Greenstar - I was reading (in the book "Teaming with Microbes") that NZ flatworm populations are increased as a result of spreading steaming manure on beds rather than letting it age fully. Apparantly it's a big problem in some parts of the US. Didn't realise we had them here. Can't remember what else it said, maybe I'll look later...
Delete that comment - it was about a different earth critter entirely and from another book ::) I do remember reading about them somewhere else recently though......
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I don't know why disturbing the soil would make the flatworm problem worse, but apparently it does. Breaking up the structure makes them more vulnerable somehow.
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When we dug all of our tatties up we rejoiced greatly when we found two worm in a bed together (worm porn?) We don't get out much...
Apparently the NZ flatworms are much worse in N Ireland and Scotland - they like it cold and wet. We don't have a heavy soil, but the problem is made much worse by people putting black plastic down and leaving it down over winter. When we took the current plot on last year there was muchos black plastic sheeting and the place was hoaching with them, but so far this year I've only found one and a couple of eggs.
And we don't have any steaming manure, or not to put on the garden anyway ;)
I'll just have to keep squishing the buggers.