Sunday was beautiful; sunny, blue skies but the ground was carpeted in a layer of frost. Jon took Sami up our local mountain, Moel Siabod – his own walking blog is in the pipeline – whilst I stayed behind to do housework (just call me Cinders) and practise retrieval training with the pup, before walking down into the village to meet the mountaineers.
The weather was so good I had lunch outdoors, ideal for planning my strategy for preparing the vegetable patch. The soil was still too frosty to work with so I felt no guilt just sitting there, surveying the garden, without lifting a tool.
The patch needs a good hoe, before we apply a dressing of a compound fertilizer rich in phosphates. We’re then going to add another layer of top soil of sterilized compost to give our seeds and seedlings a good start. I’ve been reading up on the benefits of the no-dig method as practised by organic gardeners. It was originally promoted by Esther Dean, an Australian gardener, who influenced the Permaculture Movement, “an ecologically friendly and self-sustaining system of agriculture” (Chambers Dictionary). There is a lot to be said for it, especially for the reluctant gardener, although that doesn’t mean that you adopt an entirely laissez-faire approach. Traditional horticultural wisdom argues that digging improves soil texture by improving drainage, aerating the soil and burying weeds, and of course it has its merits. However, I do think some gardeners are masochists who don’t believe they have done a good day’s work unless they need a Radox bath and the services of a chiropractor. Ultimately, it is the state of your soil, and what you wish to grow in it, which dictates your course of action.
2 Comments
February 11, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Beautiful photo of the dog on top of the mountain! I grew up in Australia, and my mother owned all of Ester Dean’s books, and we had a “no dig” garden for some time. As I remember, there was quite a bit of digging to get it set up, but there was less maintenance.
February 12, 2008 at 10:05 am
Thanks for the feedback. That’s really interesting as it’s the first time I have come across Esther Dean and her ideas as my course advocated the digging approach. And yes, there was absolutely no need for me to include that photo of Sami in a gardening blog, but I couldn’t resist it!