A demonstration of the double digging technique of preparing garden beds. This video was shot in the garden area at the the UCSC Farm, managed by the Center for Agroecology.
I love this explanation for how to create garden beds. I like the ideas behind the no till method & the raised garden beds but both of those methods will require me to find a huge source of compost &/or purchase materials that I cannot justify at this state of my gardening education. Thanks a ton.
This was very helpful. Before watching I didn't quite understand how double digging worked. Your presentation was so clear and precise that now I know exactly what to do and why - and I could even teach someone else. Thank you so much! 😊
Where I live the dense red clay is so hard it takes some real determination to double dig. The soil on this video in Santa Cruz is child's play, and looks like it could be a No Till plot from the start. Here where I am in the Piedmont, I have used a front end loader with teeth to pulverize the brick clay just to start. It also takes huge volumes of compost to keep it broken up. But the double dig method is the ticket to start with. Afterward it will stay fluffy for a long time.
Hey there, I'm double digging in East TN in Appalacian foothills and the soil is very familiar to that GA Piedmont where I grew up. I don't have a front end loader and so I'm going by hand with a pick/shovel/digging bar. It is absolutely arduos labor. I read a book from the 80's left by my grandfather that said to dig it to a 2 foot depth. What depth did you go to and did the clay recompact?
@@syntropicfarms The compost you will be adding to the double-dig will be gone in ~2 years, if you want the soil to always stay (relatively) soft you should add biochar instead (if you're allowed to make it and if it's not too hard/expensive).
When I learned to double dig we took out both, the first dig, and the second, and then broke up everything from the next row into the next. A true double dig and not simply with forking the second layer.
@@MrPotatoesLatkie As in he dug the first two layer dig bits, then dug out the fork depth of the first trench, then forked the second forking into the first forking, so the entire two layers of soil slowly rotate over time. That's the neolithic method, never heard of 'double dig' but our neolithic ancestors would dig an entire long garden bed / trench out, dump the soil on animal skin, and drag it all the way to the end of their field. Then they'd dig their second trench into their first. Rinse and repeat until you empty your last trench and have no dirt to fill it (if done right you ideally dragged your 'skins' to where the last ditch is) then tipped the skins of trench 1 into trench 10 or whatever the last trench was. That way the earth acted as if it were a constant conveyor belt always changing beds every re-dig. It is still, by far, the most effective method and is still used 150,000 years later. But it absolutely triggers the fuck out of 'no dig' worm loving hippies who think digging the soil is injuring mother earths powerful vagina chakra and punishable by stoning to death. You know the rabid types I'm talking about. They wig the fuck out when you speak about it. Or say digging is superior. It mostly stems from the fact their weak beta noodly arms cannot hold a spade let alone move a ton of earth per hour like a man can. :P (Yes, at this point I'm shitposting, but even though I'm admitting to it they'll still be foaming at the mouth reading it. It's almost like saying "Marijuana is degenerate and bad for you." to an American in a democrat state, they'll fucking flip their shit out so hard. Even if you tell them you're about to troll them they'll still get 'triggered'. :P)
@@bashkillszombies what can I Google to learn more about this? How do you know humans have gardened like this through history?very interested I’ll try to find something in it
@@bashkillszombies I'm all for no dig when possible as over time it has proven to out perform conventional methods of constantly machining the soil Spring and Fall. Now while u seem a bit zealous u gave me a chuckle n made valid points! While there is nothing wrong with this emerging fascination with no dig..... clearly some folks "kno not of what they speak. " Most parts of most Southern states (and others) in the US are covered in heavy orange red n brown clay.....not much is growing in that except pine trees wo serious intervention. Unless ur preparing beds for your great grandchildren.. no dig will be time consuming and EXPENSIVE on a large scale for initial seasons. Now if u have a century to wait..then yes...no dig is perfection. You and your kids and their kids spend lives producing compost and doing chop and drop for 100 years on your useless 100 acres because on principle alone u refuse to till in organic matter for a few seasons....THEN go to a selective no dig. Man to get this nice texture he has here.... from clay with no intervention.....would take decades upon decades or longer. ... After working in Maryland Mississippi and North Carolina.....im still amazed to see volumes of rich dark soil that falls softly from the palm after being gently crushed with one hand😍🥰😍 WTF😱 is this CGI? Godzilla truly seems more real to me! No dig is definitely something to aspire to but it cannot be a mandate.....most especially on virgin plots of expansive acreage... unless u have an equally expansive bank account for truckloads of EVERYTHING....... to blanket the site.
