no dig | Baldock Allotment Association

May 4, 2018

The No-Dig Diary May 2018

There hasn’t been too much going on down the allotment for the last couple of months …… even been too cold for weeds and just a bit too wet to work!

In the meantime I have been puzzling over no-dig potatoes. How does that work? My initial solution was to avoid the problem by not growing potatoes this year. However the gardening fraternity are a generous lot and by April I had been asked to grow a row of spuds for a friend.
Up in Weston, the farmers also use no-dig but on a far larger scale. As it happens they are trialling no-dig potatoes this season, so of course I wanted to know how they went about it.

Translated into allotment terms, we start with some levelled ground and place our chitted potatoes on the surface at the usual spacing.

Next comes a layer of manure or compost or both.

Add manure on top of chitted seed potatoes

On top of this is a layer of straw. This will benefit from a good soaking once it’s in place.

The top layer is grass cuttings – obviously not from grass treated for weeds & moss & such like ! The grass will rot down, and whilst its doing that, it stops the straw blowing about. Thinking ahead to pigeons etc. picking through all those layers, I covered the whole lot with some pea-netting.

Apparently this method will produce potatoes that are a better shape and more regular sized that traditional cultivation. It also avoids stabbing your crop with the garden fork, because you don’t dig them up to harvest and should mean that rogue tubers don’t get left behind in the soil.

We shall see!

Annie

January 27, 2018

The No-Dig Diary Jan/Feb 2018

BALGA tenant, Annie, updates us on her progress with experimenting with going no-dig. This month….paths!

‘Of course, no-dig doesn’t mean no work! The digging is delegated. You may do this already of course – you may have a co-worker or partner who loves the exercise! However you can still gain benefits from no-dig and find these heroes other important jobs on your plot.

With no-dig, the digging is done by the worms. Hopefully you have plenty, but you will certainly get a big influx with the arrival of all that lovely compost. The worms will draw the organic material into the soil and aerate it at the same time. As the soil is not being continually hefted around, an environment is gradually created that allows beneficial insects, microbes and fungi to thrive and prosper. As this happens, it gives the perfect soil structure for your fruit and veg.

However, there is still work to be done….plenty of compost to produce and distribute, but we don’t want to compact the ground so some paths would be useful.

There are several options for paths.
1. Grass paths. These look nice if well maintained. A grass path is fairly permanent though so perhaps other more temporary solutions would be useful to give flexibility year by year.
2. Walk on top of the compost.

The mulch underneath should stop weeds and the compost layer should not get muddy for a long time – not until the mulch has been broken down by the worms. This should take much longer than on the beds since you are walking on it and compacting it more than the beds.
3. Woodchip path. If you have a source of woodchip this is great. It shouldn’t get muddy and when you want a change, the woodchip will just rot down and add organic matter to your soil.

4. Gravel. The weed-proof layer here is black plastic (old compost bags work well!). Clear the ground, lay the plastic with a few drainage holes to prevent pools of water developing, cover with a layer of gravel. Cost of gravel may be an issue but it is re-usable when you want to take the path up and re-lay it elsewhere.

You will notice that the emphasis throughout is to try to stop the weeds growing thus saving time on weeding. We shall see!’

January 1, 2018

The ‘No Dig’ Diary – January 2018

Members may or may not have heard of this method of growing veg which has been espoused by Charles Dowding.
Clothall Road tenant, Annie, tells us more about it as we follow her on her ‘no dig’ journey.

‘I joined the library just before Christmas – I wanted learn more about pruning. What I found, was a book on compost. I like making compost. It’s very satisfying on so many levels. Perhaps that’s another diary thread for another time……but the compost book contained a chapter about no-dig gardening. How could that fail to catch the eye? That would be the best gardening revolution ever!
Several hours with Mr. Google followed, plus the chance arrival of an assortment of cardboard, and a few hours of free time over the Crimbo Limbo period. Fate decreed this was definitely worth a try.

Rather than try and convert the sceptics with technical persuasion (that can appear in later episodes), I shall just explain what I’ve done so far. Suffice it to say, ‘no-dig’ seems to mimic natural processes and therefore cannot be ‘wrong’.

One benefit of no-dig is to reduce weeding and the first step towards this is ‘sheet mulching’. I raked over a patch of ground (you can take out deep-rooted weeds if you like but this isn’t essential). Then I spread cardboard over the area. You can wet the cardboard but the ground right now is probably wet enough! Newspaper can be used instead of cardboard.

Then I covered the cardboard with a thick layer of compost (about 3 inches). I guess you could leave it at that, but in my garden the birds fling compost all over the place, so I covered the compost with whatever I could find – some bits of fleece, and old pea netting.

You could use black plastic but that would also keep the rain off. Aims of this mulching are twofold, firstly the mulch prevents light getting to weeds thus eventually killing them and secondly mulch gradually decomposes and is drawn down into the soil by worm activity.

Next time I shall explain ‘the path dilemma’ and hopefully tell what my solution will be.’