Comfortably the best gardening channel. Comprehensive without dogma. You just say what YOU are doing. Not how it SHOULD be done. You let your results speak for themselves.
The dig-then-minimally-dig method is the one I've settled on for my own gardens. In my experience when starting with very poor, dense clay soil the pure no-dig method can take several years before it becomes maximally productive. After three or four years I ultimately went back to my original no-dig beds and double-dug them just once, further improving their productivity. Beds that I had dug in compost at the very start have not needed such a long ramp-up to reach high levels of productivity. As always, thanks for sharing your experience and insights, Bruce.
for a new patch on clay soil, i dig and leave the clumps as they are just by adding some gypsum through the spaces between clumps, so in the wintertime frosts will make them more workable in the next spring and gypsum gets the time to penetrate the clay structure. also research shows that gypsum works better if its mixed with green manure cover crops with nitrogen which i will try this year(ie. next month)
Well done Bruce. Your work ethic is very impressive. I have two allotments and use no-dig extensively. I wish however that I had initially used your approach and reverted to no-dig after digging and feeding my beds. We did that with only two beds but the results were much better. I think that your approach will become much more common in future. Thanks for an uplifting video.
Thanks! This approach definitely is longer to get established, and more work upfront, but so far has been easy and productive. I am not sure how much of it is the lack of compaction, or the fact all the existing vegetation is well decomposed before the crops are planted. But not having to deal with those few weeds was a definite benefit!
The first and most important part of no till is the cover crop. Oats, rye sunflower etc etc have thick roots that breaks up and aerate the soil all while pulling in nutrients and suppressing unwanted vegetation.
@@REDGardensI did a test plot of oats on my lawn last winter. Despite the extreme summer we just had the test plot did amazing. No weeds grew and that spot looked outstanding all summer. The rest of the yard is toasted. This winter I’m preparing ground for a spring garden. First and only thing I’m doing this winter is spreading oats. Early spring I will lay out cardboard 4 rows 4’w*25’L right on top the oats. 25/25/50mix of peat/ compost and straw on the cardboard.
I have always applied till before no-till, and I don't see an alternative. My arid areas are sometimes wastelands, and tilling once or even a second time sets a good stage for no till. The real crazy stiff happens when managing termination and biomass, seeding after that. Love your stuff, Bruce. Great as always.
Your new bed looks great, the hard work paid off. I have just a home veggie garden; I do min-dig, In the fall I cover with leaves to minimize rain erosion and compaction, In spring I gently fork in the leaves, some amendments and some compost, In summer I mulch many sections with lawn clippings. It seems I need to / like to, do it this way to build my soil. I can appreciate the No-dig method, but I just don't generate enough compost.
If the weed mat is pulled tight it makes it easier for sharp weeds to poke thru. If the weed fabric is left a little loose, the weeds lift it up and then buckle and fall over. Keep checking under the weed mat till everything appears dead, then remove the fabric and water the area as a garden but without planting anything and if weed seeds come up, return the weed mat. Repeat if necessary. Weeds can be really tenacious.
That is true. On my site it is so windy at times, I can't really let the fabric blow around too much as it will start to form holes and not last as long, so I tend to pull it tight if I can.
I put weights down on the edges like branches but leave it baggy so it can lift. It is a bit messy looking. I bagged a tree stump a year ago. It's covered in long white shoots but they can't get thru the weed mat. But it might take another year to kill the tree. @@REDGardens
I love the open-ended compost laying frame. I'm definitely copying that for our next build. Filling in the gaps we left in the compost with a closed-ended frame was a bit of a pain. We adopted a plot where the landowner had stripped the top 4 or so inches of topsoil into a big pile the year before in an attempt to sort of compost a lot of the perennial weeds. We spread the material back out and it actually seems to have done a pretty good job. The next year we planted into an adjacent field without that preparation and had a lot more trouble keeping the weeds suppressed, particularly buttercup. Catching the weeds at the right time also seemed to make a big difference. The beds we made right at the beginning of the season when the buttercup was really active were quickly overtaken, but the beds we did a month later when it was less active had a lot less weed pressure.
Yeah, it worked quite well! The main issue is it was a bit taller than the amount of compost that I had. Would have been a bit easier to buy more compost or rip down the boards a bit to match the intended depth. Stripping off the top layer of of soil is an interesting idea. I have seen it done, and in theory it could be useful, only if you have access to heavy machinery, because it means you don't have to cover the full site, only the composting pile. I wonder if stripping the top layer of soil and planting a green manure that will winter kill on the remaining ground can be a useful combination. Kill off most of the existing vegetation, and build the fertility of the ground at the same time. Buttercup can also be a tough weed, but cutting it just below the start of the roots can effectively kill it.
I've been experimenting with cutting a slit on contour and topping with compost. Seems to be a good compromise with minimal disturbance, especially for root crops that benefit from the looser soil.
