Advice on mulch depth for new beds.

[John]

Hi Charles

I have a new allotment, in addition to the one I started last year, and the plan is eventually to use one third of the area to feed the other two thirds with green manure for the compost bin.

I did the course in April and visited the Garden Open Day in June. You had a new area that you had covered in 10cm of muck with polythene on top.

To get a head start on the weeds this week I have used a combination of polythene and mypex to smother the weeds and will lift and apply muck when it arrives later in the Autumn, then recover.

The plot has been neglected for about three years (does this count as no-dig!) and my question is how thinly can I spread the 2 cu.m. of muck that I will have available. I have about 100 sq.m. of new polythene/mypex beds, not including paths, to cover. Am I better mulching to a depth of 10 cm over 20 sq.m. and leaving the rest until I have developed my own compost or spreading thinly (2cm. depth) over the whole area, planning to add compost as it becomes available in the future. Is there a minimum depth below which it is not worth bothering?

Of course the easy answer is to buy in much more muck but I have a couple of reasons not to do this:
1. I have been inspired by a writer who had several plots close to mine between 1970and 1990 and he used his plots to try to answer the question “Can a given level of food production be maintained, or even increased, with systems that are, as far as possible, self-contained?” He grew green manure rather than using imported compost.
2. Many first time plot owners soon give up faced with a plot such as mine. Your method combining no-dig, muck and polythene is, I am convinced, the way forward but many balk at the idea of having to buy in so much muck/compost at the start. Plots are generally far bigger than needed to grow sufficient veg for a family, clearly shown by the productiveness of your closely cropped experimental beds, and this should allow using part of the area, a third or so, for green manure.

I keep a blog of progress here: John’s blog

Best wishes

John

[charles]

Nice post John and helpful images.
I have the book here, Questioning Garden by Nic Pawson – it came via his nephew Colum who is a gardener too, and we were mutual friends of Patrick Whitefield.
Its a great project and wonderful that you can continue Nic’s works.
I suggest a thin covering of compost on the whole area if possible, even a half inch, to enliven the soil as much as adding a few nutrients.
I use more here because this is a high-yielding, often two-crops -a-year market garden. If yields are not high, I lose money from spending time for less output.
Allotmenteers also have time constraints but do not always need high output, so thinner compost-mulches and green manures are viable.
Best of luck!

[John]

Hi Charles

It certainly is a small world. I borrowed the book (in the form of ring bound sheets) but do not know how to get a copy.

Another plot holder, speaking warmly about Nic, said that the old guard thought he was mad while the middle class cohort said he was eccentric, both meaning the same thing. I wonder what the good folk of Alhampton think of you!

Thank you very much for the helpful advice and the rationale behind it.

Best wishes

John

[Rhys]

John – if you don’t want smelly comfrey, then harvest 10 plants, cut off just the leaves and cram them into a good sized pot, holes in the bottom and wedge it into a larger pot with no holes in the bottom. Apply a weight to the leaves (I use a bag of rock dust), cover with aluminium foil to retain moisture and leave for 4-6 weeks. At the end, you get a litre or so of thick, dark liquid which doesn’t smell in the bottom pot. I store it in wine bottles and it certainly lasts 12 months (last summer’s production run was used to grant effect on the beans this August as the rains came).

It certainly does great things for compost, comfrey leaves. Not to mention for potatoes planted at the time of the first cut…..

[John]

Rhys – I have been making comfrey tea by bagging up the leaves in a hessian sack and steeping them in a lidded water butt – no smells until I take the lid off! I can then tap it off into milk bottles. Being a wine fan I think it would be be risky for me to decant it into wine bottles. In the fading light of a winter’s afternoon it’s colour could be mistaken for a good Burgundy.

The comfrey patch has done excellent service this year. Can anyone recommend a DEEP ROOTED green manure that can be cropped for the compost heap and the roots left in to die off after a year or so of service? Alfalfa has been grown successfully here in Exmouth, as part of a four year green manure break, but I believe that it is a longer term crop and the roots are not so easy to deal with.

John

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