No Dig Garden
Winter harvests and mulches | No dig value
With Minty 28th November and Trafalgar Brussels sprouts, lambs lettuce and leeks
Two Bed Trial 2025
The no dig bed has once again given more harvest than the dig bed. Even though growth on the no dig bed was hampered by squash plants rooting in from one side. They’re a variety new to me, Ayote with delicious green flesh, and way more vigour than other squash I grow.
The Ayote roots travelled under the pathway and into the neighbouring bed, reducing harvest of leeks and kale in particular. Even so, we notice how the smaller kale plants give as much harvest as larger plants on the dig bed. the totals from 5 plants each bed were 4.91 kg dig, and 4.99 kg from no dig.
24th June after final potato harvest, peas removed, leeks and cabbage transplanted. Dig bed left and no dig right
Dig bed has been dug with compost incorporated, and no dig bed has same compost on top
“All the trials you do have made my husband a believer in no dig. He’s an engineer and he appreciates seeing these trials. We started no dig this year and have had an amazing garden. I still have a lot to learn but you’ve made gardening a delight again.”
Langdon, YouTube 2022.
Harvests in 2025 were 97.5 kg dig bed, 106 kg from no dig. Each bed is 1.5 × 5 m, 5 × 16ft.
TWO MORE OFFER DAYS
There are fantastic discounts until midnight Monday. Such as my No Dig book for just £7.50 when you buy the updated No Dig online course, which already is 50% discounted.
And we are now able to sell to North America!
The Season of Mulching
How much compost to apply?
The beds cleared of vegetables, have all received 2-2.5 cm or just under an inch of compost
It can vary a lot. If your soil is light and sandy, maybe full of stones, I would use more. I apply every year around 2 cm and for those soils I would spread double-dose, and 5 - 7 cm initially. See the recent garden tour for ideas.
On the other hand, look at the message below and the success Yvonne is having using much less.
“I can’t overemphasise how impressed I am with the drought resistance of no dig veggies, and how easy the method makes weeding. I only use about a fourth as much compost as you do and have only been doing no dig about three years but it is vastly better than anything else I have ever tried.”
Yvonne Jackson March 2024 on YouTube.
No Dig in Winter
Few winter weeds is the biggest advantage for me. That comes from years of being careful, not to allow seeding weeds, also from using compost with not too many weed seeds in. If that is the case for you, spread it now to give you a chance of winter hoeing in late January.
You can enjoy harvests in winter, as long as you remembered the sowing dates, as in my calendar.
A wonderful harvest of lambs lettuce / corn salad, sown 7th September, between lettuce and cabbage
Why it Works
1 - Fertility is conserved through maintenance of biological networks.
2 - Organic matter is maintained, as opposed to being lost through oxidation during digging.
August sown spinach, Medania left and Acadia F1 right
Using even a little compost makes the win bigger. Try a few different amounts and see what works best. I find that using some extra compost results in time savings, because of fewer weeds, stronger moisture retention, and needing fewer plants for the same amount of harvest.
White mustard for fertility, sown 7th September and now killed by -5°C frosts - and it has the whole winter to decompose. BUT it’s too late now to sow any green manures
Celeriac this year has been an excellent example, because I didn’t buy enough seeds and had fewer plants than I had meant to. I was worried about being short for the restaurants I supply.
Instead, celeriac of consistently 1.5 to 2.2 kg mean there is plenty. Adam harvested it all because we are now in a spell of consistently wet weather, meaning by December the leaves on top would rot, and take that decomposition into the main root.
Celeriac stores very easily. We leave some soil on the roots but not a lot, and put them in boxes or crates. They can keep nicely for up to 4 or even 5 months.
Celeriac harvest late November, from a bed which already gave a leek harvest.
Thanks for the notes on storing celeriac. I was wondering what to do with ours.
Hi, from year to year the crop remains the same? Or the crops are the same only in the same year and then you changed vegetable? I wonder what are the spikes ( for example in 2017) in production due to..