@@REDGardens Yeah. Just using a spading fork or the like. Might require some mulch depending on what and how much existing vegetation is in the area, but I also landrace all of my crops, so weeds don't bother them much.
That’s a great use of space in between tunnels, which otherwise might become neglected. Have you seen the methods used by Iain Tolhurst, who uses cover crops between or with the main crops? Worth watching parts 1 & 2 of their farm tour. Thank you for sharing your amazing efforts! Those veggies look delicious.
If you use a digger you can dig deep in just one central spot to examine your soil horizons . If their is a compacted area it will be just below the dept of a plough or spades/forks ect
I have seen that too, and occasionally use my own flame weeder, which is great for small weeds and anything on the surface. Buried roots are not affected, unfortunately.
I personally think that No-till method works the best, when the soil is always aerated enough, the water can easily sink into the ground, but the ground mainly in hot summer days is still covered and not overly drying out. It's basically better to do min-till rather than no-till. But that's just my opinion. Thanks for the video btw! Are you planning on another composting video in near future? Would be highly appreciated :)
I think your "municipal waste compost" is similar to the "leaf compost" where I live. I find that it doesn't have enough nutrients for my plants. It's OK at first, but not enough nutrients for a whole season. Where I live something called "mushroom compost" is richer in nutrients. It's the spent substrate that commercial mushrooms are grown in. It's a waste product similar to compost that is higher in NPK. It is sometimes called "mushroom soil." I am told it can be higher in salts from animal manure, and so is not great to put directly on plants. That might be true, but I haven't had a problem with the salts yet. Some people recommend applying mushroom compost in the fall/winter and letting winter rain/snow wash excess salts out of the soil before sowing/planting the spring. Maybe it's OK in open areas with lots of rain/snow in the winter, but not great in a covered area with limited water to wash away excess salts, I don't know. Previously I applied it in the fall or mixed it with some leaf compost. This year I applied directly without any leaf compost in the spring and everything grew well. No issues with salt this year. Anyway, it's worked well for me so far. Might work better for you than municipal compost.
Great work -- amazing! Have you considered silage tarps to kill weeds and seed bank? No air, no water and heat absorbing. Wondering if the double layer of landscape fabric allows to much water and air to really kill stuff...
Thanks. I haven’t tried silage tarp, but a neighbour did and they seem to age some success with it. But they cut holes in it to plant squash, so there was air and water getting in. Here in Ireland I don’t think it gets hot enough a lot of the time for that method to be very effective, so the slower method of eliminating the sunlight is more successful, I imagine.
oxygen atoms are a major component of the entire plant, soil aeration is extremely important for the bacterial colonies also - more air = more bacteria, more bacteria = more plant food, more plant food = bigger, better, healthier plants.
I sometimes wonder about all of that, and then I look at the healthy growth of the plants in my no-dig garden, and figure there must be enough oxygen getting down into the soil.
@@REDGardens Absolutely, guided by the plants. Its such a simple aspect thats its overlooked, which is why i mention it, a soil that holds the ideal moisture and air is often overlooked in its importance for other remedies or advertised fixes.
Worms and other critters help to aerate the soil. If you have various soil crumb size, grains and grit with wide animal life range you will no problem.
I have been establishing raised beds by making taller walls and using cardboard at the bottom, then slowly filling with compostable matter and horse manure. I leave the raised beds over winter then start growing. It doesn't stop the weeds but they are slower to grow. Birdy
I usually like to dig and remove rocks, but I am really impressed with the quality and length of the carrots in my other no-dig garden this year! So I am not so convinced as I was the tit si worth the effort.
Fantastic, @@REDGardens ! Cannot wait. I've been shooting tons of video (Sadly, not releasing on my weekly schedule, but shooting lots!) Hopefully my garden videos will start coming out again fairly soon.
I agree that the ground needs to be prepared before adopting no-dig. The goal is excellent soil and not "do not disturb." I pull many rocks and weeds rom the native soil before adding the compost and amendments to begin no-dig.
I would generally agree, though there are a lot of different opinions out there about all of this. I can imaging if I was starting with a nice clean lawn, over good quality topsoil, I would be willing to risk just doing the easy 'do not disturb' method.
only thing i have seen working is steaming the ground. they develop it here named it " Soil Steam" the prototype was used on the land aroud my workshop.
I was thinking of doing something similar within one of the polytunels to get rid of some problematic disease organisms. But planning to use a combination of solarisation with a sheet of plastic, and my own makeshift steam generator.
This is great, thanks for sharing man! It's really beautiful. I was wondering, if you leave the ground fabric down the pull it back in spring, let the weeds germinate then put it back down when they come up would it help knock them back? Happy growing!
