[Veg Plot 1B]

"Humour me. As part of your processes find a part of your plot with real weeds in it, a few nettles, brambles , couch grass and some bind weed. Cover them with an inch or even 2 of compost and leave it 6 weeks"

Don't forget to put cardboard down first.

[John]

No-dig has been around for far longer than CD has been alive. Parisian market gardeners in the 19th Century used a no-dig method, adding huge amounts of horse manure to their plots. In this country  Albert Guest wrote Gardening Without Digging which was published in 1948, followed by Dalziel O'Brien in his Intensive Gardening of 1956 and James Gunston published Successful Gardening Without Digging in 1960.

This does beg the question 'if no-dig growing is so good, why does anyone dig over their plot nowadays?'

I think L D Hills summed it up best back around 1970 -

“We're not concerned with proving whether any of the authors whose books are bibles for each separate cult of no-digger are 'right' or 'wrong'. Our purpose is to find a blend of old and new methods that will help us garden with least and lightest work”

The only thing I'd add is that different methods are appropriate for different conditions. No one size fits all.

[jambop]

Oh dear I seem to have caused a debate disturbance 
The way I see it is this. I have been growing veg and keeping a garden for a long time and have always used the time old methods of digging and tilling the soil. I have now in my retirement moved to rural France and have a , what many would consider at an acre, large garden. I am not cultivating the entire area ... thank god! I am however looking for ways to make my job less demanding. My ground is a really good but heavyish alluvial soil which is shallow at about  20-30 cm deep over a hard clay pan below ... it floods easily in the heavy winter rains and dries rock hard in the summer heat. I have watched several of CD's videos on youtube he is a sensible and no nonsense gardener and his methods are perfect for my particular situation. I am raising my beds which will allow me to plant when the garden would have been flooded and unuseable before. The other vital piece in the jigsaw puzzle is I can get lots of farmyard manure to make the compost required for the method. However just watching his tutorials is enough for me to want to follow his method he shows you from seed to harvest what to expect using his methods and it has simplicity which makes it appealing to me at least. I don't think that CD has ever claimed he invented the method he uses but I suspect he has certainly added one or two innovations along the way.

[John]

If you could get a farmer to run a sub-soiler plough over the patch to break up the clay pan that may well cure the flooding problem. It's basically a knife blade with a cylindrical piece below that cracks open the clay.

Adding compost above will help cure the drying out problem.

My experience of growing on heavy clay has been that that double digging, adding loads of manure and compost and liming resulted in a wonderful soil. A neighbour's no-dig plot was a waterlogged mess.  Where we are now with a light but very stony soil is a lot easier with no-dig. Hence my addition of 10 tonnes of compost last year. Heck of a job moving it though.

You (and all of us) need to use whatever ideas and methods are helpful in our situation. I'm not proud, I'll steal any good ideas I can find.

[New shoot]

You (and all of us) need to use whatever ideas and methods are helpful in our situation. I'm not proud, I'll steal any good ideas I can find.

Well if they are good ideas, why not 

I've never double-dug my clay soil, but I do dig, use no-dig in bits, compost for all I am worth and add this as I am digging or as a mulch.  I'm pleased to say my soil is now pretty good as well 

I've just put a post on another thread about real nasty weeds, compost and no-dig, based on my own experience.  It didn't work for me then, but has since on cultivated soil, which has then been turned over to permanent plantings like fruit.  Just because people aren't shouting about no-dig all the time, doesn't mean they don't know about it or haven't tried it 

https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=129708.msg1511445#msg1511445

[jambop]

Let me just say here and now if I ever had to dig my garden soil... I would not be gardening full stop! I use a motor tiller and am not at all ashamed to say so. I am not about destroy my garden in an attempt to stop flooding. I am told by the local farmer that the soil below my garden is exactly the same as is in his fields metre upon metre of yellow clay. He ploughs his fields to a depth of 45cm and adds tonnes of his farmyard muck to them every year and his fields flood just the same as my garden does in act even more dramatically. The reason the soil sets up like concrete is because of the silty soil composition, temperature and sunshine we get down here... you only imagine it we garden on it. In the past people built houses using the stones from the ground and the soil, my own house is built exactly this way walls half a metre thick   No farmer can grow crops efficiently here without irrigating the ground hugely. I have just invested some of my money in an automated drip irrigation system I will be putting into effect this year this should help my ground and crops in the summer. People think that having the sort of weather we get here makes veg gardening an easy proposition dream on there is always a downside to the upside

[John]

I've been using grass clippings as mulch with great results under fruit bushes. Better soil and less weeds. Note: LESS not NO weeds

The thing I hate is black plastic sheets. Yep, they may work but when they get shredded and blown everywhere in a storm..