@@bashkillszombiesthis is the way my dad showed me how to double dig, except he used well rotted farmyard manure and not compost. It's also called Bastard digging here in the UK. For good reason!!
This is a great educational video. I have clay so I went ahead and remove top 10-12 inches of soil for 3 trenches at a time, instead of one. It was easier for me to work with a broadfork. Next, I broke the clay with the broadfork and pull out rocks. I then pour my vermicompost mix on top of that clay. (vermicompost, greensand, alfalfa meal, rock dust, blood & bone meal, eggshells and peat moss) and mixeed with a fork. I then sifted all that top soil with 1/2" mesh. Poured it in while spreading my compost mix in between layers. I did this to grow roots vegetables, specially, carrots. The other beds that I'll be working on shortly will only be broadforked, as I have done the double digging in the past and have been covered with black plastic to kill any weeds. I'm also putting paper (roll from home depot) down before I plant so to keep weeds down. Looking forward to healthy crops. ☺
@@brandonkrause6401 😂 I don't do that any more. Did 2 beds and gave up. I now just use my broadfork to loosen the soil. Put on my dry mix and water with Compost tea and Jadam's fertilizers. That worked GREEEAAAAT!!! LoL
@@ucscagroecology i have heavy clay soil.....would it help to throw in shredded cardboard to encourage worm activity......forking clay is tuff so I want to do as much beneficial stuff as possible while I'm in there...
Thanks for making this video, my dad told me to use a hoe to till the ground and thats too dang hard to go down 6-8 inches with a hoe, shovel is much better!
Yer right! A hoe works great for surface tillage and weeding, but the combination of a spade and digging fork is the best for this kind of deep tillage.
Oh Christ, been double digging for a friend's mum who is a garden designer. Turns out I've been doing it wrong, mixing all the soil in one pile and using it to fill in all the trenches.
Used to do double digging. Not anymore. To much work and somewhat cientific base infos that are simply wrong. You dont need oxigen lower than 15cm into the soil. Than its just for the structure and very loose soil like double dig method its not optimal for the plants. Done the experiments. Did not produced better crops. I just use microorganisms and my soil is fairly loose up to 40cm below and beyond and its sooooo much easier. Microrganisms was the missing link in agroecology. Thanks to JADAM, for me not anymore
He mentioned that it was "skimming", or clearing the land, to prepare for the digging. He also mentioned that the biomass could be used for composting.
You can't go wrong with compost. Composted manure is good to. If you have leaves in the fall they are great. Grass clippings make good compost to. Check some composting videos. I think if I were starting out where you are I would double dig and add a nice amount of compost or manure in the trench. then when you cover it, mix some more compost in to the top layer since you are starting with poor soil. Compost is magic. If you can't double dig[ it's a lot of work ] mix in as much compost as you can into the top layer with a spading fork. Do it in the late summer or fall if you can. Try to avoid working wet soil.
This is a really terrible/intensive/old fashioned method. Anyone watching this would do very well looking up the No Dig method, Charles Dowding on TH-cam is an excellent resource. Could be good for starting out and removing stones but after that is really damaging to soil life.