Clay can struggle with the no dig method, especially if it has been compacted over the years. I believe it could work if treated with leaf mulch, homemade compost and wood chips, letting worms do the work- but it would take a decade or more. Your method seems a great compromise.
@REDGardens I have heavy clay, and I have had a lot of success with Hungarian Rye Grass as an over-winter green manure. Amazing how the fibrous roots loosen up the clay by Spring.
Yes they do. In the compost, chopped into the soil, or weed tea, any way will help return the nutrients to the soil an help all the plants to grow better, including the weeds that I fail to dig out or remove in time!
You've talked about this before, in discussing the different approaches among the plots. It's great to see this in action and see it work. As many growers have said, context is key, and purist no dig is likely to fail.
I'll be trying this for future outside beds as my soil is very thick and clay like, the standard no dig beds I started never did well. I only started growing this year so still loads to learn but definitely learning to not be strict in following things like pure no dig. It's great finding someone doing this in Ireland, I'm in Wicklow myself, as it's more of a direct comparison to my own land and process
No dig beds need time to build up, you can't expect miracles in the first year (Dowding writes about this). But as you're inexperienced anything could have contributed to your plants no doing as well as you hoped.
@@lksf9820 but that's the whole issue this video is approaching, the time to build up is too long and a bit of aeration in heavy soil like I have can work better. I've purchased Dowding's books and have had great success in raised compost beds but that's a lot more money to build. The issue I've seen is the plant roots cannot penetrate the thick soil under the compost and I'm going to try the method here to see does it help
@lksf9820 Dowding does write about it needing time to build up, but he also promotes the idea that simply throwing compost over a piece of cardboard with produce great results. And I know a lot of people who have been frustrated by this.
Ha a very timely video. I've just got in from digging over a patch fully weeded in readiness to make it no dig next year inwards. We have the dreaded ground elder here on this side although we do have creeping thistle over in the main garden. On on unrelated note how was your runner bean harvest this year? Despite sowing late we had a much better harvest with lots of beans per stem, actually more beans than last year with fewer plants.
Yes. id like to get more precise and creative with the possibilities, but I have a huge bath brewing at the moment, just lots of vegetation soaking in a big tub of water.
Yeah, I’m quite certain that no-till, while an admirable ideal, isn’t a quality innovation. It originates in a desire not to plow the vast areas that a farmer growing cereal crops will work over repeatedly. But the idea that your local micro biome won’t recolonize is nonsense, a garden isn’t usually measured in acreage, but square feet/meters even in market garden size. I suspect that no-till is effective at a small backyard scale, but any market garden is going to need to till sometimes, and I’ve seen that reinforced by a channel here on YT named for the ideal. That’s caused me to create a slightly cynical phrase, “there’s two types of market gardeners; those who till sometimes, and those who lie about for clout and merchandising”
Interesting phrase. 😁 I do think there are situations where the never-till method works really well, and I think that is the kind of situation that some of the promoters of the various versions started with. I suspect they didn't recognise the uniqueness of their situation before promoting the method, and we end up with a lot of people struggling because their context isn't ideal. This tendency seems to be very common in a lot of areas of gardening/growing. It is hard to identify the reasons why we are successful if we don't have a lot of experience with a wide range of different climates and soil conditions.
Have you seen the latest video from NightHawkInLight? The testing method he presents in that video may be of great interest you to for helping to improve your garden project.
I do no till gardening but i really dig it many times before i plant and rake it over once a week for a month or so but i have ground elder, couch grass and ground ivy and creeping thistle along with creeping butter cup. I afterwards use a layervof cardboard every fall with goat stall bedding twice a year And still i need to weed them in between because these plants send off runners from meters away. But its better than tilling because i mostly grow perennial veg.
@@REDGardens yeah it makes a bigger difference than any other mulch and I get mine from my workplace. I imagine it's a terrible option for someone without a car or who doesn't have a reliable source.
I think a windbreak would help create a better microclimate, but tI am not sure it would be worth it mainly to try to keep out weed seeds from blowing in.
interesting stuff, never realized weeds could be so much work have you experimented with digging deeper rather than broader? say like 2 feet minimum, ideally deeper, but just narrow trenches or bored holes rather than the entire area and then backfill with some homemade fungal compost + sand/native/whatever for drainage then plant the cash crops right into that? i imagine in doing so, you can largely ignore all the weeds in between plantings, maybe just buzz them down once in a while with a weed whacker that's my plan of attack if i can find land, to dig a grid of trenches just a few inches wide, but as deep as i can manage. Plants seem to really love sending a root as deep as quickly as possible, no matter the species. And any sort of hardpan or shift to a tougher environment seems to cut its potential. I just don't have any clue if it will actually work out well or not😅
I think the deeper trenches you describe would really boost the growth of these problematic weeds, and their roots would colonise the loose fertile trenches very quickly and eventually overpower the crops.
