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Now we’re going to build up our materials in layers, just like we were making a delicious baked pasta dish.
- Soak your high-carbon brown material in water
- On top of the newspaper layer, alternate the following –
- 10cm of the soaked “brown organic material” (e.g., autumn leaves or straw)
- 5cm of manure – e.g., horse, cow, sheep
- Water well after each layer is added
- Keep adding these layers until you get to your desired height. We recommend building up the garden at least 30-40cm.
- Make sure that the top layer is the brown organic material, which acts as a great mulch to suppress weeds, hold water and insulate the soil
- To plant seedlings, pull aside the mulch and add one or two handfuls of compost to the hole that you’ve created. Make a hole in the compost and plant the seedling into this compost.
NOTE: The no-dig garden will approximately halve in height in the first six months as it composts away. Therefore, if for example, you want a 30cm high veggie bed, build a 50-60cm no-dig garden.
During this time the layers that you put down will turn into fertile black compost. After these few months, any vegetables should grow very well in the no-dig garden. However, in those first 2-4 months (the first growing season of the bed), the following vegetables will not grow especially well in a no-dig garden, so don’t be disheartened:
- Root vegetables – e.g., carrots, onions, beetroot
- Beans or peas.
These veggies will grow well from the second season onwards.
To maintain the health of the no-dig garden area, VEG recommends adding homemade compost at least once a year (the start of spring), but preferably twice a year (the start of spring and the start of autumn).
Raising a ‘no dig’ garden has recently become all the rage because of its simplicity. What do you think? Could you become the next ‘no dig’ gardener?
