Applying Original Permaculture to the Garden

Discover some of the principles of permaculture that will help you achieve a low-maintenance garden.

By Patrick Whitefield
Published on October 26, 2018
article image
by Pixabay/MetsikGarden

No-Dig Gardening

In a natural ecosystem, disturbed or bare soil is very rare. An undisturbed soil, covered with plant material, either living or dead, is protected from erosion and free to develop its natural fertility. Moving and exposing the soil disrupts the biological processes of fertility and leads to the loss of precious organic matter.

So why do we dig our gardens? The main reason is to relieve compaction, and the main cause of compaction is treading on the soil. If a garden is laid out on a bed system, gardening without digging becomes a possibility. A bed system consists of beds alternating with paths, with the beds sufficiently narrow that every part of them can be reached from a path. The gardener never needs to tread on the growing area, so there is no compaction.

Doing away with digging saves a lot of work. What’s more, although quite a large proportion of the garden is composed of paths, the overall yield is usually higher than in a traditional vegetable plot. In part this is because the vegetables can be placed equidistant at their ideal spacing in both dimensions. Without a bed system they must be planted in rows, to allow space for the gardener to walk between them, so they’re too close to each other in one dimension and too far apart in the other.

No-dig is not a dogma. Sometimes it may be worthwhile to dig, perhaps to remove perennial weeds or to mix in compost in a raw soil. But these occasions should be rare in most gardens.

Perennials

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