With weeds like Bermuda grass it's impossible to do no-dig. I have a shaded bed that doesn't get much bermuda grass infestation, but the others on full sunlight are a nightmare to clean every season...
Yes, a lot of that damage was from flea beetle, one of our main pests from brassicas. I haven't figured out a great way to deal with them, but I am trying trap crops and crop cover mesh. I mainly rely on crop covers keep out butterflies and other flying insects. For slugs, I kill them, either by giving them places to hide and then killing them, or head out in the night with a flashlight. And I have been using some 'organic' slug pellets that apparently doesn't cause an issue with other wildlife.
instead of no dig, just get pigs or chickens or goats or all of the above to till the soil then plant. you get to free range your animals then you get a freely fertilized soil from all that manure for your veg.
That seems to work well for some people, but they aren't without issues. I have seen pigs really dig up the ground and then when they were removed, the scutch grass and dock just came back stronger than ever growing in the loose fertile soil. Apparently the pigs didn't like the scutch grass roots or dig deep enough to get the dock roots. Personally, I'd rather put in the work digging that put in the work taking care of animals, and then having to clean up after them.
Your work is great. Love your experimentation. Belive it would be of value, to you and viewrs, an experiment with herbicide, in a small plot, a problematic one, as a way to do a transition to a produtive garden faster. Belive you can reduce the transition from 1 or 2 years to a few months (2 aplications from feb to july), with great results dealing with the most problematic weeds. It would also reduce work, and materials (plastic, cardboad, etc). So, there trade offs... All good to you.
Then he couldn't claim to be organic 🙂 The problem with using them is they don't kill some weeds permanently as they don't kill the roots, they can also get into the soil.
@@lksf9820 the oposite. They are specially effective to deal with the nasty rizhome weeds, that are very duficult to erradicate just by covering it, or dig. They get killed from foliage to the roots. And, at least the more common glyphosate, does not persist nor damage the soil... thats the whole point. Im all for organic, and for using chemicals the least possible. But sometimes they are just a better, more rational, option. Everything as a good use, if its tge right amount, the right place the right time...
@@REDGardens I use it on some land we have (grazing for sheep), It depends on the plant it's applied to. Weeds with large and deep root networks such as docks, dandelions, thistles and nettles it just kills off the top growth and they grow back. To get rid of those you have to hit them twice yearly for years. Grass it kills dead, but I don't know about couch grass. It might have been Jesse Frost who said it can get into the soil.
With all the money that you’ve invested in this it seems like you would invest in a weed flamer , And just run it back-and-forth over the area until you kill off all surface weeds.
This is why or where Jesse Frost of No-till growers is slightly ahead of Charles Dowding. As said before (which may have triggered this video 🙂) Buy their books, watch their vids.
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Comfortably the best gardening channel. Comprehensive without dogma. You just say what YOU are doing. Not how it SHOULD be done. You let your results speak for themselves.
Wow, thanks! So wonderful to get a comment like that!
Amen
The dig-then-minimally-dig method is the one I've settled on for my own gardens. In my experience when starting with very poor, dense clay soil the pure no-dig method can take several years before it becomes maximally productive. After three or four years I ultimately went back to my original no-dig beds and double-dug them just once, further improving their productivity. Beds that I had dug in compost at the very start have not needed such a long ramp-up to reach high levels of productivity. As always, thanks for sharing your experience and insights, Bruce.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, which sound sensible, specially having to deal with clay soil.
I’ve found the same thing in my southeastern Pennsylvania clay.
for a new patch on clay soil, i dig and leave the clumps as they are just by adding some gypsum through the spaces between clumps, so in the wintertime frosts will make them more workable in the next spring and gypsum gets the time to penetrate the clay structure. also research shows that gypsum works better if its mixed with green manure cover crops with nitrogen which i will try this year(ie. next month)
Well done Bruce. Your work ethic is very impressive.
I have two allotments and use no-dig extensively. I wish however that I had initially used your approach and reverted to no-dig after digging and feeding my beds.
We did that with only two beds but the results were much better. I think that your approach will become much more common in future.
Thanks for an uplifting video.
Thanks! This approach definitely is longer to get established, and more work upfront, but so far has been easy and productive. I am not sure how much of it is the lack of compaction, or the fact all the existing vegetation is well decomposed before the crops are planted. But not having to deal with those few weeds was a definite benefit!
The first and most important part of no till is the cover crop. Oats, rye sunflower etc etc have thick roots that breaks up and aerate the soil all while pulling in nutrients and suppressing unwanted vegetation.
I wonder if the cover crops like that would significantly reduce the perennial weed issues.
@@REDGardensI did a test plot of oats on my lawn last winter. Despite the extreme summer we just had the test plot did amazing. No weeds grew and that spot looked outstanding all summer. The rest of the yard is toasted.
