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Hi Charles
I have recently finished the Future Grower Apprenticeship scheme and am now doing lots of research into small scale veg growing (no more tractors!!) with the aim of setting up my own enterprise. I have read alot about the Broadfork through Jean – Martin Fortier and another tool from France the Campagnole http://www.fermedubec.com/outils.aspx which looks really effective at loosening beds.
My question is, do no dig beds suffer from compaction like dug beds? Are the movements of worms etc enough to keep the soil structure in good condition? Would the beds benefit from the use of a broadfork/campagnole? Would the use of these tools count as digging the beds??
Be great to hear your opinion on these tools before I get carried away and buy them!
In most situations I think this is not necessary, as long as soil is fed some organic matter and is kept open for most of the growing season with plant roots.
For example in France I gardened on ghastly white clay and grew fine crops without any loosening. After five years of not touching the soil at all, crops were better than ever. Soil was mulched with either compost or old hay/straw.
I was advised to use a broad fork by neighbours, because of the dense soil, so I bought one and tried it, but found it an unnecessary extra job and have since lost the fork!
I am unsure whether Fortier has tried not using it, otherwise I don’t think he or anyone can advise it as a necessary job. Maybe if you did not feed soil with organic matter or green manures.
Also I feel that the benefits of any extra aeration are offset by damage to existing soil structure and fungal mycelia.I’ve been doing a few small-scale tests of soil structure by simply seeing how easy it is for a fork to penetrate to full depth every six months or so. I started using no-dig in March 2014 and what I’ve found is that the longer a bed remains no dig, the easier I find the fork goes to full depth. In particular, growing potatoes has a massive benefit in that regard. The first season, I did fork along with hoeing away weeds before the first planting of beans and that worked well, but I did none of that the second season as the soil structure appeared good.
So I’m with Charles on this one. And I’m definitely seeing more and more worms as I harvest vegetables using the no-dig beds…….
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