What Is No-Dig Gardening?
While it might seem counter-intuitive to grow a garden without digging, take a moment to consider how forests and meadows grow in nature with no help from us. Leaf litter and debris from trees, grasses, and other plants fall to the ground where it collects, forming a blanket of organic matter. It’s organic matter that feeds the soil and the ecosystem living in the soil. Animals such as birds, worms, insects, and moles, along with microbes (think fungi and bacteria) act as ecosystem engineers. As these creatures go about their daily lives eating, depositing poop, reproducing, moving seeds, and tunneling, they naturally aerate soil and help transform organic matter into dark, nutrient-dense soil commonly called humus. Collectively, plants, animals, and microbes function as an ecosystem or biologic community where members interact with one another and their environment. Simply put, they need each other. Together, they create a matrix of life in which the individual’s resilience depends on the ecosystem’s resilience as a whole. People are part of this matrix too. As humans, we’re only as healthy as the environment in which we live. No-dig gardening asks you to reframe the conversation around growing. How can you think like an ecosystem and work with it rather than disrupting it by disturbing the soil? Your job as a gardener is to build and create soil by mimicking nature’s system: organic matter falls to the earth and the biodiversity living above ground and in the soil does the rest of the work. Basically, in a nutshell, soil is life, and it takes life to grow life.
Benefits of No-Dig Gardening
I’m so passionate about no-dig regenerative gardening that I decided to write GROW NOW: How to Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet—One Garden at a Time. While working on this book, I was surprised (and not surprised) to find microbes at the heart of my research. Many of the same microbes we seek to foster with no-dig growing inhabit our bodies like old friends, helping us decode and distill the world around us. The more biodiverse and abundant these microbes, the better. By restoring the natural areas around us, particularly soils, we can actually improve our own health as well as the health of the environment. The benefits of no-dig gardening also include:
Building a healthy soil ecosystem that naturally supports pollinators, insects, birds, and other animals.
Cultivating rich, healthy soil with excellent structure and tilth
Providing the nutrition and environment plants need to thrive with reduced to no added fertilizers.
Reducing weeds because seeds remain buried under compost rather than getting tilled to the soil surface where they sprout.
Increasing the water holding capacity of soil, so your garden is more drought-resistant.
Decreasing the time and effort needed to tend your garden because there’s no need for tilling, and weeding and watering is reduced.
Sequestering carbon. No-dig gardens retain carbon in soil, which helps mitigate climate change.
Growing a healthier, more biodiverse garden which, in turn, produces more nutritious food and an environment that’s equally good for your physical and mental wellbeing.
How to Grow a No-dig Garden
It’s possible to utilize the no-dig process in food gardens, landscapes, perennial borders, raised beds, and containers. You can even use it to transform lawns and areas with hard-to-work, seemingly impossible soils. The first step I took to begin improving my own new, soon-to-be garden was to employ a tenet of no-dig gardening known as sheet mulching or lasagna gardening. Sheet mulching is a simple process of layering organic materials over the top of existing soil rather than digging down to restore it. Nearly a year later, I now have light, crumbly soil filled with life that’s ready to plant. It’s truly quite remarkable. I go into more detail about how to sheet mulch in GROW NOW, but here are the basic steps:
Sheet Mulching Simplified
Keep Adding Compost
Like fallen leaves and other organic materials, compost is soil food. It feeds the soil ecosystem, which works in partnership with plants. Apply compost to the soil surface once or twice a year. I like to use a layer of 1 to 2 inches of compost in spring and fall. Remember, don’t till in the compost. Just let nature do its thing.
How to Plant a No-Dig Garden
Your goal is to disturb the soil ecosystem as little as possible. Simply create a planting hole just big enough for the plant at hand. Pull the soil back with a small trowel, your hands, or a chopstick or pencil (for tiny seedlings) and tuck the plant in by gently pushing the earth back in place around the roots. Keep off your planting beds as much as possible as you work in them. Stepping on soil compacts it, which makes it harder for air and water to reach the soil life that needs it, including your plants’ roots.