This winter I’m preparing ground for a spring garden. First and only thing I’m doing this winter is spreading oats. Early spring I will lay out cardboard 4 rows 4’w*25’L right on top the oats. 25/25/50mix of peat/ compost and straw on the cardboard.
I have always applied till before no-till, and I don't see an alternative. My arid areas are sometimes wastelands, and tilling once or even a second time sets a good stage for no till. The real crazy stiff happens when managing termination and biomass, seeding after that. Love your stuff, Bruce. Great as always.
Thanks! I think there are a lot of situations that the till then no-till approach makes a lot of sense.
Your new bed looks great, the hard work paid off.
I have just a home veggie garden; I do min-dig, In the fall I cover with leaves to minimize rain erosion and compaction, In spring I gently fork in the leaves, some amendments and some compost, In summer I mulch many sections with lawn clippings. It seems I need to / like to, do it this way to build my soil. I can appreciate the No-dig method, but I just don't generate enough compost.
I think that is a sensible approach. Many people just can't get the compost to do Dowding's no-dig method.
Interesting experiment. Thanks for sharing your results to date.
🙂
If the weed mat is pulled tight it makes it easier for sharp weeds to poke thru. If the weed fabric is left a little loose, the weeds lift it up and then buckle and fall over. Keep checking under the weed mat till everything appears dead, then remove the fabric and water the area as a garden but without planting anything and if weed seeds come up, return the weed mat. Repeat if necessary. Weeds can be really tenacious.
That is true. On my site it is so windy at times, I can't really let the fabric blow around too much as it will start to form holes and not last as long, so I tend to pull it tight if I can.
I put weights down on the edges like branches but leave it baggy so it can lift. It is a bit messy looking. I bagged a tree stump a year ago. It's covered in long white shoots but they can't get thru the weed mat. But it might take another year to kill the tree. @@REDGardens
I love the open-ended compost laying frame. I'm definitely copying that for our next build. Filling in the gaps we left in the compost with a closed-ended frame was a bit of a pain.
We adopted a plot where the landowner had stripped the top 4 or so inches of topsoil into a big pile the year before in an attempt to sort of compost a lot of the perennial weeds. We spread the material back out and it actually seems to have done a pretty good job. The next year we planted into an adjacent field without that preparation and had a lot more trouble keeping the weeds suppressed, particularly buttercup.
Catching the weeds at the right time also seemed to make a big difference. The beds we made right at the beginning of the season when the buttercup was really active were quickly overtaken, but the beds we did a month later when it was less active had a lot less weed pressure.
Yeah, it worked quite well! The main issue is it was a bit taller than the amount of compost that I had. Would have been a bit easier to buy more compost or rip down the boards a bit to match the intended depth.
Stripping off the top layer of of soil is an interesting idea. I have seen it done, and in theory it could be useful, only if you have access to heavy machinery, because it means you don't have to cover the full site, only the composting pile. I wonder if stripping the top layer of soil and planting a green manure that will winter kill on the remaining ground can be a useful combination. Kill off most of the existing vegetation, and build the fertility of the ground at the same time.
Buttercup can also be a tough weed, but cutting it just below the start of the roots can effectively kill it.
I've been experimenting with cutting a slit on contour and topping with compost. Seems to be a good compromise with minimal disturbance, especially for root crops that benefit from the looser soil.
Are you cutting a slit through the existing vegetation/soil?
@@REDGardens Yeah. Just using a spading fork or the like. Might require some mulch depending on what and how much existing vegetation is in the area, but I also landrace all of my crops, so weeds don't bother them much.
That’s a great use of space in between tunnels, which otherwise might become neglected. Have you seen the methods used by Iain Tolhurst, who uses cover crops between or with the main crops? Worth watching parts 1 & 2 of their farm tour. Thank you for sharing your amazing efforts! Those veggies look delicious.
Thanks, I will check it out.
Fantastic work as always. I appreciate you!
Thank you! Cheers!
If you use a digger you can dig deep in just one central spot to examine your soil horizons . If their is a compacted area it will be just below the dept of a plough or spades/forks ect
I would like to try doing that with a digger one day.
About the weeds…I’ve seen others burn the weeds and weed seeds prior to sowing. Love the channel!
I have seen that too, and occasionally use my own flame weeder, which is great for small weeds and anything on the surface. Buried roots are not affected, unfortunately.
not any use on perennial weeds
Thanks for sharing, your videos are very instructive.
🙂
I personally think that No-till method works the best, when the soil is always aerated enough, the water can easily sink into the ground, but the ground mainly in hot summer days is still covered and not overly drying out. It's basically better to do min-till rather than no-till. But that's just my opinion. Thanks for the video btw! Are you planning on another composting video in near future? Would be highly appreciated :)
I think I agree. I hope to do another composting video next year.
