What's your style, dig, no dig and why

[Greenleaves]

We all have different ways of gardening with what appears to be no set rules when it comes to choosing between digging and no dig.

I am a confirmed digger, I get great satisfaction from it and that's how I was taught, I have tried the no dig method and never got the same level of satisfaction from it. Bindweed was my biggest problem but have managed to eradicate it in all but one small area on my first plot. This area has be covered for five years until last Saturday....today bindweed is starting to sprout.

Without any scientific rhyme or reason, that to me underlines why I am a digger.

What's your prefered way and why?

Please remember everyone has the right to peruse their favoured method

[Thelma Sanders]

I was a digger but age and arthritis snuck up on me The only things I've dug for the last couple of years have been potatoes ( and I'm also growing a lot less of them now) and any perennial weeds that resurface.
Can't barrow about huge quantities of compost/manure - so that rules out Charles Dowding's method of no-dig, as well.
So I guess you'd call it 'minimal cultivation', for me, adding as much compost as I can make, plus Phacelia green manure on some empty beds sown in the Autumn- it tends to die-back with a good frost, so no digging-in required. The roots do keep the soil open, though.

[Small pumpkin]

I'm a digger

I don't really know why. Like you it's how I was taught. I've never really tried the no dig method. In my tiny little head, I can't get how it works.
But I only dig once a year. At the beginning of the planting season.

[Bren In Pots]

Apart from digging up parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes I don't do any other digging, I add dalek compost to my beds and mulch well, the worms seem to do the rest.
Not sure why I don't dig but its probably because i started out growing in pots and containers then carried on the same way once I'd got beds to plant in instead.

[MyWifesBrassicas]

I'm a digger also and again, I don't know why.
I'm currently enchanted by the Charles D spell regarding no dig, this is the last year I intend to do it my old way, time for change.
Well! It works for Charles

[nickdub]

I dig a bit, when I have to - not something I enjoy, but then I don't grow many vegetables so it doesn't amount to more than a day or so a year, and secondly I make no where near enough compost for a "no dig" approach to be practicable.

[veggiechicken]

I've never been a digger - but I'm not a CD No-digger either.

When I first had an allotment, I read all the books (pre-internet) and it said to double-dig the plot. I dug one row, maybe two, and really couldn't see the point. All I was doing was moving the soil to another position a foot or so away. It was the same soil, I hadn't added any magic ingredients, all I'd done was give myself some aching muscles. Totally pointless. Why spend the few hours I had each week moving soil from A to B when I could be sowing, planting and picking instead.
I stopped digging and started hoeing instead. Just skimming off the weeds and leaving them lie there. May not have looked as neat and tidy as my neighbours' plots but it worked and nobody complained.

Until I joined the Vine, I'd not heard of CD's version of no-dig - din't even know there was a name for it. I don't have the money, resources or enthusiasm to garden his way. Buying in manure and compost is not my style. Any cardboard boxes I find are used in the chicken coop first, then on paths.
If I can get a load of woodchip, it goes on the paths.
Collecting manure is too much effort and may bring in chemicals I'd rather avoid anyway.
Basically, I'm a no-interference gardener. No-dig, no-spray, no regimentation but I seem to grow as much as I need and it keeps me happy.

[bramble]

I have always been a digger.
Purely for the pleasure of seeing the newly turned soil.
I am also a "raker" so, think I am a bit of a tidy gardener.
Perhaps if I had a large garden or an allotment I might approach it from a different angle.
I add as much nourishment to the soil as possible but dont have access to any manure.

[SarrissUK]

I am definitely a no dig convert, but only newly so.

I had one allotment that was full of bramble roots - I soon switched to another that was in much better condition, but there was no way I'd have the time to both weed my beds as well as digging any new ones. When the local council worked with the local football club to try and have a new stadium built on my allotment site, I didn't have it in me anymore and gave it up.

At home in my back garden I did experiment with the lasagna method, which involves chucking anything on the ground with cardboard either on top or underneath. I had a lot of grass sprout from the straw I used, and slugs absolutely loved it.