He made it very clear that this method is for starting a brand new garden bed. In our case our soil is more rock than soil, rocks that are as big as your head and bigger. This was the only, i repeat only viable method to allow vegetables to grow. We are digging out the first 12" completely piling all the topsoil on one pile. Then digging out the subsoil, next 12" down piling it on another pile. Then we sift both piles with a 1/2 screen. We then replace the soil amending with compost as we go. We did one bed like this last year and the results were nothing short of magical. Now we will go through and do this to the entire garden, this will take us at least 2 years to complete, but will be worth it at the end.
thank god i found this method, youtube always shows me the wooden beds but i don't want that, i want the classic version. thank you for the help!
Look at that amazing soil. So jealous.
What a fantastic video. So clearly explained.
I love this explanation for how to create garden beds. I like the ideas behind the no till method & the raised garden beds but both of those methods will require me to find a huge source of compost &/or purchase materials that I cannot justify at this state of my gardening education. Thanks a ton.
Very useful and very professionally done. Thank you for the clear instructions
Glad it was helpful!
This was very helpful. Before watching I didn't quite understand how double digging worked. Your presentation was so clear and precise that now I know exactly what to do and why - and I could even teach someone else. Thank you so much! 😊
Glad it helped!
Excellent video not only on the gardening method, but on proper tool useage!
A great video for sure. Thank you so much and I wish I have a piece of garden to work with.
Where I live the dense red clay is so hard it takes some real determination to double dig. The soil on this video in Santa Cruz is child's play, and looks like it could be a No Till plot from the start. Here where I am in the Piedmont, I have used a front end loader with teeth to pulverize the brick clay just to start. It also takes huge volumes of compost to keep it broken up. But the double dig method is the ticket to start with. Afterward it will stay fluffy for a long time.
Hey there, I'm double digging in East TN in Appalacian foothills and the soil is very familiar to that GA Piedmont where I grew up. I don't have a front end loader and so I'm going by hand with a pick/shovel/digging bar. It is absolutely arduos labor. I read a book from the 80's left by my grandfather that said to dig it to a 2 foot depth. What depth did you go to and did the clay recompact?
I’m going to be doing this with an excavator soon here in Puerto Rico clay you you had a good result using a excavator ?
@@syntropicfarms The compost you will be adding to the double-dig will be gone in ~2 years, if you want the soil to always stay (relatively) soft you should add biochar instead (if you're allowed to make it and if it's not too hard/expensive).
When I learned to double dig we took out both, the first dig, and the second, and then broke up everything from the next row into the next. A true double dig and not simply with forking the second layer.
So you forked after doing two spade digs? Instead of 8 inches, you dug out 16 for example?
@@MrPotatoesLatkie As in he dug the first two layer dig bits, then dug out the fork depth of the first trench, then forked the second forking into the first forking, so the entire two layers of soil slowly rotate over time. That's the neolithic method, never heard of 'double dig' but our neolithic ancestors would dig an entire long garden bed / trench out, dump the soil on animal skin, and drag it all the way to the end of their field. Then they'd dig their second trench into their first. Rinse and repeat until you empty your last trench and have no dirt to fill it (if done right you ideally dragged your 'skins' to where the last ditch is) then tipped the skins of trench 1 into trench 10 or whatever the last trench was. That way the earth acted as if it were a constant conveyor belt always changing beds every re-dig.
It is still, by far, the most effective method and is still used 150,000 years later. But it absolutely triggers the fuck out of 'no dig' worm loving hippies who think digging the soil is injuring mother earths powerful vagina chakra and punishable by stoning to death. You know the rabid types I'm talking about. They wig the fuck out when you speak about it. Or say digging is superior. It mostly stems from the fact their weak beta noodly arms cannot hold a spade let alone move a ton of earth per hour like a man can. :P
(Yes, at this point I'm shitposting, but even though I'm admitting to it they'll still be foaming at the mouth reading it. It's almost like saying "Marijuana is degenerate and bad for you." to an American in a democrat state, they'll fucking flip their shit out so hard. Even if you tell them you're about to troll them they'll still get 'triggered'. :P)
@@bashkillszombies what can I Google to learn more about this? How do you know humans have gardened like this through history?very interested I’ll try to find something in it
@@bashkillszombies I'm all for no dig when possible as over time it has proven to out perform conventional methods of constantly machining the soil Spring and Fall. Now while u seem a bit zealous u gave me a chuckle n made valid points!