Your gardens are beautiful!
Thank you!
I think your "municipal waste compost" is similar to the "leaf compost" where I live. I find that it doesn't have enough nutrients for my plants. It's OK at first, but not enough nutrients for a whole season. Where I live something called "mushroom compost" is richer in nutrients. It's the spent substrate that commercial mushrooms are grown in. It's a waste product similar to compost that is higher in NPK. It is sometimes called "mushroom soil." I am told it can be higher in salts from animal manure, and so is not great to put directly on plants. That might be true, but I haven't had a problem with the salts yet. Some people recommend applying mushroom compost in the fall/winter and letting winter rain/snow wash excess salts out of the soil before sowing/planting the spring. Maybe it's OK in open areas with lots of rain/snow in the winter, but not great in a covered area with limited water to wash away excess salts, I don't know. Previously I applied it in the fall or mixed it with some leaf compost. This year I applied directly without any leaf compost in the spring and everything grew well. No issues with salt this year. Anyway, it's worked well for me so far. Might work better for you than municipal compost.
Great work -- amazing! Have you considered silage tarps to kill weeds and seed bank? No air, no water and heat absorbing. Wondering if the double layer of landscape fabric allows to much water and air to really kill stuff...
Thanks. I haven’t tried silage tarp, but a neighbour did and they seem to age some success with it. But they cut holes in it to plant squash, so there was air and water getting in. Here in Ireland I don’t think it gets hot enough a lot of the time for that method to be very effective, so the slower method of eliminating the sunlight is more successful, I imagine.
oxygen atoms are a major component of the entire plant, soil aeration is extremely important for the bacterial colonies also - more air = more bacteria, more bacteria = more plant food, more plant food = bigger, better, healthier plants.
I sometimes wonder about all of that, and then I look at the healthy growth of the plants in my no-dig garden, and figure there must be enough oxygen getting down into the soil.
@@REDGardens Absolutely, guided by the plants. Its such a simple aspect thats its overlooked, which is why i mention it, a soil that holds the ideal moisture and air is often overlooked in its importance for other remedies or advertised fixes.
Worms and other critters help to aerate the soil. If you have various soil crumb size, grains and grit with wide animal life range you will no problem.
I have been establishing raised beds by making taller walls and using cardboard at the bottom, then slowly filling with compostable matter and horse manure. I leave the raised beds over winter then start growing. It doesn't stop the weeds but they are slower to grow.
Birdy
Sometimes just slowing them down helps a lot :)
I just cant imagine not doing that initial till to get rocks out. Imagine year after year planting on top of a large rock..
Your carrots would be short!
Massive tree roots as well
I usually like to dig and remove rocks, but I am really impressed with the quality and length of the carrots in my other no-dig garden this year! So I am not so convinced as I was the tit si worth the effort.
really nice. Will you be giving us a run down/recap of what was planted in this space? and the results of the planting/harvests?
Yes, I plan to do a video about the quick rotation cropping that I have been experimenting with.
Fantastic, @@REDGardens ! Cannot wait. I've been shooting tons of video (Sadly, not releasing on my weekly schedule, but shooting lots!) Hopefully my garden videos will start coming out again fairly soon.
I agree that the ground needs to be prepared before adopting no-dig. The goal is excellent soil and not "do not disturb." I pull many rocks and weeds rom the native soil before adding the compost and amendments to begin no-dig.
I would generally agree, though there are a lot of different opinions out there about all of this. I can imaging if I was starting with a nice clean lawn, over good quality topsoil, I would be willing to risk just doing the easy 'do not disturb' method.
Good work and good luck
Thanks!
only thing i have seen working is steaming the ground. they develop it here named it " Soil Steam" the prototype was used on the land aroud my workshop.
I was thinking of doing something similar within one of the polytunels to get rid of some problematic disease organisms. But planning to use a combination of solarisation with a sheet of plastic, and my own makeshift steam generator.
Good Work :)
Thanks 😁
Really enjoyed this video -
🙂
Love your videos
🙂
This is great, thanks for sharing man! It's really beautiful. I was wondering, if you leave the ground fabric down the pull it back in spring, let the weeds germinate then put it back down when they come up would it help knock them back? Happy growing!
Yes, I think that would work.
Thank you dude.
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Clay can struggle with the no dig method, especially if it has been compacted over the years. I believe it could work if treated with leaf mulch, homemade compost and wood chips, letting worms do the work- but it would take a decade or more. Your method seems a great compromise.
I don't have any experience with clay soils, my soils are a sandy loam, but I understand they can be a real issue with compaction.
@REDGardens I have heavy clay, and I have had a lot of success with Hungarian Rye Grass as an over-winter green manure. Amazing how the fibrous roots loosen up the clay by Spring.
