[Trikidiki]

If you have a virgin piece of land then I guess you could apply no-dig straight away once you've cleared the trees and scrub but the clearance would be 'digging'.

If you've got a hundred year old pasture you could probably start no-dig straight away. Once you've 'dug' the turf off.

Anything that's been farmed will probably have a soil pan from ploughing which will need to be broken by 'digging'.

Unless your plot has been well tended before (rarer than rocking horse manure) you're going to have to do some initial digging.

...he says it should be possible to start the no dig system by not digging, just applying newspaper and a very thick mulch, then again 3 months later.....

I find it difficult to see how you sow carrots, beetroot or whatever through the newspaper and mulch. No wonder the "first years harvest may not be fantastic"

If you're going to go 'no-dig' you've got ot do the spadework first!

[Trillium]

Digging is so ingrained in gardeners that it's hard to get our minds around not digging. Thinking outside the box can sometimes turn out to be more productive. Check out these videos:

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[freckledbeck]

Hi Trikidiki,
'I find it difficult to see how you sow carrots, beetroot or whatever through the newspaper and mulch. No wonder the "first years harvest may not be fantastic" '
Here is part of charles' reply -
'Mulching and not digging saves a lot of work and a lot of new weeds but does restrict the first year's cropping a little - spring salads and carrots are almost impossible but leeks, potatoes, autumn beetroot and brassicas, courgettes and squashes are possible. Then you will reap lots of advantages in the second year because uncultivated soil grows so many less annual weeds. Good luck.'
Thanks Trillium, a picture is worth a thousand words! I like the child labour aspect too (lol) though my youngest is only 9 months... Looks like they were having great fun.

[Trillium]

One thing that most people seem to miss about this method is that the first year is strictly left to decompose so that you're ready to plant in the second year and then keep adding 'ingredients' to keep it topped up. So you're not actually planting in newspaper or whatever, you've actually got compost made in a different manner.

[freckledbeck]

I missed that too? I thought we would be able to grow some things? I suppose you are preparing the ground for growing but does that mean no crops? I thought we would plant in the top layer of compost........

[Trikidiki]

Cheers for the expansion, freckledbeck.

Makes a bit more sense.

[Trillium]

You can always try, freckledbeck. Over here we can grow lovely potatoes in piles of straw with no manure at all, so never give up 

[Swing Swang]

But that's the whole point - digging really heavy clay a small bit at a time is almost as close to nirvana as you can get (never tried it with a baby on my back though). I've got a traditionally forged, long-handled 'Irish' spade with a long, narrow, sharp-edge blade; come November I'm as happy as a sand boy.

I wish I had more land to cultivate, although oddly enough digging someone else's patch doesn't produce quite the same feeling of bliss, so no requests for help accepted.

SS

[bigben]

The idea of not digging sounds good but I spent Sunday morning driving to my local stables, bagging up manure and then humping it back to my plot which is on a fairly steep slope. In all, it took a couple of hours to just get 5 bags ready for my spuds. (I only took over the plot in Jan - otherwise I would have manured last autumn). 5 bags will not cover even one bed to any great depth,so I cannot imagine how much I would need for a 340 square yard allotment. Even if I could get it delivered, just getting it onto the site would be fairly hard work. There is no real car access so every bag needs to be barrowed on. To cover each bed, each year I would need much better access, a huge supply of manure and would still be doing a fair bit of work just getting the stuff to where it needed to be. Sadly it will still be digging for me.

[compostqueen]

You don't need to manure the whole plot, only the bits where you grow the hungry stuff

I grow loads of comfrey round the plot margins, by the compost bins, and use it when planting crops, so there are other things you can use besides heavy manures.  No dig gardening relies heavily on home made composts so you have to start straight away getting your composting sorted 

Successive plantings make the soil more crumbly and things like leek, celeriac and spuds really do a thorough job of churning up the soil

[bigben]

quote author=solway cropper link=topic=51991.msg619488#msg619488 date=1267310547]
I dug this present plot for three years to get it into shape and it just about killed me. I'm now self sufficient in compost and I'll be no-dig from this year onwards, just cover it in compost and let the worms do the work. I will lightly fork it over and rake the surface but no more digging. I really can't see the point of digging once the plot is in a productive state. Gardening should be fun not punishment.
[/quote]

Thanks for the clarification compostqueen but what is the difference between what I do and no dig as spelt out by solway?

 My plan is - once the beds have had the brambles and bindweed etc dug out I will give them a yearly fork over before planting stuff. The beds will have had manure added  the previous Autumn if they are going to be used for heavy feeders. It seems like we are both doing the light fork and raking once a bed has been cultivated once.

[freckledbeck]

Thanks everyone for all the advice.
We spent the last couple of days covering the plot with newspaper, compost, straw and manure. (weather has been fantastic!) We will try and plant some of the things suggested above, and hope to get some croppage to eat later in the year!