While there is nothing wrong with this emerging fascination with no dig..... clearly some folks "kno not of what they speak. "
Most parts of most Southern states (and others) in the US are covered in heavy orange red n brown clay.....not much is growing in that except pine trees wo serious intervention. Unless ur preparing beds for your great grandchildren.. no dig will be time consuming and EXPENSIVE on a large scale for initial seasons. Now if u have a century to wait..then yes...no dig is perfection. You and your kids and their kids spend lives producing compost and doing chop and drop for 100 years on your useless 100 acres because on principle alone u refuse to till in organic matter for a few seasons....THEN go to a selective no dig. Man to get this nice texture he has here.... from clay with no intervention.....would take decades upon decades or longer. ... After working in Maryland Mississippi and North Carolina.....im still amazed to see volumes of rich dark soil that falls softly from the palm after being gently crushed with one hand😍🥰😍 WTF😱 is this CGI? Godzilla truly seems more real to me!
No dig is definitely something to aspire to but it cannot be a mandate.....most especially on virgin plots of expansive acreage... unless u have an equally expansive bank account for truckloads of EVERYTHING....... to blanket the site.
@@bashkillszombiesthis is the way my dad showed me how to double dig, except he used well rotted farmyard manure and not compost. It's also called Bastard digging here in the UK. For good reason!!
you are working so hard
What a Great instructional video!!!
Please say hello to Orin, Christof and everybody at the farm.
I really miss Santa Cruz!!!!
Thanks for the kind words!
Great video!
Thank you guys so much. That was a wonderful demonstration.
Wonderfully simple presentation
This is a great educational video.
I have clay so I went ahead and remove top 10-12 inches of soil for 3 trenches at a time, instead of one. It was easier for me to work with a broadfork.
Next, I broke the clay with the broadfork and pull out rocks. I then pour my vermicompost mix on top of that clay. (vermicompost, greensand, alfalfa meal, rock dust, blood & bone meal, eggshells and peat moss) and mixeed with a fork.
I then sifted all that top soil with 1/2" mesh. Poured it in while spreading my compost mix in between layers.
I did this to grow roots vegetables, specially, carrots.
The other beds that I'll be working on shortly will only be broadforked, as I have done the double digging in the past and have been covered with black plastic to kill any weeds.
I'm also putting paper (roll from home depot) down before I plant so to keep weeds down.
Looking forward to healthy crops. ☺
lol just make raised beds dude.
@@brandonkrause6401 😂 I don't do that any more. Did 2 beds and gave up. I now just use my broadfork to loosen the soil. Put on my dry mix and water with Compost tea and Jadam's fertilizers. That worked GREEEAAAAT!!! LoL
Yes double digging to prepare compacted soil and then no dig method afterwards does seem to be a fool-proof method to cultivate the soil!
Great talk and explanations!
Very helpful! Thank you!!
Glad it was helpful!
Awesome video. Thanks for detailed instructions
Very helpful! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks very much for the demonstration - it's really useful!
Glad it was helpful!
@@ucscagroecology i have heavy clay soil.....would it help to throw in shredded cardboard to encourage worm activity......forking clay is tuff so I want to do as much beneficial stuff as possible while I'm in there...
excellent demonstration and explanation
This is awesome!
Sooo helpful!! Thank you!
You're so welcome!
Wow... !!! My best friend, Great... We liked and enjoyed to the end. Thanks Have a happy day! Keep it up! +thumb up3!
Thanks for the visit. Good luck with your garden.
Thanks for making this video, my dad told me to use a hoe to till the ground and thats too dang hard to go down 6-8 inches with a hoe, shovel is much better!