[John]

jambop - I've used a Merry Tiller for years, wonderful bit of kit, but it bounced off the clay pan unless really held down. Double digging is hard work but not as hard as you might think. Still, you do what you can. An acre is a daunting amount of land to work.
I've also grown in Catalonia - gets a bit warm in the summer. Not had the pleasure of a silty soil though but I'll swap you 3 acres of Welsh hillside if you're missing the rain.

[jambop]

 John the problem with the soil type I have is that when the moisture level is just right you would think you were gardening on the best soil in the world BUT ... have you ever been making up grout for a tiling job and you add a teaspoonful of water too much and you arrive at a soup ?  That is my soil that is, then the sun comes out and drys it as hard as concrete. My neighbours think I am mad, you see I believe in the hoe and there I am hoeing aways in blazing sunshine because I know those weeds are history in these conditions with the hoe... it has to be done  Anyways I use an MTD heavy 450 pro tiller and it does a good job  and I do know that tillers are not the best thing for soil structure ... but when the soil is compact, which it always is in the spring time, the heavy winter rains compacts the soil terribly. One other thing John look up the annual rainfall for where you live and the annual rainfall for Lembeye in Pyrenees Atlantiques I think you will be surprised.

[Veg Plot 1B]

Perhaps people like Charles Dowdings way is because his videos are more interesting, informative and backed up with sound evidence.

Never seem anything similar about digging.

[John]

....
 Anyways I use an MTD heavy 450 pro tiller and it does a good job  and I do know that tillers are not the best thing for soil structure ... but when the soil is compact, which it always is in the spring time, the heavy winter rains compacts the soil terribly. One other thing John look up the annual rainfall for where you live and the annual rainfall for Lembeye in Pyrenees Atlantiques I think you will be surprised.

I don't think tillers do damage the soil structure. Given all you've said about your soil I'd spread my compost over the surface and then run the tiller across to mix it all up. Perhaps you could convince a local farmer to donate a load of manure. If you chipped some wood and mixed it with the manure in a pile it would rot down and hold the nitrogen as it decomposed the wood. Not so much for the nutrition as for the humus improving the soil structure - in particular water retention.
According to The Great Google, Fount of all Knowledge the Midi-Pyrenees gets 825mm of rain against our 1067mm. Surprisingly the Limousin gets over 1,000 mm too. We've obviously been lucky when we visited friends there.

[John]

Perhaps people like Charles Dowdings way is because his videos are more interesting, informative and backed up with sound evidence.

Never seem anything similar about digging.

The trouble is so many Youtube viewers haven't the ability to evaluate the information presented and apply it to their individual situation. Did you know the earth is flat and climate change a myth? It must be true, it's on Youtube
I must admit that I don't like video generally for information - far too much time taken to say very little. Text, if properly written, is far more information dense.
I suppose a video about digging wouldn't be so exciting .. although a cursory search will give you quite a few results if you're finding a spade a bit confusing.

[jambop]

According to The Great Google, Fount of all Knowledge the Midi-Pyrenees gets 825mm of rain against our 1067mm. Surprisingly the Limousin gets over 1,000 mm too. We've obviously been lucky when we visited friends there.

I am in Pyrenees Atlantiques which has an average annual rainfall of about 1052mm  which is believe it or not fairly evenly distributed month on month although in the winter between Nov and March we do get a bit more. The thing down here is when it rains... it rains! I have never seen rain as heavy as we get here when it arrives and this is the thing it does not rain frequently but when it does the garden is trashed and the soil heavily compacted just by the weight of the water hitting the surface and of course a lot of it just runs off.

[Beloved Porcupine]

Go for it.  It is always worth a try and see if it works for you.

I do my no-dig without raised beds.  I could not be bothered with the expense (or the look).  My garden is a kind of like a furrow and ridge:  compost on the beds and lower paths between.  (FYI,  I asked him about this and he agreed the raised beds were not required.  You can see some pics on his site without raised beds).  This is my third season, and it really seems to work a treat on my heavy clay soil.  But then, I have 6 compost bins constantly on the go, providing the required material.

[John]

Is your land flat? Thinking you might find some ideas in permaculture swales to better control the water. We're on a slope here and have planted a triple band of willows at the top of a field to help absorb excess water that flows down onto us.

Quite ironic really, 200 metres above the sea and we near get flooded when there's a cloudburst. A sheet of water just sweeps down the hill.