As climate change is a worry for so many people, I wondered how many of you have considered making your garden, no dig? We moved to Cumbria just before the pandemic hit, the house has a big garden that was just weed & moss infested grass, perfect for me to make a garden that suits me! As the soil is clay,I decided now was the time to start gardening using the no dig method, the first project was the veggie garden complete with poly tunnel. 2020 I had a reasonable harvest, given that I had to scrounge seeds, but last year was really good and I hope for even better this year. The benefits to the soil is massive, mine teams with worms, we use far less water for the veg and the plants seem stronger & less prone to disease, another benefit is not having to stress about crop rotation so much, it’s also much kinder to my body! Even if you don’t use no dig, do any of you think it might be worth thinking about, especially those of you that suffer from drought in the summer?
My veg gardens apart from the first year have been no dig since we bought the house. We have 4 compost bins on the go & I’m going have to build another couple.
For anyone interested in no-dig here are a couple of my favourite You tubers
Have you noticed better results Wozza? I’ve used the no dig method for my flower garden for several years and never water them after the initial planting, I’ll be doing the same here. I currently have 6 compost bins on the go, 3 were left by the previous owners, in various parts of the garden & OH has just made me a compost tumbler, it’ll be interesting to see how that goes!
For a non gardener (currently) this sounds a good idea. I shall follow with interest.
Check out Charles Dowding, on line, he’s really good at explaining in a down to earth way, that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of others as good, but he’s my go to guy! It makes a lot of sense & so simple to do, hassle free gardening, what’s not to like 
Thank you, yes I have subscribed to his youtube following your link.
Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I think that the success or otherwise of no dig gardening depends on the initial soil structure together with the amount of compost that can be created, or bought in, to provide the required depth of regular mulching that is needed.
If the original soil is heavy, cold, and wet, or at the other end of the spectrum, extremely sandy and ultra free draining, then it is going to take a considerable depth of compost on the top to make it usable for planting. In either of these two cases I think there is no substitute for initially working in a good deal of organic matter by digging or rotovating. Once a good foundation is obtained, then subsequently it is possible to mulch rather than dig.
Of course the whole thing is never entirely ‘no dig’, as compost has to be dug out of the heap, and the ground is dug and worked to a finer tilth during planting, clearing of spent plants, and harvesting of root vegetables.
The existing soil structure isn’t as important as you’d expect as the aim is to give nature a helping hand without destroying the billions of micro and macroscopic organisms that live in soil along with the worms, spiders etc. Because my land is clay, I started with a good layer of leaf mould & some chopped up twigs for structure, then I cover with grass clippings and on goes a layer of cardboard and a layer of compost finishes it off. If the bed is for decorative plants then I’ll cover it with membrane and leave alone until I’m ready to plant in autumn through to spring. I do dig a hole for planting, but only just big enough for the rootball , no fine tilts needed. For my veg garden we made raised beds, used the same weed surppressing formula but added a deeper layer of compost, again the planting holes are only as big as needed, often I just poke a hole and pop the seedling in. I then cover the bare soil with grass clippings and keep an eye out for slugs! Harvesting root veg is more like easing them out as opposed to digging, most I just pull by hand, for the spuds, I just root about , very rare I even use a trowel. All other veg I cut off just below the soil & leave the root structure behind, it feeds the soil as it rots.
Another fan of No dig and Charles! For various reasons I’ve not grown much the last couple of years, would like to start again this year!
Our little plot was chock full of bricks, bottles, large pieces of hewn stone from an old archway, and the reinforced concrete remains of animal pens, so we really didn’t have much choice other than to dig it first.
Used to be the slaughtering area for small animals used by the village butcher, so once the detritus was removed we discovered that the soil will grow virtually anything as it has had the benefit of decades of being drenched in animal / poultry faeces and blood.
Charles has a good following in France, mostly French I think, it’ll be nice for you to get going when you have time.
Rubbish left buried in the garden is a real pain Robert, we have had to dig up an area to try to find the soak away for the septic tank, only to discover there wasn’t one. The builders that had done the conversion, years ago, we’re apparently well know for not installing them just dumping bits of pipe to pass the inspection. Lucky you having all that lovely rich soil to grow in, we have a friendly farmer that dumps bucket loads of manure over the fence for me 