A Transformation - No Dig comes to the farm

The first half of 2019 has seen a huge transformation in my veg garden.
We are now officially NO DIG.

NO DIG I said, Boris!

The Wheel - A little design history

I initially designed the veg plot based around a wheel split into 4 quarters for crop rotation. Each quarter had 20 small beds which could be accessed without being trodden on. There were flowers and herbs grown with the vegetables and self-seeded waifs were selectively kept growing where I found them.

All was good, except that the sheer number of grass edges and paths made things unmanageable and gradually a major slug problem developed. The overhanging edges and small beds were perfect for them to shelter under and make raids into during the hours of darkness. 20 beds x 4 sides each x 4 quarters = 320 edges to maintain!

Gradually I joined beds together till eventually there were just four large beds in each quarter, plus a smaller one for forest garden / perennial growing.
These beds were much easier to work. In a single afternoon at the back end of winter I could comfortably rotavate half the plot. Coming into the spring I could have all the beds worked and all the paths mown and edged. A fresh start for the new growing season.

But somehow I gradually realised that I had moved away from my idea of a productive potager style garden. With beds being completely turned every year, waifs and strays and smaller patches of nature did not really fit in with the system. I noticed too that the soil somehow felt less alive. For a clay soil it was in good shape, but there were no worms, no fibrous roots, no complexity or structure. Yet if I left a bed unattended for a while, the soil surface protected from the elements, I would invariably find a different story, with crumbly soil alive with worms.

I wasn't doing anything terribly wrong. I still managed the plot for nature, chemicals were banned and pests and diseases were largely under control thanks to natural balances, but more and more I felt that the actual soil I was growing in lacked vibrancy. It was just a hunch, a feeling.

NO-DIG
I was increasingly hearing about No Dig gardening, but considered it a bit of a gimmick. After all the promise of not needing to dig, greatly reduced weeding and healthier crops seemed too good to be true. It seemed to be an idea which was almost being sold as a panacea to all gardening woes. When I looked further into it, crop comparisons seemed to rely on an abundance of salad leaves, which do seem to do better under this system, but which I could never possibly munch my way through. Fine if you want to market them, but otherwise...   Indeed, figures seemed to show a slight decline in yield for brassicas, which normally require a firm, undisturbed soil, and this seems to be glossed over everywhere I look.
Another problem I perceived was that no dig gardening seemed to place a huge emphasis on an annual mulch of compost (or even worse, black plastic). I don't have a problem with the compost idea, but it doesn't seem right if people are buying in compost left right and centre. The idea of sustainability seems to have gone down the pan. It's ok if you've got a farmer friend who can transport an endless supply of manure to you, but we are not all in that position. Anyhow, I'm not sure how healthy cow manure would be, what with the amount of antibiotics, growth hormones and goodness knows what else are used these days. Horse manure has its problems too, mainly due to the problems caused by aminopyralid weedkillers which persist from being applied to hay crops, through the horse, through the compost heap and on to destroy your vegetable crops. With ineffective regulators this problem seems to be rapidly on the increase. I came across it once when I was collecting horse manure from a friend and it caused no end of problems.

To counterbalance this argument, it is probably fair to say that even a conventional plot should ideally have at least as much compost applied as a no dig one. It's just that you can more easily get away with skipping this to some extent.

One final problem was that this seemed a bit like the latest fad, another excuse to go out and buy things, most especially lots of landscaping material and wood for edges. Facebook groups are full of people's photos of their newly landscaped no dig gardens.
To be fair though, one of the main proponents has moved away from wooden edges, which are not just impractical on a large scale but also harbour slugs and snails galore.

But still something inside me told me that a modified version of no dig was the way forward, so I started making plans to circumvent the problems I perceived.

The first beds being prepared for no dig - note the use of cardboard (top left) and how there are now paths dug to divide the larger beds into smaller ones.

