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The no dig approach to gardening

By: Richard Griffin, Sittingbourne, Kent

Did you spend a back breaking day (or even more) during the winter digging over your vegetable plot? If so have you considered whether digging, either single or double, is really necessary and worth all the time and effort?

Two arguments are usually put forward in favour of digging. Firstly, it is argued that digging helps control weeds and, secondly, that it breaks up the soil and improves its structure. It is questionable, in my opinion, whether either of these objectives are actually achieved through digging.

Take the first of the arguments, control of weeds. While it is certainly true that turning the soil over buries newly emerging and established weeds, it also brings to the surface a plethora of weed seeds ready to germinate. The end result of digging is likely to be considerably more weeds in your kitchen garden than when you started. To test this out try digging over a small patch of earth and leaving undisturbed the soil next to it. Without doubt the dug over soil will produce the most weeds. So much for the first argument!

Digging over your garden does not necessarily improve the structure of the soil either. In fact it can actually destroy the natural process of structural formation carried out by earth worms and plant roots over the years. Frequently dug over soil is much more prone to compaction and reduced fertility. In addition, unless you are very careful, you also bury the fertile top soil when you dig.

It is also a sobering thought, while nursing your aching back, that unless you use the raised bed method a considerable amount of the soil that you dig is not actually used for growing vegetables at all, but for paths or the space between rows of plants and plants in the rows.

The alternative no dig approach relies on nature to develop the soil's structure. Planting particular vegetables such as leeks, parsnips and potatoes help this process, as does adding a mulch of organic material to the top of your bed at the end of the season. This encourages earth worm activity, builds up the quality and fertility of the soil as well as suppressing weeds and conserving water.

This is not to say that soil should never be dug over. On very compacted soils or on heavy clays it may take some time for worked in organic material to improve conditions. Digging can certainly help under these conditions.

A hundred years ago it was common every year for gardeners to double dig (then called trenching). William Cobbett in The English Gardener (1829) wrote that trenching was "an operation absolutely indispensable to the making of a good garden; that is to say, trenching to the depth of two feet at least". How many gardeners now double dig each season? Many, however, still, single dig every year. Most, I believe, are wasting their time and probably doing more harm than good. The no dig approach saves time and energy and result in fertile well structured soil.

This article originally appeared in the Members Bulletin, the journal of the National Vegetable Society, which is sent quarterly to members. You can Join the National Vegetable Society here

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