Double-Dug vs. No-Dig

[digitS']

There must be advantages to both.

If you want to incorporate a lot of organic material in a short period of time, laying it on the surface won't do it. Besides, the critters you are attracting may include things like voles.

The trouble I had by doing that in the potato patch led me to say, "never again!"

Steve

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i read a section in one of my companion planting books about the intensive method. i believe most of the digging takes place in the beginning and that bottom layer is replaced with mixed compost. the top layer is the dirt that was originally from the bottom foot and the original top foot is removed to eliminate the weeds. i know there is a local gardener using that method and i hardly see him/her in their yard while everything they grow looks fabulous! they have nicely raised rows and even have fruit trees and berry brambles on their tiny property sandwiched between 2 busy roads. i'd say their property is about 1/10 of an acre.

gardening like that can be tough in our area, we usually have a lot of rock and boulders to work around. sometimes tilling works well but having to not till every year can save some aggravation with breaking your back or having to fix your tiller or stop what you're doing to dig out large rocks or boulders.

 

[AMKuska]

I have fine-grained clay, if that makes sense. I have to dig. No matter how much compost I put in, it still looks and acts like clay. Dries to concrete.

Really? How long have you been working with it? All of the compost/soil books I checked out said the soil can be improved and made into a "Fine Loam" (or Tilth. I presume they're the same thing) by adding enough compost.

Maybe they forgot to add "If you truck your own dirt in first."

It's very interesting how the real world seems to differ a bit from these books.

 

[catjac1975]

The double digging is really time consuming, but I'm so glad that I did it for 4 beds. I still have 5 more to do. LOTS of sweat equity, but it's worth it bc we have between 3-18 inches of natural, glacier tilled black topsoil on top of heavy clay and the clay will dry to cement.
I dug up the first spade's depth and removed to another place on my 5 acres. I dug up the 2nd spade's depth and put it to the side of my bed. I even dug up a 3rd spade's depth, hand tilled and mixed with compost, did the same the next level up and the mixed fresh dirt from some other place on the property and mixed that with compost. This was about 30 inches deep, the depth I had been planting by augering holes for my tomato plants. It was well worth it.

Was this EVERY YEAR??? Or just the first time? And I do not really mean JUST. WOW so much work. I guess you don't need to go to the gym.

 

[journey11]

I only have about 10" of topsoil before I hit hardpan clay. This clay is so compact, so dense and homogenous. Seriously, you could cast pottery with it. I'm going to take a picture some time and show you guys.

So double-digging for me is backbreaking work, and then I end up with giant clods of clay that will take another year of weathering to break up, so the double-digging is no immediate fix for any new plot I have. It takes several years of tilling in and adding organic matter to my soil to get it where I want it.

On the plus side though, I don't think most plants mind the clay as much as I do. There are things you can plant that will either not need to go that deep (below the 10" topsoil I have) or are plants that have strong root systems that seek to go deep and they themselves will gradually improve the texture of the soil as they die off and their roots break down in that clay. Just continually planting something on the area helps in my case. The clay is nutrient packed and holds moisture, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. I have more trouble with flowers than I do with veggies not performing well because they can't get their roots down (in general, they tend to be more specific to what soil type they like and some are really fussy.) So I don't bother with double-digging because time, patience and adding lots of compost/manure to my soil just works better for me, without nearly killing myself to try to turn that clay.

 

[digitS']

I have never "quite" done the double digging.

The closest was digging all the soil out of a bed to shovel-depth. That is about 8" to 10". After spreading compost in the trench, I have run the rototiller over it. You should know that I have never had a garden hereabouts where the topsoil was deeper than 8" when I first started there.

I seem to do the "almost" double digging every year with the gladiola bed but the glad bulbs don't need to be in that deep so I don't clean out the trench to 8" to 10". I've got a couple boxes of wood shavings where the glads have spent the winter. Those shavings and some dry fertilizer go in the bottom & I till that in. Then, the glads are laid out and covered with soil.

Beds in the small veggie garden are dug out each year. Compostables go in the trench. By compostables in this case, I mean green material. Probably for 1/3rd the beds, that just means frost-killed garden plants. That is the way I handle clean-up there in the fall. I do not till this material, just recover with the soil.

The beds in the big veggie garden are just gone over with a spading fork. I am likely to run the rototiller over them. I cannot get the tiller to any 8" without Herculean effort :/. The tines on the spading fork are 11" long and that does the job, admirably. It is just a little time-consuming but it is faster & easier than using a shovel out there. Much!

Steve

 

[Smart Red]

Planting Daikon radishes and leaving them to rot in the soil will help to open and loosen your clay soil. Slower than double digging, but also much easier.

 

[catjac1975]

I was wondering if there are fall cover crops that would improve all that clay. I have deep sandy soil that we have gardened for 37 years. It loses moisture and fertility easily, but I will take that over all that cement soil some of you deal with!

 

[Jared77]

Sure makes me appreciate my Michigan soil reading this thread.

 

[journey11]

I was wondering if there are fall cover crops that would improve all that clay. I have deep sandy soil that we have gardened for 37 years. It loses moisture and fertility easily, but I will take that over all that cement soil some of you deal with!

I like winter wheat for that purpose and also holding the soil in place so it doesn't erode. It has very deep roots and can go down like 4 feet. That's going to bring up nutrients from below into the vegetation of the plant as well to be made useful to other plants when turned under later. And also it suppresses spring weed growth too.

Like with the daikon radish Red mentions, let the plants do all the work for me!