My only goal is to make growing food as accessible and practical as possible for as many people as possible. This is why I decided to talk about a rather hot topic because I believe in pragmatism. Please let me know your thoughts!
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48 Comments
Excellent, common sense approach! Thanks for all you do to promote practical, healthy home gardening.
Oh my goodness! Did I just hear Huw LAUGH? ❤️
Don't ever cut out the bloopers..lol I appreciate you Huw 💖 Another video full of helpful info
When I was really into lifting I had similar problems when dialing in my diet. I had gone vegetarian/vegan for the most part with the rare meat/animal product. It's tough to hear that I'm not a vegan for eating out with X and having meat once in three months. The lables we use are overly simplistic and are used to define us yet in reality we're all coplex and always in flux. Don't let anyone lable you Huw, do what works.
LOL!!! I agree about the moles! And all the rest of what you said.
I dig when I have to, when I want to plant something or when I want to dig up a huge taproot or weed an area so I can grow in the current season for example. Ignore the haters, there are plenty of them. Also if you have cake, you should eat it, whats the point otherwise??
The agricultural world refers to their similar concept as "minimal tillage" which always feels like a better description to me
Couldn’t have said it better myself!!. Thank you for a bit of common sense. ✌️❤️
How bout no till, or till once in the beginning then try not to till unless you really need to. Honestly who cares as long as you’re happy!
Growing your own food is the act of enriching your own property. It is building wealth. Buying food is enriching someone else's property. It is building wealth for them. You are paying them to enrich themselves and build their wealth.
Thanks for this Huw, you have said what Ive been thinking too and feeling a little concerned about (and some guilt) It's very good to hear your views, especially about the cost of the compost.
No dig seems to me to be an excellent marketing idea pushed by large composting facilities. It has never made sense to me. In nature all animals dig whether it be dogs burying bones or rodents creating tunnels. Even worms dig through the soil. There is, of course, a difference between digging a massive swath of land and digging a one foot hole. I personally dig holes to bury my kitchen and yard waste. The soil is so healthy the raw matter is gone within weeks during the summer months, that in itself brings all the needed macro and micro biology into my soil, along with below ground insects, worms, etc. I plant right on top of the decaying compost and the plants thrive. Everyone, and I mean everyone thinks I have 10 green thumbs.
I will never, ever do no dig. The idea of buying compost is ridiculous to me, and creates its own negative footprint on our planet. I don't import anything into my soil. No compost, no fertilizer, no bug killers of any kind, no plastic mulch. How do the birds scratch when the soil is covered? If birds can't scratch, how do they devour weed seeds and bugs? I much prefer to dig a hole and bury my kitchen and yard waste, and apparently my plants prefer it as well. I have been gardening this way for decades and have never had bad pest pressure due to the health of my plants.
I am very upfront about how I maintain my soil health on my small youtube channel and have yet to have a negative comment about it. Maybe the nay sayers haven't found my channel yet. If they do, I would challenge them to prove their soil is healthier than mine in words. Let them explain intelligently the logic behind their thinking, or are they just parroting.
You have to do what will work in your climate & soil type. Period. Dont listen grumblers!
My allotment is mostly no dig. People always ask how I get my parsnips out. I usually do it with a trowel but I say I do it with a spade. They walk off chuffed with themselves, when I see them digging out weeds in the blazing sun I say nothing but I smile to myself.
I till my gardens thoroughly every year, deep and hard. I have plenty of worms and microbes.
i totally agree with you , it’s becoming pc gardening rather than knowing your soil and garden x
I've been no dig for four years now, but i have to issues digging a hole to plant an apple tree or using a fork to extract a huge parsnip. Sometimes you gotta dig.
Perhaps "No Double Dig" would be a better name for what i do.
I do both, depending on the crop. As gardeners we need to adapt with the climate and soil needs for that crop. both have pro and cons. But they both need to be maintained.
The next time someone criticises you for using a fork Huw tell them to Fork off!
So true, Huw. Who knew it would come to having to say these things, eh?
Ban moles 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
and some time weeds are a problem wher I will grow my carrots, then I have to dig a bit.
wheres a good chicken squawk or F# bird call when you need it to root you on! another great vid Huw! 100% 😊
I think there is a need for dig methods especially if there is poor soil that has a lot of rocks and stones
So for me when starting a new garden I think starting off with a dig method has it's benefits.
I have been no dig for about 4 years and have been really impressed by the results. I will disturb the soil and dig if it offers an advantage to solve a problem. I do avoid diggig the ground so weigh the benefit against the negatives. If I am forced to dig a small patch of ground to remove an invasive weed I will. The bacteria will recover quickly, soil structure and mychorrizah fungi will take longer.
If I take over a piece of ground with a heavy infestation of bindweed then I dig the ground first, then mulch the beds. After that I handweed any bindweed that appears each season until it gives up. My view is dig or no dig you can get good results, delaying going over to no dig by one season is worth the benefit of making a difficult first season easier by removing a lot of the bindweed roots. So my approach is avoid digging if possible but be prepared to dig if the benefits out weigh the negatives,
In the US its often called No Till, which still has its issues because different people have their different definitions of tillage. No Till Growers on youtube has a videos on this exact topic called What Is Tillage? and Are We Wrong About Tillage? and makes REALLY GOOD market gardening content and talks a lot minimal disturbance and not letting dogma take over.