Yer right! A hoe works great for surface tillage and weeding, but the combination of a spade and digging fork is the best for this kind of deep tillage.
It works good as it did 30 years ago. But now I find it much to labor intensive
Is it a lot a hard work
Tried this and never again so much back breaking work. Just went to no till and let the worms bring the compost through the soil for me.
Why are you putting the compost so low in the soil, shouldn't there be some in the upper soil as well?
That was totally informative, thank you for posting!
This brought back some memories as a kid doing this back in the late 80s. Learned technique from some place in Cali. Wonder if this is the same place.
Oh Christ, been double digging for a friend's mum who is a garden designer. Turns out I've been doing it wrong, mixing all the soil in one pile and using it to fill in all the trenches.
Awesome Thank you
What brand of spade and fork are you using?
Thank you:)
Used to do double digging. Not anymore. To much work and somewhat cientific base infos that are simply wrong. You dont need oxigen lower than 15cm into the soil. Than its just for the structure and very loose soil like double dig method its not optimal for the plants. Done the experiments. Did not produced better crops.
I just use microorganisms and my soil is fairly loose up to 40cm below and beyond and its sooooo much easier. Microrganisms was the missing link in agroecology. Thanks to JADAM, for me not anymore
Thanks a lot
Happy to help
How do you make your rows when your dig is done
Excellent
That isn't a spade you're using
can u use a weed whip on that cover crop?
what was the point in cutting the long grass at the start of the movie.?
What did you do with it.?
He mentioned that it was "skimming", or clearing the land, to prepare for the digging. He also mentioned that the biomass could be used for composting.
What if I'm starting with disgusting sand in the San Fernando Valley? In other words, I want to add a lot of compost. When and how?
Do a soil test first to determine what types of additives you need to add to beef up the sand to successfully grow your food in.
You can't go wrong with compost. Composted manure is good to. If you have leaves in the fall they are great. Grass clippings make good compost to. Check some composting videos. I think if I were starting out where you are I would double dig and add a nice amount of compost or manure in the trench. then when you cover it, mix some more compost in to the top layer since you are starting with poor soil. Compost is magic. If you can't double dig[ it's a lot of work ] mix in as much compost as you can into the top layer with a spading fork. Do it in the late summer or fall if you can. Try to avoid working wet soil.
Get a Broadfork! www.themarketgardener.com/broadfork
won't work here in Louisiana with clay soil.
lol mfw I go to school here and forgot I could have just asked someone
Lmao
I have hard clay soil... lots of rocks and clay. The soil quality you have here was a bit erotic...
Please I am from the therid world and need experience if anyone assistance me I will be thankful
I have learnt something
This is a waste of time. Just do raised beds and mulch with animal bedding.
NO till?
@@BrushlessNitroSlayer Not no till, but minimum tillage. Make raised beds then till every few years and reshape beds if needed.
Not for me................
I’m doing this with an excavator
This is a really terrible/intensive/old fashioned method. Anyone watching this would do very well looking up the No Dig method, Charles Dowding on TH-cam is an excellent resource. Could be good for starting out and removing stones but after that is really damaging to soil life.
He stated at the end that this is not appropriate for annual use, but is best for establishing new beds when soil structure is difficult.
He made it very clear that this method is for starting a brand new garden bed. In our case our soil is more rock than soil, rocks that are as big as your head and bigger. This was the only, i repeat only viable method to allow vegetables to grow. We are digging out the first 12" completely piling all the topsoil on one pile. Then digging out the subsoil, next 12" down piling it on another pile. Then we sift both piles with a 1/2 screen. We then replace the soil amending with compost as we go. We did one bed like this last year and the results were nothing short of magical. Now we will go through and do this to the entire garden, this will take us at least 2 years to complete, but will be worth it at the end.
Awesome
Thanks! Here's a link to a list of lots more gardening videos:
agroecology.ucsc.edu/resources/instructional-videos.html
Thanks for the helpful video!