No-dig gardening is a popular and potentially effective way to garden, but it’s not best for every gardener. Good soil created by earthworms and soil organisms are important aspects of no-dig gardening. Without adequate soil life, there can be better garden options than no-dig gardening. (Video #219)
“Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way” by Charles Dowding:
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40 Comments
Love your channel Scott
This would have been better titled 'Why I don't think I can use no dig'.
In effect Gardener Scott is doing a form no dig by using raised beds – no? But those are indeed challenging conditions. No dig was the only option in Dar es Salaam Tanzania where I lived for a while as there was only coral rock and lateritic soils, so I had to make my soils form garden and kitchen waste. No dig worked for me on hard stony, sandy and acidic soils in part of the Thames basin heath ecosystem in Surrey, UK which is good for heather and birch but not tender veges. I constructed raised beds, put down card board threw on leave much and garden compost which was cold composted so i do get weeds growing but its easy to deal with. I will now make more new beds with out timber borders. My partner says you are just making work for yourself but I say i'm just throwing some compost down and planting stuff and leaving them to it. My father in Devon who farms on clay soils complains of the back breaking work to turn it over constantly. I'm trying to convert him but hes stuck in his ways/clays! Nice to see these friendly exchanges between gardening gurus to.
Excellent video. Great information
Nature is the master gardener. If she follows a no dig protocol, that's what I'm doing. The worst soil will be improved dramatically over time by following no-dig methods.
You can even make a garden in the sand of an islet which is a part of an atoll in the Pacific.First you import soil by ship and ferry it across the lagoon in a motorboat. $$$ Add all the household food scraps and chopped up vegetation (palm fronds, seaweed) you can find, Plant some veg and incorporate all the plant trimmings. Eventually you have it.
I agree with Charles. You just have to make this initial investment of some truckloads of professional good compost. Maybe you could start with a smaller area and expand in function of your capacity to maintain the space.
But I'm very sure that you will succeed without digging the organic material in. You might need to use more water to irrigate, but compared with dug earth, it will be less. My opinion is that, when you don't do the initial investment and start digging in smaller amounts, your efforts will not pay off and it will take longer with less yield.
A better method for soil in that state is have crimp roll the weeds, manure, spread 6in of hay, disc seed a summer cover crop, irrigate for the summer, then roll that in, newspaper line it, hay mulch again, then winter cover crop including radish varieties, roll that, repeat with newspaper and hay. By now you have bacteria, nematodes, fungi, worms etc. and from that point on as long as you keep the mulch up so it never dries out and dies and keep a living root in soil to feed sugars to those microbes, including nitrogen fixers, she’ll be perfect forever more. One year of effort to create good top soil for generations to come, but your method will never give you the quality top soil you need in a climate that dry.
Gardner Scott I like most of your videos. However this one has some deficiencies. I have watched many videos of Charles Dowding and he has promoted no dig gardening for decades you are right about that. But it is not just the worms and soil life for the reason why he promotes it. It is mostly to not disturb the fungal network that works with your plants that helps feed them. No dig gardening is much deeper than you explained and maybe you want to look into it more in its modern form. It is also very connected with permaculture. I hope you do this because I think you support in theory what this is all about. I believe it’s the best for the soil as well as for gardening. Also a raised bed garden is a no dig garden.
thats exactly the soil i have in my garden, stony hard and compacted… what do you do about it? raised beds? near my garden there is a field where the farmer plowed and cared for the soil for years (30) and there are many earth worms and i can dig easily in a whole shovel in the soil withoud impact drill which i need in my garden to dig a planting hole for a tree.
Permaculture would work in this dreadful ,dry, dead situation.
Thank you for your very useful advices i am from Algeria i am trying to learn about no dig and natural agriculture it's a pleasure to follow a professional instructions
WE DEFINITELY BELIEVE THAT SOME SITUATIONS CALL FOR A 1-DIG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROCK ON GARDER SCOTT !!!!!!!!!!!!!! GREAT CHANNEL AND THANKS FOR HELPING TO SAVE THE WORLD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
why dont you do a trial patch for fun
I believe this is the Ruth Stout method also called lasagna gardening. I have similar soil to yours only it's sand and it's easy to dig. There were no worms until I added a lot of any and all compostable material and slowly I see a few more each year. I thought I would try this Stout method, but I really didn't see fantastic plants in that garden, plus the thought of snakes that love piles of straw. For those reasons I prefer to get it mixed in as I'm not waiting for great soil at a glacier pace and like to see the snakes first. We have tree trimmers in the family and was lucky enough to get a couple truck loads of bark. I also added to the garden. I just make sure I have enough nitrogen. Lasagna gardening adds more to soil than Stout method. She added cottonseed meal or greensand and I don't think that's enough. The video I seen of her she was older and I'm sure her garden wasn't as well kept as when she was younger, but I like a tidy garden. I don't till all season only at the end and a few raised beds. I've never heard of the author you mentioned. Sometimes I bury comfortable material direct to garden in trenches. Great info, thank you.
