Not digging without manure – can it be done?

[Roger BrookMember]

I believe it to be the heart of the original organic movement as pioneered by Eve Balfour and the Japanese guru Fukuada that to have self sufficiency you should not have to rely on ‘robbing’ a different site of its organic matter and nutrients. A most definite ‘yes’ to any suggestion that you can have successful no dig by just recycling all the organic matter produced on a site.I have described on my own blog,how my allotment became black with organic matter by just recycling what nature produced. Eccentrically over a period of 25 years living in a country village I refused all offers of FYM. (I do regard FYM as wonderful stuff and it is certainly a short cut to converting to no dig-except for all those damned weed seeds it contains.)

[grannyjannyParticipant]

A friend refuses to use manure because of the seeds it brings in. She has 2 large plots but also uses straw to grow in when it starts to compost down she then uses it as a mulch. She uses grass mowings, weeds in fact whatever she can lay her hands on to mulch with. Her father many years ago had an allotment in Finland & he used straw on the clay beds which eventually became superb soil.

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