Why I did not use no dig earlier

[Stevie342000Member]

Unbeknown to me it was the intention to use No Dig, when inheriting my allotment plot in early November last year.

The site was severely water logged the day I went to visit, it was absolutely tipping it down, the plot level was about 18″ lower than the paths. Some parts were even lower by 6″ inches having been dug out by the previous owners.

The elderly person before them only worked one part of the plot and the last recipients left it a right state.

The person next to me advised that I needed to dig the plot so I dug a trial pit to see how long the water stayed, it stayed for a while. Eventually draining away.

Other areas were trialled with a covering of chipped bark or manure or leaf mould. Results from that it is safe to say that the are with the leaf mould faired the best, couch grass did makes its way through but was easy enough to pull up and compost. The docks were dealt with with weed killer.

The chipped bark areas were fine as well this has now been dug in, only later for me to rediscover no digging. As the intention was to cover the whole plot with bark chips and manure.

Yes I know the bark chip encourages slugs but the concept was to raise the level and quickly to alleviate the flooding problem. Covering it with manure worked as well, this rotted down nicely.

The harsh winter put pay to the best laid plans of mice and men. Not to mention that the manure ran out before I could complete my covering of the ground.

Recently the plots one plot behind mine which had not been in use for a number of years have had a £92K make over and are now being brought back into production. This should alleviate any future flooding as they have had land drains put in, the site slopes from the right hand corner and from the back of the whole site.

So with no more manure or compost to hand it was a case of having to dig some land and grow in that area for this year to return to the No Digging this Autumn which is what I have done.

The slugs had a field day this year as the remainder of the site was not dug over for the initial later covering of manure, the soil got too dry to dig, so that had to be abandoned as well.

Yes I know we are not supposed to dig but in the initial preparation of the land in the transition to no dig before applying the organic matter.

That in essence has been my year trying to battle against nature and the laws of diminishing returns with the lack of organic matter available in the summer.

So in the back of my head 12 months ago I was aware of No Dig growing only to rediscover it again late in the summer. Onwards and upwards.

Other advise given to me by the head guy who was doing the work on the new plots was to say that the best organic matter he had come across was well well rotted bark chip, he said it takes up to 5 years to break down but with regular turning. He thought manure was over rated, it was not my intention to disabuse him of this. The rotted bark chip is an experiment for and report back for another year.

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