NO-DIG BEDS!

Sapsorrow

Hiya just starting planning a new 1 acre organic veg garden as am moving house on the weekend, any one got any experience witht he no dig bed system? I'm planning on giving it a go this time round seems very logical to me!

The Sweeper

What do you want to know?

A "no-dig" bed is a broad term referring to anything that you grow plants in where you don't have to dig. You might be more specifically considering a layered bed, where you layer things like shredded newspaper, straw, animal manure and compost layers, lasagne-style, to the desired height, then plant things in that bed.

For example one example of no-dig gardening involves using straw bales to grow potatoes. (Saturate straw bale. Then water again with a liquid fertiliser like seaweed or fish emulsion. Plant seed potatoes.)

Have you done much gardening before? A 1-acre garden is a LOT of space to plant in. It would also be a LOT of space to be building upwards into raised no-dig beds. The sheer volume of material you would need if you wanted a number of raised beds would be formidable. Additionally the cost of plants for that space would be high.

I currently live on a one-acre property with very developed gardens (which I must take a picture of) that the previous resident of the property built up over seven years (and longer). The gardens are divided into four main areas - orchard, grapevines, lawns and cottage garden, with a couple of smaller areas devoted to different things (chickens, screening plants along the boundaries, groups of similar plants here and there).

I'm moving in about four weeks to a small property on just over a quarter acre, the garden of which is undeveloped, scrubby ground that's been compacted after construction, and is full of weeds and rubbish. The soil is heavy clay, so for the first year there's no doubt about it - I'm layering upwards to start and then we'll see how I do with it. I've never had to garden from such 'tabula rasa' status and I'm a bit apprehensive about how it's going to go for me, but hey, have to give it a go!

Sapsorrow

hiya thnks for the reply,
ya it'll be our fifth year growing veg, the workload is between two of us so it's not so bad, my partners studying horticulture in college so he'll be spending lots of time on it as a new project.
We were hoping to have around a quartar as raised beds and then do some double dig beds for other things and also a big huge patch for pumkins next year. We're having a big pollytunnel put in which'll take up rather a lot of space also and I'm getting some three yr old apple and pear sapplings for another corner of the field so quite a bit of the land will be relatively low maintenance.
I was going to buy a few trailers of cow manure from our neighboour and see if we can get some bails of spoilt silage from him too. There's masses of dead leaves all around the cottage and road also. We're both vegetarians so we have a lot of kitchen waste i was going to add as we had it also. With those things considered do you still think it'll be hard to get the materials together? also how does the system work for root crops? I'm worried that there may be stones in the ground that may hinder the carrots and parsnips if i use this system for them!

BettyBlue

Well done khrystyna100
for taking on such a big project
am starting a veg garden - rescue hens - apple trees -ect
big plans !!
but havent got as much time under my belt veg gardening as you
boxes of small veg outside the back door and a few fruit trees ....
dont no about no dig beds but it sounds sooo intresting
my sister is in the organic collage in limerick .. starting now her own
business now... pollytunnel and all .. soo jelous
but will ask her , but sounds like your partner might know or would no the
people to ask
good luck with it

Sapsorrow

I'm jealous of your sister too lol! Ya my partners course is very conservative unfortunately, I prefer a more holistic approach to the whole thing myself, I feel very lucky to have this opportunity now, I had fives years of gardening in city-centre back gardens and distant allotments so this is a big change for me, I'm rearing to go though!