[oakridge]

Very many years ago I bought a book by Dr. Shewell-Cooper about this very topic on the basis of being an idle sort of chap anything that avoided double-digging had to be a good system.  Well the land here is South facing sandy soil which is very free draining and the most aggressive tools I use are a Chillington and Canterbury Hoe, to no apparent detrimental effect.  Anyway, this morning on 'Farming This Week' on Radio 4 they were talking to Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust who thought that minimal cultivation was a 'Bad Thing'.  He was very sure of himself and did rather get on my nerves, but I wondered what y'all thought.

Malcolm

[New shoot]

There are quite a few 'no-diggers' on here, let alone minimal cultivation fans and they seem to do well with their crops.  If it suits your soil and the way you like to garden, then how can it be a bad thing.  In gardening, there are always several dozen sure fire ways to achieve anything 

I dig, but I don't have a rotovator or anything like that.  I like to add compost and let the worms do a lot of the work for me.  I was on the plot last weekend and got good reviews from some of the old boys for the state and depth of my topsoil.  The bit I was working, I have had for 15 years, so that's good enough for me 

[mumofstig]

I find that, if you have sandy soil, it makes any rain drain away too quickly - it's quick enpugh on sand, wthout making it quicker 

The most I do nowadays, is to turn the top few inches lightly with my fork - it works for me.


My old clay plot would have been too heavy without regular winter digging - so it just depends on your soil IMO.

[oakridge]

Thank you both, just what I thought.  The soil drains very rapidly so it certainly does not make much sense to make this easier by digging.  Both the plots I use are former stock tunnels so there is plenty of humus remaining although I do add large quantities of home made compost.

Apart from a blip with the caulis, which I have mentioned here previousely, crops seem to grow very well.  Because of the livestock history the soil is extremely good at growing nettles too, but I keep telling myself that this is a sign of fertility, but I don't always convince myself.

Malcolm

[compostqueen]

I'm a minimal person.  As I weed and harvest crops the soil gets tilled a bit. The roots of the veggies helps cultivation quite well, especially the leeks, onions, celeriacs, spuds, so when you harvest you find the soil much looser.  Regular additions of home made composts, spent hops,muck, leaf mould etc all help. I don't bother rotovating as I don't think soil needs to be like talcum powder

I don't mind what other folks do but I like not digging 

[oakridge]

I think it all comes down to the type of soil you have to work with.  My soil is sandy and does not form a pan so even the heaviest rain does not run off my sloping ground. Where we lived in Swallownest it was heavy clay so digging it over in the Autumn to let the frost break it down made sense.  Copious amounts of compost etcetera cannot do any harm I am sure.

Malcolm

[Christine]

ah so someone else has found that there's no such thing as minimal cultivation on clay 

[Beekissed]

There is now!  I've found the Back to Eden garden method and have applied it to my hard pan clay and will no longer be tilling, tilling, tilling to be able to get a seed or seedling into the soil. 

Before~



Five months after...soft, moist, black soil starting to build on top of that clay and the clay underneath it loose and moist as well~



The before pic was taken after tilling the ground 5 times and then a hard rain...compacted like it had never been tilled.  The after pic is soil that has been walked upon, a large truck driven upon it and many rains, then drought...hadn't rained for some time when this pic was taken. 

Imagine what it will look like in the spring!      http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

[mumofstig]

We've often discussed the back to Eden method on here, and it's great if you have enough organic mulch/chicken run debris to use.
Difficult for many to obtain that much material for many of us in the UK, though.

[jaydig]

We've often discussed the back to Eden method on here, and it's great if you have enough organic mulch/chicken run debris to use.
Difficult for many to obtain that much material for many of us in the UK, though.

We have a tenant on our site using the 'Back to Eden' method. The only problem is that when a load of wood chippings is dropped on site, he and his wife barrow every last little bit onto their plot, leaving the rest of the tenants without any. His selfish behaviour has caused a lot of upset amongst the other tenants, as a lot of them work and can only get to their plots later in the day or at weekends.  As they say "There's always one, isn't there!" 


Edited to clarify quote.

[snowdrops]

There is always one in anything you do. It is also worth saying how interesting I find these discussions on different ways of doing things either in this country or others. I do versions of lasagne gardening, how much I add is up to what I have available at the time. I work on the principle of owt is better than nowt😉

[Aunt Sally]

We have a brilliant book:

Gardening Myths and Misconceptions - Charles Dowding

He is a organic gardening expert and is also a market gardener.  It is amazing how many of the recognised "good gardening" practices he convincingly proves wrong.

[Beekissed]

There is always one in anything you do. It is also worth saying how interesting I find these discussions on different ways of doing things either in this country or others. I do versions of lasagne gardening, how much I add is up to what I have available at the time. I work on the principle of owt is better than nowt😉

I agree!  When I didn't have access to much materials where I lived before, I begged, borrowed and scrounged for it.  I contacted tree and lawn services for their bagged leaves or chips, I found chip dump sites out in the country and asked about them...then brought them home(I know a lady who does this all in the trunk of her car..even manure!).

I still do that and I currently pick up bags of bagged grass clippings from people who leave them out for the trash service in town...it's just a dab but every little bit counts.  Newspapers, shredded paper from local offices, old mulch hay that farmers were trying to get rid of, hair clippings from local salons, sawdust from local saw mills, leaves raked from the yard and the nearby woods, free manure/sawdust from horse farmers, etc.

You name it, I've scrounged for it.  It's sort of a hobby of mine to get useful things on the cheap or for free.   

It just takes work, but in the end it will pay off in not having to cultivate the land each year before planting and it also pays off in weed suppression, the richness of the soil and in total harvest.