No-Dig - it's a no-brainer!

My raised vegetable bed - May 2015

My raised vegetable bed - June 2016

Over a year ago now, I was introduced to Mick, (affectionately referred to as 'Mick the Leaf' by me) a vegetable and salad leaf producer who rents some land across the road from me. I know that I have mentioned him a couple of times in my blogs before as I sometimes go and help him pick salad leaves and last year watered his plot and polytunnel while he and his wife went on holiday during the Glastonbury Festival. He grows all his stuff the No-Dig way and I have become quite intrigued by this method. It is not a new idea but the current expert, and mentor of Mick, is Charles Dowding who lives a couple of villages away and has written several books on the subject of organic, no dig vegetable growing. Having seen at first hand how the beds are constructed I made my own beds based loosely on the idea and working with the materials I had to hand i.e. lots of well-rotted horse manure and some fairly poor, ashy soil that already occupied my site. Last year's bumper harvest of fresh vegetables made me decide to extend a bit further along the yard and create a fruit bed using the same method, and this seems to be getting on quite well, too. The strawberry plants and some of the autumn fruiting raspberry canes came from one of my gardening clients, a couple of gooseberry bushes were reduced to 75p each in Aldi (and looked 'sick unto death' when I got them home), the rhubarb crown came from my friends and WWOOF hosts, Dawn and Tony, in Powys and some more autumn-fruiting raspberry canes, a blackcurrant bush, a redcurrant bush and a thornless blackberry from Mick, so it was nearly all free! I very quickly had to extend my rabbit-proof fencing as the chickens were pecking off all the new green leaves as soon as they emerged and seriously hampering growth!

The site of my raised fruit bed - 2015

My raised fruit bed - June 2016

Mick and I generally work on a barter basis – I pick leaves, or water in return for bags of salad leaves, veg and plants for my plot and this recently extended to a goodly amount of municipal compost that was surplus to his requirements but would be very useful to me, because my friend Karen had told me that their veg bed was so overgrown with raspberry suckers and perennial weeds that Ade was despairing of ever getting back on top of it, so I volunteered to establish a no-dig veg bed for them in exchange for free aromatherapy massages from Karen! I spent a few hours over a period of weeks removing as many of the raspberry canes, dandelions and buttercups as I could and then thought about the construction of the beds. Their soil, despite much improvement by Ade over the years, is still heavy to work and retains a lot of moisture, but in a raised bed system this could well be an advantage but, talking it over with Mick, who has a background in civil engineering, it soon became apparent that I would need a huge number of manure-filled bags and compost to make the beds that I envisaged so, again in the spirit of barter, Mick offered his trailer, and eventually himself, to help get things underway.

'Mick the Leaf' barrowing muck!

The beginnings of Karen's and Ade's new veg beds

We chose probably the hottest day of the summer to shovel manure from the huge heap in our back yard into the trailer , and then drive the few miles to Karen's house. As we approached Binegar, Mick remarked that he had only ever been there once before to pick up some cardboard from a Freecycle ad, that he subsequently used to construct his original beds and pathways. Imagine our mutual surprise when we realised that he had got the cardboard from Karen and Ade in the first place!

We used two wheelbarrows and, with Mick's expertise and unfailing good humour, the beds were soon shaping up and, after a quick stop for lunch we filled a second trailer load with 'my' municipal compost for the top layer and headed back to Binegar. By the end of the day we had constructed two raised veg beds about four feet wide and twelve feet long with paths running around each, and a few days later I took a consignment of plants up – some that I had grown far too many of ,and some from Mick ' for payment for the original cardboard'. I realise that I would never have managed to finish the beds in time to grow anything this year without Mick's help and the use of his trailer, so probably need to do lots more watering and picking to 'pay off' the debt. Meanwhile, I am enjoying lovely aromatherapy massages as my 'payment' from Karen – such a nice way to do business. 

The completed veg beds

On another topic: as mentioned in my previous blog, I went to help on the WWOOF information stand at the recent Green Scythe Fair at Muchelney, and it proved to be an interesting day in more ways than one! I arrived at about 9.30 am but my fellow representative didn't arrive for another three quarters of an hour as she'd been held up with unexpected jobs at home. Unfortunately, she had all the leaflets, banners, etc so for a while it was just me standing rather disconsolately behind an empty table! Jane has been a WWOOF host for many years and is located only about 8 miles from me, so I may go and have a day's WWOOF at some point, just to keep my hand in. The weather turned in to a day of torrential showers and we had not been provided with any cover! Both Jane and I had brought large umbrellas with us and Jane had also had the foresight to bring a large sheet of clear polythene – we got very adept at whipping it over the stand at the first drop of rain and therefore managed to save things from getting wet, which was just as well as I had taken some needle-felted sheep, a peg loom rug and some skeins of wool along with a wooden bowl and spoon that I made, to enhance the rather bare stand. We met some lovely people, some of whom were thinking of becoming WWOOF hosts and some who were already WWOOFers, including a couple of Spanish girls who insisted on taking our photo. I didn't get to see any of the scythe competitions, but I did have a quick look around the other stalls before I left and had a lovely chat with a fellow spinner. I will definitely go again next year, as a visitor, so that I can enjoy the day more (as long as it's not raining!).

(Wo)-Manning the WWOOF stand at The Green Scythe Fair