Things changed when I found out about no dig, which wasn't initially though Charles Dowding, but an online article that I found. That lead me on to Charles Dowding and the basic method is to cover the ground with cardboard and top it off with plenty of compost, soil, leaves (if you have time to leave the bed, such as over winter) or well rotted manure.

So, I took on a plot again, removed all the carpets and found free sourses of cardboard and horse manure for the beds. I soon took on another plot, as my first plot is full of fruit trees and I knew I wouldn't fit everything in. The new plot was signed for in January, and I started off a bed in February, again with cardboard and horse manure, and it runs along almost the whole length of the plot, so I'd guess it's 75 foot long, and about 7 foot wide the whole length. That does have some grass poking through the holes in the compost, but it's getting weaker now, and it takes me five minutes to weed that whole bed every week. It took me many loads of manure in my van to be fair, but time spent is far less than it would take me to dig it all and get the bed ready.

No dig is simply the only way I could have two plots and manage them (ish) with full time work and part time study at OU. And very little digging, only dug around the polytunnel to bury the plastic, and when I planted my asparagus. That's it.

Here's the mahoosive bed

On the left you can see the grass as it is now (although now covered in cardboard), then the path covered in wood chip, then the bed on the right.

[Jay-ell]

My first plot was a half plot in London which had a number of years use as a place for someone to park. It also had carpets, mesh, shopping trolley and other stuff buried so that had to be dug.

My next plot was in the space behind a church. It had stones all over the place - some of them pretty big as the area had previously been hard standing for works vehicles and the hardcore fill was still there so that had to be dug.

My third plot was the Jungle so I had to dig out the Christmas decorations, power tools and dolphins from the beds (still got a little bit to do when I get the energy)

And the fourth plot is the New Territories which had landscape fabric in each bed that restricted the roots of everything except couch grass and bindweed - still one bed left with this.

I'll class myself as a low dig gardener - I'll dig it over at the beginning then try not the dig it again unless really needed.

Last year I found that heavy mulching helped improve the soil more with much less work so it'll only be dig to plant or transplant things or when the weeds really get out of hand.

[Snadger]

Even though I have dundiggin with my avatar, I have to confess, I am a closet digger! There, I've said it.

Like VC though, having dug over my plot in the autumn, I only hoe and rake the ground before planting. I won't be digging it again this Autumn because I don't think there is a need. Any organic matter just gets added to the surface, where hopefully the worms will do the digging for me.

So, in essence, even though I enjoy digging, I just can't see the point any more, unless I am after worms for fishing.

[Logunner]

Only into my second year, and now a second plot.... much like Jay-ell each plot needed an initial dig, 2nd plot is underway as I type ( but both needed weedkiller before digging )

Then the intention is no dig, just hoe, rake and a bulb planter.

[rary]

As I suffer with arthritis and have knee replacements I made raised beds in my garden both flower and veg but even so I still did a bit of digging until I read here on the Vine about using cardboard though I had come across it in the past on here it was more promenent and used by a number of folk so I gave it a try and now I use a hoe more than any other garden tool in the autumn/winter I hoe the ground and cover it with two or three layers of cardboard which then gets covered with garden compost and seaweed and plant down through it in the spring

[bikermike]

My next plot was in the space behind a church. It had stones all over the place - some of them pretty big

I did wonder where you were going with that...

I am a no-digger. I dug over the first half-plot as it ws a Forrest of marestail, but since then not at all. This year I have my first full-on cd cardboard and compost beds, aand they do seem to bear out his ideas.

I'm also organic with no pesticides etc

[Snoop Puss]

I have gone the whole hog this year. As I grew nothing last year, a friend with a tractor came in and ploughed with disks to chop up all the weeds and to open up the soil surface (not very deep ploughing and the dead weeds add loads of humous, like a green manure), then Mr Snoop followed up with a Mantis and has worked in some muck and ash. Technically, I personally am a no-digger...

Not very sure what will happen next year. I'm fencing in the veg patch I'm working this year, so there will be no tractor ploughing there.