I’ve taken the plunge and ripped out my wooden beds

[Cgw2562]

Ok, so I’ve grown veg for many years and have finally decided to change my ways. I’ve often thought that wood lice have been responsible for me losing early sowings of beetroot and other veg. My old boards are still healthy but I’ve ripped them out and am about to start a no dig plot. My soil is obviously water-logged like everyone else’s at the moment but am thinking about how to increase the fertility of the soil. I know that bogs of compost will be expensive and my compost bin is just cold and soggy. Also, I can’t grow onions or cabbage because of white rot and stunted roots on the cabbage. Do I just stick loads of compost on the top or do I continue with my allotment type of chicken pellets, gro-organic compost thinly sprinkled and other such things?
Thank you Charles for your book it has inspired me to change. Here goes!

[charles]

 Sounds good, you will have less woodlice and less slugs, although the soil sounds tricky. My experience of white rot is that undug soil tends to contain it to smaller areas (as opposed to it being dispersed more by cultivations) and it does diminish over time – years! – and that compost on top helps promote more health and vitality in growth.

With boggy soil I woud import as much compost as you can find at this stage (say 2-6 inches) to create a better drained and fertile medium for roots to develop, from where they can then explore your improving soil below, where worms will get busy and breed, as well as lots of other helpful soil-life developing.

I hope you can find a reasonably cheap source of old manure for example, rather than bags of compost. Good luck.

[Author]

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