Mulching
I absolutely won't use black plastic as a mulch. It seems to go against every grain of nature-friendly, sustainable gardening. I am however making great use of cardboard to inhibit weeds. It eventually rots down and contributes to soil structure.
Mulching in temperate climates brings a huge potential risk of harbouring slugs and snails, a gardener's number one enemy. My previous attempts at using straw under strawberries attest to this - fine in a dry year but disastrous in a wet one. Instead I am following Charles Dowding's approach of aiming to use prepared compost. This should avoid problems of a gastropod nature since slugs and snails thrive on decomposing material, not decomposed material.
I will reserve grass clippings and animal bedding for specific crops, such as the soft fruits which don't seem to be affected by slugs. Otherwise these can go straight onto the compost where the nitrogen rich materials greatly speed up the composting process.

The garlic bed and salad leaves has grown rapidly.

There are radishes down the middle of the garlic

and it is flanked by two rows of young parsnip plants.

Once the radishes and garlic are harvested I shall plant tall flowers between the parsnips.

A different patch of parsnips will be allowed to grow into a second year 

(these are last year's sown for this purpose and now flowering) to attract hoverflies, 

to give architectural design to the garden and to produce fresh parsnip seeds for next year's crop

Compost
I shall ramp up my compost making. To do this I have specifically planted elephant grass and short rotation coppice willow, both of which will be shredded to bulk up my compost.
With these measures I should come much closer to being able to apply a thin annual covering of compost.
But already I am noticing a huge benefit just by having the soil protected from the elements, compost or no compost. So I intend to selectively use green manures. These are traditionally dug in, which is not ideal in a no-dig system! However, there are some which can be chopped off and removed to the compost bin. The goodness will still eventually end up on the vegetable beds and while the green manures are growing they do a fantastic job of protecting the soil from erosion and from being beaten down by the rains. It is surprising how quickly a freshly rotavated fine tilth can turn into a sticky, solid clay mass or develop a concrete-like crust on it. Already I am noticing a huge improvement in soil structure where I have applied compost mulch. The crops are doing very well too, but it has been pretty much a perfect growing year so far.
Finally I am planning to try something which I've not seen before in this country but I did come across in a YouTube video. Where crops are harvested early and I don't intend to follow with another crop this year, I am going to sow oats. These I get incredibly cheaply in the form of animal feed. I know that they germinate as I do this to provide fodder for the turkeys. The idea is that they grow to protect the soil surface but then die off with the first heavy frosts. The thatch will then protect the soil over winter and will have rotted down enough to rake off and go on the compost the following spring. So I guess I am talking about winter mulches which are removed in spring. Slug problems will be avoided because of....

Ducks
The Khaki Campbells have, for the moment, been ejected from the veg plot after developing a taste for peas, spinach and coriander. Having said that, they were far less destructive than any other ducks and certainly less destructive than chickens. I expect to be able to let them back in the veg patch as their light nibbling will be a small price to pay for their almost total slug control. I seriously doubt the slugs will bounce back much even if the ducks have to stay out until autumn.




Paths
I originally planned to have so many grass paths because of my clay soil. It just would not work to turn all the grass over to earth. Paths would end up a sticky mess and in the wrong conditions most of the ground would be clinging on to my wellies and weighing me down. My compromise is to keep the main paths but to dig out shallow paths in the larger beds, effectively recreating a whole system of smaller beds again but without the endless grass edges. The soil dug out from the paths has just been used to build the beds up a bit so effectively we now have raised beds.

The paths are one rake wide, which means that as soil is gradually displaced into the pathways from the beds (this shouldn't happen so much as things settle down) I can very easily hoe and rake along the paths to keep them clear.

With the beds now being permanent and not being turned every year, I can plan to grow more herbs and perennials and leave self-seeded specimens to grow if I like where they are.

The broad bean bed in its early days.

Under the beans grow poached egg plants to protect from blackfly

and coriander which enjoys the shade.

The whole bed will be used for Purple Sprouting Broccoli once the beans and coriander are harvested.

The flowers will provide ground cover and will self-seed to give transplants for next year.

Growing methods
Only carrots and parsnips are now sown directly into the soil. Everything else is started off in modules and the plants are then moved into their permanent spots when the time is right. This way I can nurture them and prepare them for the big outdoors. I have found it is best not to delay planting out too much as they really take off once in open ground, as long as a liberal dose of patience has been applied and you don't try to push the plants to grow when conditions are not yet right.
I have been trying some multisowing too, where small clumps of several plants are grown together. This won't work for everything and I am very much following Charles Dowding's lead on this one. I shall draw my own conclusions later in the year.