Hi. I live in a small town in the pirenees, and i did exactly what you say in the video. Bringing life and improving the soil, mulch, manure from mules and horses and sheep, cardboard and some digging , compost…. 2021 was our first year and It went quite right.
We grow in 150m2. I find your advices and expertise so interesting. Thanks a lot.
Tip for if you're dealing with hard or compact soil and you need to dig or break it up, go get a geological pick from the hardware store.
Excellent tip my friend. Hope to see your no dig garden when the time comes 🙂
My soil is clay and my root vegetables found it too hard to break with just cardboard for no dig. I didn't like the results. All that soil is so expensive. I agree with you.
Interesting, essentially you added organic matter equivalent to the 15 cm/6 inches of compost that Dowding recommends. After complaining that it would be too expensive in $ , time and effort. You chose to dig it in, when you could have dropped it on the surface, then immediately planted. Dowding is very clear on immediately planting. Waiting isn’t recommended.
I think the confusion here is based on language. Compost is organic matter. I too found myself frustrated 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 when trying to follow Dowding’s teachings. Until I thought thru the essentials of No Dig, In Canada, we mostly have well rotted manure, wood chips and tree leaves available for home gardeners to use as organic matter. These materials all are organic matter. Suppliers are now offering “composted manure”. How is that different to well rotted manure? No real difference in materials. It’s all in a name. I’m fortunate in having lived & worked in the USA, United Kingdom and my birthplace, Canada. I’m fluent in all three versions of the English language.
You chose to dig it in. Are you going to continue adding organic matter? Are you going to dig it in?
Nature is more clever than we give it credit. Each year trees drop leaves onto the ground, seeds drop on it and grow. No one comes and digs it in to help seeds grow, Rain, worms critters, vertebrates &, invertebrates, bacteria and fungi all eat each other, travel, defecate and reproduce in the top few inches if the earth. In doing so the newly dropped leaves are broken down and incorporated into the ground. A top layer of new leaves is dropped,-what we call mulch, this protects the soil from wind, rain, heat and cold. Dowding IMO, is promoting supporting nature’s method, protecting the food soil web and as a side effect, protecting the spine health of gardeners.
I will watch both your videos. Scott, yours provides a North American context, Dowding offers years of experience, knowledge, skilled teaching and profound understanding of plant growth. His videos need to be rewatched, as I find the depth of content is only fully appreciated this way.
thanks Freda
Good talk. Good advice. This is what I’m going to do. Thank you.
Here in this part of Scotland we have New Zealand flatworms, probably introduced through potted plants. The flatworms search out and kill earthworms and the result is that on our allotment (community garden) there are no earthworms so compost spread on top does not get pulled down into the soil.
The idea is that we should cater for a healthy and nutrient rich soil! We share the earth with other organisms and we can only prosper together, not by taking the space for only us humans. Such invasive agricultural methods have proved unsuccessful in the past as we can see in the decreased soil quality in America and desertified areas. In addition, one can only dig such wide areas, water them and add nutrients by taking the energy, nutrients, and water from somewhere else as such things do not just exist by themselves. The tractors take too much fossil fuel, they produce emissions, those nutrients come from the developing parts of the world, destroying the soil there. Therefore, we need smarter methods that only tilt the balance a bit to ourselves rather than destroying everything to then recreate it with much more energy. I appreciate your perspective as here in Turkey, it is almost impossible for a farmer to wait for years until the soil quality is improved to start profiting. Yet, such a problem could be solved if it is included in a reform package undertaken by the state. So I think we should search for new methods rather than sticking to the old ones!
I’ll add that Charles Dowding bought that property because it was flat and used to be a small farm. So the land had already been prepared before for him – probably tilled and all the rocks removed. So of course he could do no-till on top of that! It was already prepped for him!
you tell you dig and incorporated fresh weeds, you should let the green dry a bit before diging it in, if not, you will have différents worms, eating you roots, or plants seekness.
I follow the no dig method to a certain extent, I do dig some beds, mainly to help with previously compacted and not so great soil, left from desire lines. However, most of my soil (here in the UK) is a dark, loamy mix, well draining but with clay way down to help keep a rich mix and moisture. We live in a slighter dryer region, but still have plenty of rainfall. As you rightly say, you would have to shell out hundreds of dollars to start your soil as it does look pretty compacted. Charles brought this method up to date here in the UK, and I think we find this method suits our climate. Those before him had done the same, such as Guest etc. He is the more modern day pioneer, and here in the UK it’s very popular as our garden soil is quite fertile in most areas (mainly due to our excessive rainfall and hence consistent cover of weeds, grass and a diverse selection of wild plants). Worms enjoy moisture, so if your soil is dry, you’d have a dig a fair way down to find moisture and soil life, which isn’t so prolific that far down, plus greatly lacking in sandy types of soil, so I totally see why this methods not for you. You’ve made great tracks and as you fill your space more and more with plants, such as shrubs to provide shade and deep rooted plants to help break up your soil, you’ll get the fertility back. The only downside to having rich, fertile soil is the amount of 🌧 we have to put up with. We are in the midst of our ‘Goldilocks’ gardening months, where we have both long warm days with pretty good sunshine and a small amount of rain. Thankfully our water butts are full from the earlier months🙏. Good luck and look forward to see your garden mature more and more. All good wishes 🐝
Ground (dirt) such as yours does not need "a couple of inches" of organic matter placed on it. You need a few tons of the stuff. This is where the Ruth Stout method comes to the fore. You cover the ground with bales of hay or straw and plant in THAT. This will break down and enrich your dirt. You may have to import a handful of earthworms once the organic matter has broken down enough, but in time everything will sort itself out. Basically you will be laying new soil over the old ground. The old ground will then soak up water from the layer above, allowing the earthworms to carry the organic matter into your ground, thus deepening the productive layer and turning it into arable soil.
