Dig v No Dig first month of growth 2023 

Ah thanks. I hope one day you may garden!

If u have a window sill or balcony u can still 're grow herbs. Coriander spring onions leeks garlic ginger

How wonderful to hear this Dan, and so good that you've done all that

Thanks is interesting. That's a long fork! I do run a trial to compare forking and harvests are 8% less over 9 years, it must damage the mycelial network charlesdowding.co.uk/three-strip-trial-2014-2022/

The interesting thing about mycelial networks when you gently disrupt their network they sporulate at the ends of their hyphae. I have a friend that has actually photographed it under a microscope. Rototiling pulverizes it but a Broadfork can actually increase the spore count in the soil. If you have the proper food available like Ramial Chipped Wood they will be even more aggressive and available. Thank you for the link and thank you for what you do.

Nice Melizza

So nice Eleanor, thanks

Thank you

good question. i struggle w slugs also

Sorry to hear that. I do nothing in fact, I am relying on seedlings being strong and the soil being top quality. No dig helps by allowing survival of predators such as Beetles. Notice also there are no wooden sides to the beds which can be habitat for slugs

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😂

Great comment which I would write as No dig improves soil with time and mulching plays a big role in it. Using any mulch including compost, wood, leaves, straw or anything that sits on the ground to feed the microbes and bugs that feed the plants.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig thank you 🥰. I can have a hard time communicating. You simplified it so more people can understand and learn! Best response I've had on RU-vid in years.

That is nice Sam! 💚

Ah nooo! Sending you grow vibes Justus

Not sure about this because diggers say they dig to loosen and aerate soil so roots can access it. Always when transplanting, we push the rootballs in, to ensure firm contact.

@@CharlesDowding1nodig Thank you for your warm and informative response. We all profit from your work and your shared experience. It seems unlikely that firming plants in is a practical confounder here. (Here comes my rambling rant to help you and others help all of us and say what's on my mind.) I and others have a great appetite for short-form videos which warmly and succinctly present a video-abstract of experimental findings, protocols, conclusions, and ideas for further research, as peer-reviewed journals have learned to format content but with supplemental attractive warmth and social grace which prefers a soothing kindness of tone to superfluous verbosity as ironically ostensible nicety: none of us want our life's time wasted to get information we might not immediately recognize as worth taking. The applicability might not occur to us until years later when we are frustrated by the toil of working against the nature of our ecosystems. Short, high-impact reports infect viewers with knowledge that might be initially resisted because of cognitive dissonance because everyone is apparently tilling their soils, thus evidently soil-disturbance is the supreme agronomy. GMOs are intellectual property that can pollute copyright-infringement into organic farms' whole gene pools through pollination, meanwhile GMOs are engineered to withstand spraying transient supplements which sicken whole ecosystems. Professor David R. Montgomery reports on many of these issues and how people regenerate entire farms, observed as organic matter content in souls. There's often a couple years of reduced yields when switching to regenerative practices. This experiment makes me wonder if that time is caused by tilled or dug soils' need to recover the actinomycotal population or the mycorrhizal network to support plants' prosperity. Dr. Elaine Ingham could likely provide some insight about performing microscopic analysis of your soils, perhaps showing us how no dig supports prosperity in your experiment.

Thanks. It's the two year drop in harvests which stops farmers switching :( I have had microscope analysis of my trial beds, v different results

Seedlings resist! Always impresses me

The use of compost to grow vegetables is not exclusive to No Dig and as I say/show in this video, you need less than when digging. Vegetables are demanding plants to grow. If you can't access or buy much compost, just do a small bed and I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results

I know what you mean! It's two things, residual warmth in the soil and much warmer nights often. Plus that plants have an extensive root system which has already grown in the warmer months so that can power more new growth. Whereas in April they have to make new roots as well as growing the leaves et cetera

That's what I did on the dig bed. On the left. No dig on right has the compost on top

😂 yes our language is biased towards digging!