The No-Dig Garden

Why didn’t the 7 dwarves have any time for girlfriends? Because they spent all day digging!

And spending days digging a home garden can be just as detrimental to your social life!

And your back… and hands – if you forget to wear gloves… and your feet – especially when your Sustainability Nut Spouse leaves gardening tools laying about and you step on them – just ask LTSH (Long Term Suffering Husband) about that one… ooops…

To save your back and hands (and feet!) why not take advantage of one very clever Aussie’s garden design? It’s called the No-Dig Garden. The idea saw the light of day in the 1970’s when Esther Dean, a Sydney Gardener created an above ground garden made of layers of organic matter that over time rot down into a beautifully rich soil that your plants will loooooooove.

The No-Dig Garden is not only perfect for those with an aversion to back-breaking exercise, it is also the answer to poor quality soils that have been run down through the use of pesticides and fertiflizers, or soils that are just too damn hard to get a fork or spade into.

The beauty of the No-Dig Garden is that you can put it just about anywhere – over rocky soil, dense clay soil, lawn, concrete and even an old boat deck (long story!). The other thing is that the soil quality improves over time as the nitrogen and carbon materials break down, pouring those elements into the ‘growing soil’.

LTSH was impressed with the No-Dig Garden idea – he particularly liked that there was a border around each garden. Being a stickler for order, he heartily disliked my previous vegetable patch which just grew in a huge ‘kind of’ square in the middle of our back yard… not neat at all. Personally I like the idea of low maintenance, another trait of the No-Dig Garden (NDG), as weeds and grass find it difficult to get through the layers of organic matter.

Ingredients for your NDG include carbon and nitrogen materials:

• organic straw or lucerne hay (carbon)
• organic manure (nitrogen).

Basically the No-Dig Garden is like a large lasagne – you keep adding layers. There’s no rule to this set up – simply add as many layers as you want. Personally I just add until I run out of straw and manure. I’ve also added a layer of non-broken down scraps from our compost bin at the bottom of one of our No-Dig Gardens, and that particular plot is doing incredibly well… tomatoes, a crazed zucchini vine, and a huge eggplant that is producing quicker than we can eat, and basil (yeah! like I need more basil!)

Step 1
Decide where you’ll put your garden. Take into account what you plan to grow there. If it is something that favours shade during the hotter times of the year, then plant accordingly, ie. plant where a tree, the house, a fence, etc. provides shade during the steamiest part of the day.

Step 2
Mark out where the walls of the garden will be.

Step 3
Build the walls. It’s advisable to build them at least 20cm high. Some people prefer higher – and that’s their choice. If you’re starting to age a little (just a little) you may prefer not to bend down to access your garden, so you may go for much higher walls. No-Dig Garden walls have been built from:

• rocks
• bricks
• besser blocks
• sleepers 
• pavers…
• boat hull (yep, that’s also part of that long story!)

Step 4
If you are planting directly on the ground (not on concrete) cover the bottom with newspaper, overlapping corners to stops weeds from peeping through. If possible, avoid coloured print – this will only leech into the soil.

Step 5
Water the newspaper well.

Step 6
Cover the newspaper with a thick layer of straw or lucerne hay.

Step 7
Water.

Step 8
Add a layer of organic fertiliser.

Step 9
Water.

Step 10
Add a thick layer of straw or lucerne hay.

Step 11
Add another layer of manure.

Step 12
Water

Step 13
Add another layer of straw.

Step 14
Add organic compost to plant your seedlings into. You have a choice, you can either add clumps of compost for each plant, or cover the whole surface with a layer of it.

Step 15
Plant seedlings and water well.

Step 16
Mulch to retain moisture.

The layers will break down over time so keep adding new layers of organic matter. Worms will work their way through the newspaper (munching into it to help it break down) and help to keep your new garden healthy.

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