A 'No-Dig' garden bed consists of layers of organic material such as straw, leaves, grass clippings, weeds and manure. You may have also heard of this type of garden bed being called 'lasagne gardening' because of its similarities to making a lasagne (layers upon layers).
The layers are stacked up to form a raised garden bed without any soil. The beds can be contained with sides such as timber planks, sheets of corrugated iron/tin or they can just be left as free-standing.
A benefit of this kind of bed is that they can be set up anywhere, including over existing lawn or concrete. It is a good option if you have particularly poor soil as the plants grow entirely in the layers of decomposing organic material.
These garden beds are extremely fertile because of the decomposing organic matter attracts a whole host of organisms to help break down the material, making the nutrients available to your plants. They also have excellent moisture retention and are quick and easy to make and are easy-going on the household budget.
If you plan to set up a no-dig garden on top of lawn or a weedy area, first slash the grass or weeds down then sprinkle the area with blood and bone and water it in. This will cause the grass and weeds to rot when they are smothered. It is best to use old carpet to smother grasses and if you are only contending with annual weeds just cover them with thick layers of damp overlapping newspapers. If you are building your garden bed on top of a hard surface, first put down bundles of dry branches to allow air into the bed.
The next step is to introduce alternate layers of different types of green and brown organic material in ten centimetre layers, starting with crude material like wood chips followed by fresh green weeds and grass clippings (without seeds and bulbous or running weeds that might re-shoot) and then the dry leaves. Add a five centimetre layer of sheep or cow manure after each layer of dry brown material. Next, add layers of straw, manure and lucerne, watering it in as you go until you get to a height of around sixty centimetres. At this point, top it off with a layer of decent compost. The garden bed will settle to around half this height within a couple of weeks.
Once you have built your no-dig garden bed it is best to wait until the bed has settled before planting. It is possible that the bed will begin to compost during this time and the heat from the compost process will cook your seedlings. Don't worry if your bed does start to warm up, as this is a natural process and it will have cooled down by the time you are ready to plant.
When planting out a no-dig garden bed it is a good idea to place seeds and seedlings in pockets of soil to get them off to a good start: simply pull back the surface material where you want to plant add two generous handfuls of soil and pop in the seed or seedling and water in well.
No-dig garden beds need to be regularly topped up with fresh materials as the bedding settles and breaks down. A good time to do this is after you have harvested your vegetables. You will soon have a ready supply of compost from all of the vegetables that you have grown so add this along with straw, manures and lucerne hay to build up your no-dig garden bed again.
Happy gardening folks!
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