Weeds make incredible fertilizer
Yes they do. In the compost, chopped into the soil, or weed tea, any way will help return the nutrients to the soil an help all the plants to grow better, including the weeds that I fail to dig out or remove in time!
You've talked about this before, in discussing the different approaches among the plots. It's great to see this in action and see it work. As many growers have said, context is key, and purist no dig is likely to fail.
Yes, context is key! I think the 'purist' no-dig approach works if you have a nice lawn with normal grasses, and good decent topsoil underneath.
Richard Perkins would be delighted!
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I'll be trying this for future outside beds as my soil is very thick and clay like, the standard no dig beds I started never did well. I only started growing this year so still loads to learn but definitely learning to not be strict in following things like pure no dig. It's great finding someone doing this in Ireland, I'm in Wicklow myself, as it's more of a direct comparison to my own land and process
No dig beds need time to build up, you can't expect miracles in the first year (Dowding writes about this). But as you're inexperienced anything could have contributed to your plants no doing as well as you hoped.
@@lksf9820 but that's the whole issue this video is approaching, the time to build up is too long and a bit of aeration in heavy soil like I have can work better. I've purchased Dowding's books and have had great success in raised compost beds but that's a lot more money to build. The issue I've seen is the plant roots cannot penetrate the thick soil under the compost and I'm going to try the method here to see does it help
@@StevilKanevil_ As you point out, you're very inexperienced.
@@lksf9820 XD cheers for the helpful constructive comments!
@lksf9820 Dowding does write about it needing time to build up, but he also promotes the idea that simply throwing compost over a piece of cardboard with produce great results. And I know a lot of people who have been frustrated by this.
Ha a very timely video. I've just got in from digging over a patch fully weeded in readiness to make it no dig next year inwards. We have the dreaded ground elder here on this side although we do have creeping thistle over in the main garden. On on unrelated note how was your runner bean harvest this year? Despite sowing late we had a much better harvest with lots of beans per stem, actually more beans than last year with fewer plants.
I don’t grow any runner beans outside, and the ones I was trying inside the polytunnel didn’t do very well for some reason.
Hi there! Have you ever experimented with making your own organic liquid fertilizers? Thank you :)
Yes. id like to get more precise and creative with the possibilities, but I have a huge bath brewing at the moment, just lots of vegetation soaking in a big tub of water.
That is a mighty texan broadfork :D
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Yeah, I’m quite certain that no-till, while an admirable ideal, isn’t a quality innovation. It originates in a desire not to plow the vast areas that a farmer growing cereal crops will work over repeatedly.
But the idea that your local micro biome won’t recolonize is nonsense, a garden isn’t usually measured in acreage, but square feet/meters even in market garden size.
I suspect that no-till is effective at a small backyard scale, but any market garden is going to need to till sometimes, and I’ve seen that reinforced by a channel here on YT named for the ideal. That’s caused me to create a slightly cynical phrase, “there’s two types of market gardeners; those who till sometimes, and those who lie about for clout and merchandising”
Interesting phrase. 😁
I do think there are situations where the never-till method works really well, and I think that is the kind of situation that some of the promoters of the various versions started with. I suspect they didn't recognise the uniqueness of their situation before promoting the method, and we end up with a lot of people struggling because their context isn't ideal. This tendency seems to be very common in a lot of areas of gardening/growing. It is hard to identify the reasons why we are successful if we don't have a lot of experience with a wide range of different climates and soil conditions.
Have you seen the latest video from NightHawkInLight? The testing method he presents in that video may be of great interest you to for helping to improve your garden project.
Have you ever tried the top burn method to clear land.? ts done in the pacific.
I haven't. Would probably clear a lot of the grasses, but bought it will get rid of the scutch grass and bind weed.
I do no till gardening but i really dig it many times before i plant and rake it over once a week for a month or so but i have ground elder, couch grass and ground ivy and creeping thistle along with creeping butter cup. I afterwards use a layervof cardboard every fall with goat stall bedding twice a year And still i need to weed them in between because these plants send off runners from meters away. But its better than tilling because i mostly grow perennial veg.
I can imagine the regular use of cardboard would really help.
@@REDGardens yeah it makes a bigger difference than any other mulch and I get mine from my workplace. I imagine it's a terrible option for someone without a car or who doesn't have a reliable source.
Much of my weed seed blows in from surrounding farm land. I wonder if a windbreak at each end of your between-tunnels would reduce imported weed seed?