Transformation complete
The transformation is now complete. It has been hard work, greatly helped by the use of volunteers, but it was a one off job which won't need doing again. Mr Rotavator has gone into semi retirement (though I'm sure he will still get the occasional run out, just maybe not in the veg plot) .
My hoes and edging tools are now being put to much more use, as is my transplanting trowel. The spades will still have the occasional use, not that I ever was much good at turning the soil with them. The days of double digging are certainly over




Now in early June most of this year's plants are in the ground and the harvest is already under way. So far results have been impressive with the salad leaves and early growth has been strong with almost everything I have planted out.
I am not yet giving no-dig the credit for this. The almost total absence of slugs has made a massive difference when trying to grow the likes of carrots and sunflowers and the weather has been pretty much perfect so far.

As ever I am open to trying all sorts of new ideas, but I do not approach them with my eyes closed. I retain a healthy cynicism and will constantly be evaluating and adapting the system to suit local conditions and my own needs from the veg plot.

No digging, plenty of lugging!

With Spring hurtling towards us, there is plenty to do to get ready for sowing and growing. The ground has been pretty much frozen for a while now, so I have used my time to do some of the more physical jobs on the smallholding, mainly moving piles of stuff from one place to another.

Firstly an offer of woodchip rapidly developed into collecting 6 trailer loads of the stuff over several days. It's not heavy, but that's still a lot of shovel fulls to load and then unload at this end.
Considering how much I shifted, it seems to have gone nowhere. I do at least now have some nice woodchip paths between my new no-dig veg beds.
Not all the beds are ready yet as there are leeks and brassicas still in the ground holding up my redesign of the bed system, so the last couple of trailer loads are piled up waiting to go to their new home.

While the trailer was on the car I used the opportunity to collect a couple of loads of straw bales. We are fortunate that a couple of very local farms still do conventional small bales which are far easier to handle than the massive agricultural scale ones which mostly go straight off to be burned for energy these days.
They are still only £1 per bale here, which is ridiculously cheap compared to other areas of the country.

I've continued moving compost onto some of the new beds too. The asparagus bed is looking particularly swanky. I hope the asparagus plants appreciate my efforts and throw up a forest of lovely spears this year.

Final job, and one which Sue excels at, was to clear a year's bedding from the goose stable. We run them on a deep litter system and have a good clean out once a year just before they begin laying, which traditionally happens on Valentine's day (give or take a couple of weeks).
This heady mix of straw and goose poo goes by wheelbarrow straight down to the soft fruit patch. I had to hurriedly prune all the currant bushes before it went down.
I pile it around the base of each bush and then the chickens come along and spread it everywhere!
This practice seems to reward me with ample currants. The blackcurrants especially thrive under this system.

While I was down in the soft fruit patch, I finally finished

cutting back the summer raspberries.

 

I laid cardboard on the grass (thanks Big Dug) and covered it with 

goose bedding. This will create a new bed into which I intend 

to plant more blackcurrant bushes which I raised from cuttings two years ago.

Growing Plans - The Wheel Goes No-Dig

I am more excited about the coming growing season than I have been for a long while.

I am going back to a system of smaller veg beds. I originally had the veg plot divided into 68 beds separated by grass paths. But those paths were a complete pain to mow, offering miles of edges for slugs to hide underneath.
So gradually I joined the smaller beds together until I was down to 28. The advantage of this was a lot less grass edge, simpler mowing and bigger beds which were easier to rotavate. The disadvantage was having to walk on beds to get to plants and it being more difficult to organise crops within the beds.

So this winter I am biting the bullet and going back to many small veg beds, but I am doing it differently. There won't be grass paths between the smaller beds. Instead each of the larger beds will be divided up into free-standing beds with permanent sunken pathways in between.

This means that using the rotavator will be difficult. Manoeuvring it in such small beds is difficult and it will kick the soil all over the paths.
Instead I am going for no dig.

