Try No Dig Gardening for Your Backyard Vegetables

Try No Dig Gardening for Your Backyard Vegetables
by Warren McLaren, Sydney
04. 9.09

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/try-no-dig-gardening-for-your-backyard-vegetables.php?dcitc=weekly_nl

No-Dig Gardening is such a brilliant form of home-based agriculture I was convinced the TreeHugger archives would be rich with its merits. Was very surprised when I only found one mention, in a post chronicling Leonora's permaculture adventures in New Zealand. So I launched into the following first-person account of No-Dig, only to discover that in North America the same process might be better known as as Sheet Mulching. Nomenclature aside, it's worth covering the topic again. Especially if you want to grow your own veggies for a little food security.

Background to Cultivation Free Farming
No-Dig Gardening can probably trace its legacy back to visionary Japanese agricultural pioneer, Fukuoka Masanobu, who embarked on his Natural Farming experiment in 1938. His very productive organic farming methods did not require extensive soil tilling, weeding, or application of synthetic pesticide or fertilizer. Best known for his 1975 book One Straw Revolution, Fukuoka Masanobu advocated returning grain and rice straw stalks to the fields as a way of enriching soil development.

American home gardener, Ruth Stout, put out a book in 1971, called the No-Work Garden Book, which echoed Fukuoka’s decades of natural farming. Ruth, though maybe lacking some of the quiet humility and philosophy of her Japanese predecessor, also promoted covering gardens in a dense layer of straw and green mulch.

In the Antipodes we had Esther Dean, who released her own book Growing Without Digging in 1977, seeding a small cult following of No Dig gardeners. And, of course, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren who refined their concept of a nature-inspired agriculture with the publication of Permaculture One in 1978.

All would champion the idea that soil quality will dramatically improve if left undisturbed by cultivating, tilling, plowing, digging etc. They believed that soil was enriched with top layers of mulch decomposing to develop the appropriate communities of worms and micro-organisms that enhance food growth. Their ideas have since been embraced even in broad acre agriculture under the guise of no-till farming (see links below).

So How Does it Work in Practice?
There are many ways to implement a no-dig garden. What follows is just one method.

No Dig Beginnings photo

1. We selected a section of the yard that would get at least six hours of direct sunlight. Unfortunately we had to cut down a couple of trees to ensure this access when the sun dropped to lower plane in winter.

2. We set up four main beds, so we can practice crop rotation, which rests the soil and reduces chances of plant pests making a comfortable home in the soil.

Your first bed might get the root crops such as carrots, onions, beetroot and potatoes. The second is for Curcurbits, which are melons, pumpkins, squash, zucchini and cucumbers. Corn can also be planted here. For the third bed consider Acid Lovers: tomatoes, chillies, capsicums (peppers) and eggplant (aubergine). And in the last one go the Legumes, like peas and beans (These are also nitrogen enriching plants) and the Brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, etc). Each year plant the same vegetables per bed, but one bed further round the rotation.

Separate non-rotating beds for herbs, and for perennials such as asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb, can also benefit from no dig methods.

To read the full article: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/try-no-dig-gardening-for-your-backyard-vegetables.php?dcitc=weekly_nl