by Frances Laing

Created on: March 16, 2009

Despite recent media interest there's still a huge amount of scepticism 'on the ground' about the No-Dig approach to gardening. Some people are fond of digging. Some say you can't do without it on your fruit and vegetable patch and that it needs to be done every single year. To maintain drainage. To expose soil pests.

I'm not convinced. I mean it's fine if you like or need the exercise. But I'd really rather let the worms on my plot do most of the digging work for me. Like many other people leading busy lives, I try to work smart not hard. And I have to take physical challenges into account. So I don't see a good reason for being dogmatic about it. Digging for the sake of it doesn't make sense to me!

Compared to some, there's no doubt I'm still a novice gardener. But I've listened hard and learned from others with decades of experience. Charles Dowding for example is a market gardener who's been using No-Dig techniques for over twenty-five years. I've read most of his books and tried out his techniques with great success. 'Salad Leaves for All Seasons' was heralded with a BBC prize this year.

Practical experience speaks volumes too. I converted my plot from derelict nearly four years ago. I used No-Dig techniques from the beginning - taking full advantage of training offered by the charity Garden Organic (the organisation formerly known as the Henry Doubleday Research Association) at Ryton, Coventry. At Garden Organic's demonstration gardens they have an allotments section and a No-Dig garden both of which have excellent yields.

Gardening on an allotment site is a bit like gardening on a stage. You watch those round about you, talk to your neighbours and they in turn watch and talk to you. The process of coverting my plot to full production was painstaking, it's true. It involved removing brambles with roots as thick as your thigh, and combing the soil through to remove bindweed, thistle and perennial weed roots.

I resisted the temptation to take what many saw as the 'easy way out' and roll out the rotavator. From what I could see their use led to compaction and ultimately destruction of soil structure - they chop up weeds into thousands of pieces which soon re-grow.

Once the first stage of 'combing' my soil through was done, I could finally convert to No-Dig. I use a sharpened hoe to keep annual weeds down now as well as different types of mulches such as cocoa shells, rabbit manure when it is available, wilted comfrey and cardboard and wood chip for my paths. I have raised beds too. Some are enclosed by reconstituted plastic frames. Some are simply mounds of soil with sloping sides. I find I have to water a lot less than I used to now. I put this down to the quality of my No-Dig soil and the water retentive properties of the mulches used.

In contrast to many of my neighbours who have used rotavators and those who dig the plot over every year, I have no problems at all with waterlogging - the quality of my soil (which I measure partly by the numbers of earthworms in it) and the fruit and vegtables it produces are amazing. No-Dig for Victory!

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