The plan taking shape on the ground

I have been highly sceptical about no-dig in the past, seeing it as a fad which generally requires more mulch than a garden can possibly produce which in turn encourages slugs and usually seems to demand raised beds using forests of wood as edging (given that we don't have access to natural materials like rocks).
There are alternatives to raised beds, such as lasagna beds, but even the name puts me off! These rely on layers of mulch and compost which can go straight down even onto turf. As long as the layers are thick enough this will create an instant fertile bed.
There are also systems which rely on black plastic to cover the ground, but this just feels completely wrong to me.

Then I came across Charles Dowding's method of no dig where he uses compost as a mulch. The advantage of this is that it is not so attractive to slugs as all the rotting material is not sitting on the veg beds. In theory the compost mulch keeps weeding to a minimum too, though I suspect that a fair bit of weeding will still be required.
Of course, we are back to the original problem of how on earth to produce enough compost. Charles Dowding appears to bring in large quantities of soil improver made from green waste. This often comes with plenty of plastic fragments in, as well as needing to be purchased and brought in. He also seems to have a close relative with plenty of cows and benefits from bulk deliveries of manure.

So I set to thinking how I could realistically and sustainably mulch my beds.
The solution I have come to combines a host of methods.

Firstly I will collect from all over the smallholding for the compost heaps. I am hoping to grow Miscanthus elephant grass and to chip short rotation coppice willow to give bulky material to add. I already grow plenty of comfrey but again will make sure that I harvest this on a regular basis.

My compost heaps, the key to my new system.

But this still won't be enough, even with the addition of plenty of bedding from the poultry.

I am using cardboard to exclude light and protect the soil surface too. Everybody who visits has to bring all their boxes with them!

Beds protected for the winter, light excluded so that emerging weeds expend all their energy then die off.

Here I have put nitrogen rich poultry bedding under the cardboard. 

I will let the ducks (aka slug hoovers) in before planting.

I am also planning on using green manures. However, most of these need digging in which goes against the whole philosophy of no dig. So I am being selective. Field beans seem like a good option as they are hardy so will give protection to the soil over winter, but in the spring the tops can be chopped off and moved to the compost bins while the roots will be left in the soil to add structure and nutrients. Unfortunately I made all these decisions a little too late to sow field beans so I am growing them in modules in the polytunnel so they can hopefully be planted out soon.
I also have a plan to trial sowing oats in early autumn next year where crops have been harvested. I don't see a reason why I can't use the whole oats which I buy as part of my fermented poultry mix. I know it germinates.
Oats are not frost hardy, so should die down with the first heavy frosts. They will then protect the soil over winter before being raked off and moved to the compost bin in spring if they've not already rotted down.

The first bed to go into active service. 

Two rows of garlic cloves and I will sow parsnips down the middle when the time is right.

I do anticipate a potential increase in the slug population, which is one of the major problems of no dig in our climate. But I am hoping to make good use of the ducks to control this, letting them into areas at critical times to clear the ground before tender crops go in.

It is going to be a time of trying out new ideas and it will be more work to begin with getting it set up, but I have high hopes for my new growing system.
The disadvantage, if you see it that way, is that it looks more 'rustic'. Usually at this point in the year I would have beautifully rotavated beds and the overall design of the veg plot, which I call The Wheel, would be clear for all to see.

So why go no dig at this point?
Firstly it is about going back to smaller beds again, where Mr Rotavator becomes a little clumsy. The appeal of a lot less weeding is a draw too, though I think this may be overstated as part of the sell.
The main reason is gut instinct. After eight years of cultivation my soil is lovely to work and grow in now, but it doesn't feel like it has much life in it. When I leave a bed uncultivated for a while it becomes full of worms and it is beautifully crumbly, even at the end of winter when the bare soil has been beaten down by the elements.
The theory of no dig is to protect the surface of the soil and to keep the life within it undisturbed. Not just worms but less tangible elements, particularly mycorrhizal fungi which form a linked network through huge areas of soil and interact symbiotically with plant roots.
I will have to take peoples' word for this, but I am prepared to give it a go and see what happens.
Of course, mulching is not exclusively for no-dig systems, but it will go right up the list of priorities. The idea is that the time working and shifting compost is made up for by spending less time weeding and digging. I am hoping too that mulching more effectively will help crops get through dry periods and make for better conditions for vegetables which don't like the soil to dry out.

As I say, gut feeling says this is right for my plot right now.

I will keep you updated through the year.