Quite right, Huw! A very sensible point of view. Some people just get so ideological and then hold onto their extreme views in an almost religious way.
You are a smart guy, Huw, and you make a great point. I too felt guilty as I harvested my potatoes this year, but I was harvesting potatoes for my family to eat! That was backwards thinking. Thank you for this video. I needed to hear this.
Oh precious life. Sometimes I wonder 🤔.
Well , no guilt here 🤔😁😳😂
Well explained 👏🏻 👌 thank you!!
No dig, how do I plant an apple tree? Brilliant.
Thank you Huw. So refreshing & reassuring to hear this.
I wish the local foxes, squirrels and cats had heard of no dig.
How about "Low Intervention" Gardening 😉
I appreciate how balanced you are. You are so right about nature being imperfect. I live where sink holes are a real thing. Nature is one of the greatest disturbers of soil when you think of earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and tornadoes. Some of the greatest natural disasters feed the soil with biochar, moves nutrient rich river silt to the plains, shreds whole trees into mulch, brings rich lava from the core of the Earth to enrich the land. Nature is powerful. My broad forking a small plot cannot compare to a mile wide tornado destroying every living thing in its path. We need to be good stewards of the Earth, but we also need to understand that sometimes Mother Nature thrives on chaos.
As well as cancelling moles, cancel my digging dog, lol.
I love this, thanks for posting it. I much prefer no dig but today I had to dig up my potato patch to harvest them but also to get the Couch grass out. It was a proper turn the soil over job and I felt bad for doing it, but sometimes you just have to deal with what you are dealt. I don’t have time to cover the bed to rid the grass as I want to plant in it next week. Your no dig efforts are always impressive so don’t get disheartened by any negative comment 😊
No, I’m glad you brought it up. I try following different methods of gardening. The result is that my beds are dense and plants struggle to get deep roots, which results in my wasting water, time and resources. I did much better before I started watching YouTube gardeners tbh. I’m going to dig this time. I’m in Arizona. I dk where all these crazy roots keep coming from in my beds. They’re not from the current plants and they are NOT helping my soil. 💕
On a different note, does anyone know how to get rid of sow bugs?
I used a fork to dig my spuds. If anyone has an issue with that, they can fork off.
For some people, judging is the drug, and concern for the soil/environment is merely a pretext. Hopefully, your sincere and thoughtful video will enlighten those with a capacity to see. No one should lose sleep over satisfying the demands of a population who prefer purity tests and outrage to honest efforts to move as many people as possible in a direction that benefits the soil and the people striving to produce abundance for all.
Great video Huw. Wouldn’t it be great if we all used common sense!
It is sad to me that people feel the need to criticize others to feel ok with themselves. I am a middle of the road gardener. I have tilled to create a garden space due to heavy compaction, then covered with cardboard and compost for the winter to plant in spring. That area was massively productive, but I won't till again there. I think bed creation with no dig is amazing, but you do still have to harvest, and you still have to observe and interact according to the needs of the soil. Nature is not black and white, it is shades of amazing colours!
No dig is not a command, it is a method,. a rather clever one.
You choose what methods you like, and how you implement them,. no one is coming to check up on your plot bro. There are no fines for digging.
Thank you, I agree that minimal disturbance makes so much more sense.
Peat free composts. I feel the same as you. One shouldn't define a purchased compost by what is not there. Peat frees vary horrendously.
If there are people who think "no-dig" means never – literally NEVER, no exceptions – dig then they've missed the point
The rationale behind "no-dig" is not disturbing the soil biology. SOIL biology, not hard as cement clay or might as well be gravel sandy DIRT "biology"
I'm sure people have also used it out of laziness or only thinking about weed seeds, but they've really missed the point
It seems to me that no-dig could work if you have a plentiful supply of rotted down organic matter. I find that having a small garden makes no-dig unattainable, and well, how do you harvest carrots without churning the soil? Churning the soil is what nature does – its technical term is bioturbation – it is even used in geology as a way-up criteria to decide on the top and bottom of rock strata. To recycle organic matter, I just bury it rather than compost it, or just place it on the soil during winter. Hard prunings get buried a spade depth down, or more, together with any grass cuttings, autumn leaves etc – they rot down and give me fantastic soil and sequester carbon (the soil difference between my vegetable area and ornamental area is amazing.) Nature does not do no-dig.
Well said, Huw. Attachment to ideology is the bane of our current era. I think of myself as a parsimonious excavator. I have a garden with a heavy clay soil that is easily compacted and is, therefore, perfect for growing brambles, but less so for carrots. It's about paying attention to growing conditions and learning what the land is teaching us.
I fork. I dibble. I trowl. I trench. I shovel (if needed.) My ground is fertile & acts as a super carbon sink. I covercrop, mulch & vermicompost in place & in bins. It has permaculture elements throught. I have yet to meet any no dig purist who can go head to head with my production. They are whiney ideologues addicted to growing primarily in compost. All hat & no tiny herds of soil life down deep where it counts.