Story & Photos BY KAREN B. HUNTER
Digging is a word universally paired with the concept and practice of gardening and long associated, too, with its aftermath—aching backs and joints.
Gardening and digging, however, do not have to go together. For at least 40 years or more, through the work of agricultural visionaries and the publication of books on the subject in the 1970s, we have known there is another way.
Healthy perennial plants grown in a no-dig garden in Sandwich.
Call it “no-dig gardening,” “no-till gardening,” “lasagne gardening,” or “sheet mulching,” it is easier to do and requires less maintenance than traditionally tilled gardens. Further, the quality of the soil—left undisturbed by cultivating, tilling, plowing, and digging—is dramatically improved.
Digging moves surface-loving organisms into the depths and brings deep-dwellers up into the sun or cold, thereby disturbing the natural balance of the soil. It also brings weed seeds from hibernation into the light. “When you till, you flip up weed seeds that may have been buried for 10 years. Once they have sun again, they take over,” said Jennifer L. Christian of Pariah Dog Farm in East Falmouth.
No-till gardening, on the other hand, “is amazing for the biology of the soil,” Ms. Christian said. “Plants are healthier and can therefore defend themselves better from bugs.”
An early proponent of no-dig gardening was Japanese agricultural pioneer and philosopher Masanoba Fukuoka who, after a revelation that nature is “perfect just as it is,” embarked on a natural farming experiment in 1938 that eliminated pesticides, fertilizers, tillage, and “wasteful effort.” Years later Mr. Fukuoka became well known for his book, “The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming,” published in 1978.
According to the educational website Deep Green Permaculture, when farmers use “tillage,” or preparing the soil by digging and turning it over (which loosens compacted soil and makes it easier to plant), fertility initially goes up and plants grow better. This is because the bodies of all the soil organisms that have been killed in the digging break down, releasing their nutrients into the soil.
This only works once, however, after which the plants are worse off and more prone to disease. Chemical fertilizers to help the plants kill what is left of soil life.
Gardeners, following the example of farmers, have traditionally treated their gardens like miniature farms and followed the same practice of tillage.
The Deep Green Permaculture website points out that soil is not just “dirt” to anchor plant roots. Rather, it is a complex ecosystem, teaming with diverse life. The soil bacteria form a beneficial relationship with plant roots (and soil fungi form a beneficial relationship with tree roots), helping them access nutrients.
Healthy kale growing in a no-dig garden in Sandwich.
In nature, forests grow without the soil having been manually cultivated; organic matter such as fallen leaves, twigs, branches, plants at the end of their annual cycle and other dying plants all fall onto the forest floor, where they decompose into rich humus.
Likewise, no-dig gardening, which can take many forms, uses the same underlying principle of soil building. No-dig gardens, constructed of alternating layers of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials, can be created on top of existing gardens, lawn, or even concrete. The garden is built on top of the ground and the soil is fed from above; neither digging the soil nor fertilizing is necessary.
There are as many variations on starting a no-dig garden as there are websites, and books: “The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book: Secrets of the Year-Round Mulch Method,” “Growing Without Digging, by Esther Dean,” and “Permaculture One,” by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, all published in the 1970s, for example. More recently, Esther Dean’s books, “Growing Without Digging” and “Leaves of Life” were combined into one mini-edition, published in 2001.
Basically, choose a spot where sun shines five or more hours per day. Build a raised bed of any height or create sides for the garden of stones, logs, concrete blocks, large branches, or whatever works.
If building the garden on concrete or pavement, start with a base layer, three to four-inches thick, of dry sticks and branches and old leaves and/or seaweed to help with water drainage.
Next, layers of organic material are placed in the garden spot. The range of what to use for the layering can be guided by whatever is easily available. Suggestions include, but are not limited to: layers of cardboard (staples and packing tape removed), rotten floor boards, old carpet, five to 10 inches of old leaves, layers of newspaper (no glossy magazines and flyers, as they contain toxic inks and bleach), garden compost, grass clippings, straw, seaweed, alfalfa (lucerne straw), old horse, chicken, or turkey manure, coffee grounds, wood ash, woods chips, sawdust, pine cones, pine needles, seed husks, moss, shells, pumice, vermiculite and so on. Two websites included “old boots” in the list.
Layers should alternate between “brown matter,” which is drier material such as leaves, dried coffee and tea grounds, paper, cardboard, or shredded paper; and “green,” which is living material such as fruit and vegetable scraps, grass clippings, and wet coffee or tea grounds. Water each layer well as it is laid into the garden area.
Paper is like candy to worms and they will “stampede” toward it, one website said. The layered material will completely break down into soil within a year as it decomposes and creates the “communities of worms and micro-organisms” that enhance plant growth, another said.
Healthy perennial plants grown in a no-dig garden in Sandwich.
Holes for planting can be created in a top layer of straw. Composted soil is placed in the holes into which seeds or seedlings are planted. As soil is only needed where plants will grow, the need for large amounts of soil to be moved around by truck or wheel barrow to cover an entire garden is eliminated.
If the garden is large enough to warrant them, pathways made of thick leaves, pine needles, seaweed, or wood chips, for example, over a base of newspaper, cardboard, or even old sheets wool blankets, or cotton clothing, should be created so that the soil is never stepped upon. Soil that is walked on becomes compacted, which destroys the soil’s structure by preventing air and water from reaching the plant’s roots.
Susan M. Hougton has used the no-dig method in her Falmouth gardens for 40 years. “The beauty is in watching the plants come back by themselves,” she said of the many plants she leaves in place when they go to seed at the end of the season.
If the winter is not too hard, crops such as kale, sorrel, lettuce (if not a hybridized form), pole beans, cress, nasturtium and arugula re-seed themselves, she said. “There is no turning and digging at the end of the year.”
Ms. Houghton uses trees to border her gardens because they hold moisture and prevent mulch from washing out. She uses straw and seaweed as mulch both in the garden beds and in the rows between, and grows a large variety of crops with almost no weeds, she said.
While it is admittedly difficult to use the no-dig system of gardening with conventional crops grown for production, Ms. Christian uses no-till gardening for all of the perennial plants and herbs at Pariah Dog Farm.
She recommends a very simple version of no-dig garden preparation. Lay down two layers of cardboard, cover with clean compost, and add six inches of mulch in the fall. “In the spring it’s good to go,” she said. “Loosen the soil with a fork and plant.” And then, she said, “mulch, mulch, mulch,” with grass clippings, seaweed, wood chips.
By the time the growing season has ended in the no-dig world of gardens, the layers of organic matter will have rotted down into a rich soil teeming with earth worms and other organisms.
No-dig gardens can be replenished when all the winter crops are finished and again when all the summer crops are finished. Simply add a layer of manure (turkey manure is the best, according to Ms. Houghton), cover it with a layer of straw or other organic mulch material, and water it in.
The soil will thank you.