I think a windbreak would help create a better microclimate, but tI am not sure it would be worth it mainly to try to keep out weed seeds from blowing in.
interesting stuff, never realized weeds could be so much work
have you experimented with digging deeper rather than broader?
say like 2 feet minimum, ideally deeper, but just narrow trenches or bored holes rather than the entire area
and then backfill with some homemade fungal compost + sand/native/whatever for drainage
then plant the cash crops right into that?
i imagine in doing so, you can largely ignore all the weeds in between plantings, maybe just buzz them down once in a while with a weed whacker
that's my plan of attack if i can find land, to dig a grid of trenches just a few inches wide, but as deep as i can manage. Plants seem to really love sending a root as deep as quickly as possible, no matter the species. And any sort of hardpan or shift to a tougher environment seems to cut its potential.
I just don't have any clue if it will actually work out well or not😅
I think the deeper trenches you describe would really boost the growth of these problematic weeds, and their roots would colonise the loose fertile trenches very quickly and eventually overpower the crops.
Heavy clay ,stony soil so I use reduced till
Makes sense.
With weeds like Bermuda grass it's impossible to do no-dig.
I have a shaded bed that doesn't get much bermuda grass infestation, but the others on full sunlight are a nightmare to clean every season...
I have heard that Bermuda grass is a tough one to deal with!
I notice a fair bit of pest damage on those leaves. How do you manage slugs, cabbage moth and the like?
Yes, a lot of that damage was from flea beetle, one of our main pests from brassicas. I haven't figured out a great way to deal with them, but I am trying trap crops and crop cover mesh. I mainly rely on crop covers keep out butterflies and other flying insects. For slugs, I kill them, either by giving them places to hide and then killing them, or head out in the night with a flashlight. And I have been using some 'organic' slug pellets that apparently doesn't cause an issue with other wildlife.
@@REDGardens I use a mesh cover for flea beetle. It has very narrow holes - smaller than the mesh for Cabbage White Butterfly etc.
have you ever had issues with johnson grass?
No, I don’t think I’ve come across it.
instead of no dig, just get pigs or chickens or goats or all of the above to till the soil then plant. you get to free range your animals then you get a freely fertilized soil from all that manure for your veg.
That seems to work well for some people, but they aren't without issues. I have seen pigs really dig up the ground and then when they were removed, the scutch grass and dock just came back stronger than ever growing in the loose fertile soil. Apparently the pigs didn't like the scutch grass roots or dig deep enough to get the dock roots. Personally, I'd rather put in the work digging that put in the work taking care of animals, and then having to clean up after them.
Your work is great. Love your experimentation.
Belive it would be of value, to you and viewrs, an experiment with herbicide, in a small plot, a problematic one, as a way to do a transition to a produtive garden faster. Belive you can reduce the transition from 1 or 2 years to a few months (2 aplications from feb to july), with great results dealing with the most problematic weeds. It would also reduce work, and materials (plastic, cardboad, etc). So, there trade offs...
All good to you.
Then he couldn't claim to be organic 🙂 The problem with using them is they don't kill some weeds permanently as they don't kill the roots, they can also get into the soil.
@@lksf9820 the oposite. They are specially effective to deal with the nasty rizhome weeds, that are very duficult to erradicate just by covering it, or dig. They get killed from foliage to the roots. And, at least the more common glyphosate, does not persist nor damage the soil... thats the whole point. Im all for organic, and for using chemicals the least possible. But sometimes they are just a better, more rational, option. Everything as a good use, if its tge right amount, the right place the right time...
I have been thinking of doing that type of limited exploration, mainly to see how effective it actually is.
@@REDGardens I use it on some land we have (grazing for sheep), It depends on the plant it's applied to. Weeds with large and deep root networks such as docks, dandelions, thistles and nettles it just kills off the top growth and they grow back. To get rid of those you have to hit them twice yearly for years. Grass it kills dead, but I don't know about couch grass. It might have been Jesse Frost who said it can get into the soil.
I'd love to see an experiment with it @@REDGardens
How soft was the ground when the cardboard was gone?
I didn’t use any cardboard in this section.
👍😌
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With all the money that you’ve invested in this it seems like you would invest in a weed flamer , And just run it back-and-forth over the area until you kill off all surface weeds.
I have one, and I did do that once, and if I didn't have to deal with the hard soil and the curried weed roots, I think that would have been enough.
You used a broad fork to lucerne the soil? Hay, wtf are you talking about?
Haha
This is why or where Jesse Frost of No-till growers is slightly ahead of Charles Dowding. As said before (which may have triggered this video 🙂) Buy their books, watch their vids.
Jesse is great. Huge respect for his work.
The wind would have blown weed seeds in as well bud 🙄
Yes, later in the season. The ones earlier in the season definitely germinated much deeper, below the compost.
The stems were as long as the compost is thick as well bud. 🤪🤪
I’m going in the opposite direction at the moment. returning a productive veg plot into a blank, boring lawn with borders 🫤
Oh dear, how sad.
@@lksf9820 It’s okay for now. It’s just a phase this house has to go through. I’ll find some space elsewhere, when I’m a bit fitter as well 😊