In the garden...

Watching our parents tending a large vegetable garden and seeing the results on the table for dinner is a dim memory for many people today. How about recreating those scenes on the balconies of our apartments or the patios of our townhouses?

No dig vegetable garden

A “no-dig’ vegetable garden is developed by raising the level of the soil above ground level so you get a good depth of soil without digging down below the lawn or other such surface.

You can create a no-dig garden by building up layers of organic material till you have a pile that is high and wide enough to grow some vegetables.

You can build your raised no-dig garden beds within a frame that will keep the soil in place.

You can make the frame out of solid pieces of wood, old wooden railway sleepers, kitset beds or sheets of corrugated iron.  You can use anything that will be strong enough to stand up to being filled with soil and plants.

Or you can simply build up layers of organic material on any surface and sweep or rake the soil back into place when it starts to spread.

Or you can fill old car tyres, buckets or plant troughs with organic material to create a number of mini no-dig gardens.

The best organic material to start a no-dig garden is

• straw or pea straw,

• compost (bought or home-made),

• some animal manure (sheep pellets, chicken manure or other animal manure that is readily available)

• lots of wet newspapers, flattened cardboard cartons or an old piece of wool carpet.

Before you put your raised bed in place, cover the ground with some sort of covering that will stop weeds getting through into your garden.  A piece of old carpet is great. Or flattened cardboard cartons, a very thick layer of newspapers or you can buy commercial weed mat from hardware stores of garden centres.

This base layer is especially important if you are creating your no-dig garden over an existing lawn or a ‘wilderness’ area in your back yard.

If you are using buckets or plant pots you will need to create a bottom layer that lets the water drain through – such as, stones, large pebbles or pieces from old broken clay pots

Once you have your bottom layer sorted you build up layers of the various organic material until you have filled your container, frame or have enough height in your pile of organic material.

Leave it to settle for a week before you start planting.

Lettuces getting started in an old car tyre

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