Our village is built upon solid rock. Sand had to be imported, so there is a few inches of it over the rock. When we arrived, my wife and I found a veritable desert landscape with only a few indigenous weeds and grasses growing. We gathered up all the fallen leaves, cut grass and any other stuff we could find – our neighbours registered horror at the sight of us placing layers of corrugated cardboard boxes on our yard! – but even in that first year we were able to grow a reasonable crop of vegetables. Now, six years later, the garden produced so much fruit that we have been able to preserve enough to last 'way past the winter months.
DEEP mulch is the answer: not "a couple inches"!
This makes a lot of sense! We have yellow clay with zero life. We have dug it out in areas and keave it as the base only. In other areas we have used biochar, bokashi and organic matter dug in to bring it alive.
look at permaculture you could do a really cool guild
No dig doesnt work,especially on hard clay or thin soil
I have watched and subscribed to your page and Charles Dowding…he lives in the United Kingdom and you live in the southern states…he is practising no dig on healthy green lawn and weeds..you have a sun baked hard base..you cannot compare the 2…I live in zone 5..I have raised beds but I’m going to start any new gardens with the no dig method…for you to compare your ground to his is just not sensible or fair…you have to remember where you live…I have a hard time finding gardening sites that I can relate to..I find your video quite biased and almost insulting..wish you the best gardening where you live…but Charles dowding is more useful for me and my zone…so I’ll be inscribing…stick to your zone and do not compare scorched soil to healthy fertile soil
my property in Chch NZ had "Liquifaction" from the 2011 earthquakes like gardening in compacted vacuum cleaner dust there was nothing there or alive when I arrived
I have no idea where the worms came from but after making my own compost I had gazillions
you need to make large scale bins with lots of green and cardboard banana skins and coffee grounds ( free from local petrol station and supermarket)
You're 100% right as I am currently finding out. I recently bought a house that had a garden area. Well it hadnt been planted that year and the soil had severely eroded and was very clay like. I just threw mulch/fresh wood chips on top. This first year has been a complete bust. Worst garden you can imagine despite this year being one of the best climate wise. Im sure next year wont be much better. Its rather disheartening. Perhaps I'll take next year off.
Hello, I live in Calgary, Canada and the Alberta province's outdoor soil in general is hard gray clay soil. Some of my garden plots are like that too and don't seem to have anybody living inside. On some patches, I put grass pieces as mulch. For some others, I planted alfalfa and red clover cover crop seeds a few days ago. Then next spring I can chop and drop cover crops.🍭🍭🐉
From April- early June the city lets us take free compost made from things we put in our green compost carts. I only have a tiny bit left from last year so I can't amend soil this fall. Next spring, should I take off most of the fallen cover crops and grass, mix in compost into the beds and then reapply the cover crops and grass as mulch again? Or is there a better way?
We dig all our organic kitchen waste and any of our home grown pumpkins that have rotten back into our beds…. this brings a lot of earthworms into our ground beds…. we are carefully with the pumpkin seeds if you don't want pumpkins growing in that bed….. if any animals dig it up, we put wire mesh over it for a few day….. the worms get rid or it quickly…. no smell if you dig a deep hole….. about 300mm…. worms love pumpkin….
I can dig it .
This is a great video I have just got an allotment the soil is very sandy and poor in nutrients. It was once a farm land about 30 years ago but once the farmer passed away the land was left to its own devices. Although easy to dig there is no live in it no earthworms. So has my year decided to do a little digging just incorporate the top soil with organic matter and than mulch the beds to keep the moisture so I could actually grown something in it. Maybe in years to come I will turn in to full no dig but at the moment it's just not possible
I built raised beds and went to no-till 3 years ago. Buying 20 yards of compost, acquiring 30 yards of composted horse manure, and mixing in the best of my top soil and peat moss allowed me to get started. We have chickens for manure and make 2 or 3 yards of compost each year to maintain the beds. It's a lot of work, but for the first time our soil is improving each year instead of depleting. The weeding is also much easier.
Thank you for explaining the reasons for the methods. I was a little confused until watching this because my garden has a lot of clay. No dig didn't work well for me this time, but now I know what to do to fix it. Thank you so much.