Do It Nature's Way

(The no dig method of gardening.)

by Jim Haworth

Do you enjoy pulling weeds? How about hoeing between the rows every week in the hot summer sun? Does your garden get tilled every spring and also in the fall? Do you use an expensive power tiller or old-fashioned shovel and rake?

Is there a compost pile in the back yard? Do you turn it over every few days and faithfully water it? Later, do you screen out the big lumps and use a wheelbarrow to transport the brown gold to the garden and spread it around?

Is all this work really necessary to have a great garden?

No, it's not! You don't have to do it the hard way. There's another way.

Year round mulch

Sure, you've used mulch before. Perhaps you spread a thin layer of grass clippings or wood chips around your shrubs and trees. Think about a layer at least 3 to 4 inches thick and left on year round. Picture it covering your entire garden. Can you see the blanket of leaves, wood chips or hay with your plants growing up through, tall and vigorous?

What you won't see are weeds. Down on the ground underneath everything, where the weed seeds germinate, it is perpetual night. Even if they manage to sprout, very few will have the energy to grow up through the mulch to get to the sunlight. Don't shed a tear for the weeds. They grow just fine in other people's gardens.

Have you ever been in the woods and stopped to examine the soil? First you have to push aside a layer of leaves or pine needles to get to the dirt beneath. It's moist, black, fluffy, and smells good. Even non-gardeners somehow know it's an excellent soil for growing things. Wouldn't it be great to have garden soil like that? Mulch will do that for you.

Consider what woodland soil is made of. First there's the mineral part, sand, clay, rocks etc. Just like your garden is now. Forest dirt is almost always covered with a layer of organic material that is continually decomposing and being worked into the soil. Things like old leaves, twigs, rotting wood, and bodies of dead insects. The soil also contains a large assortment of flora and fauna, much of it is microscopic. These creatures break down organic material and work it

into the soil.

The richness of the soil comes initially from plant residues. In the decomposition process organic material is broken down into nutrients that are taken up by the plant roots. Dead plants are recycled back into live plants. Mulching just duplicates this natural process.

What can I use for mulch?

What have you got? Leaves, twigs, nut shells, pine needles, spoiled hay, wood chips, straw, chopped up Christmas trees, ground corn cobs, peanut hulls, old flowers, weeds, shredded newspapers-use your imagination.

Towns and cities often chip tree trimmings and allow residents to pick them up for their home gardens. I use my station wagon in the fall to pick up bags of leaves left out at the curb by my neighbors. A foot thick layer of leaves becomes 4 to 6 inches by spring.

Some mulches are tidier looking than others. One material that I advise against using is any plant residue that you know is diseased. Putting it next to your healthy plants will spread the disease to them.

If the mulch is organic, chances are it can be turned into that rich, black earth we love so well. Mother earth is a great recycler.

What about kitchen garbage? Sure! But just as when you make compost, don't use meat products or bones that will attract vermin. To keep things looking neat, simply tuck garbage items under the mulch. Out of sight and no smell. In effect you are making compost right on the site where it will be used by your plants.

It's hard to use too much mulch. Given enough time, it decomposes completely. During the summer it breaks down the fastest but the process continues well into the winter because a thick blanket retards the penetration of the frost. As the cold continues, however, activity of all types slows down and almost stops completely. You may find that the ground doesn't freeze under the mulch because it is so thick that it insulates the ground and keeps it from freezing.

Many people complain about the plants they lose over the winter. Try mulching to keep the frost out of the ground or at least reduce its penetration. Use hay or straw or something similar to prevent compaction, which will reduce the insulation value.

Won't the weeds grow through the mulch? Look at it this way, would you plant your carrot seeds or squash seeds in the ground then cover them with several inches to a foot of grass clippings or wood chips? No, because you know they can't grow through that much darkness to reach the sunlight. There just isn't enough energy in the seed to allow the plant to grow that far without getting energy from the sun. Weed seeds are not able to do it either. If you do get weeds, you may have let the mulch get too thin. If the weeds pop through you can either pull them up then add more mulch, or just cover them with a big pile of mulch and maybe you'll smother them. Weeds will pull up easily because the ground is moist.

Water

When you have nothing to cover your garden soil, the sun bakes it. It becomes dry and hard. Weeds love it because when you try to pull them out, they just break off, leaving the roots to grow again. Hard soil protects weeds. Naked soil is unnatural. Can you think where on earth bare soil is found naturally? How about the desert?

Well, we don't want a desert garden so we have to add water. Often. The moisture is good for the plants, but also germinates more weed seeds.

Remember the idea is to grow the plants we want and at the same time discourage weeds. Because my garden is mulched, I seldom water even in dry summers, unless I'm bored. As insurance against really dry times, I have soaker hoses under the mulch, next to the soil. Soaker hoses are made from recycled automobile tires and they are cheap.

The thick mulch allows rain to penetrate to the ground, then it holds in the water where the sun can't reach it, but the plant roots can. During heavy rains this covering slows down the penetration of the water. This helps prevent soil erosion during gully washer storms.

Organic mulches reduce soil splashing during heavy rains. This keeps vegetables cleaner. It also reduces puddling and its aftermath, a hard crust on the soil surface. Some areas have watering bans during summer droughts, but this usually doesn't bother gardens with thick mulch. Mulching actually conserves water when it matters most.

If you don't want to commit to a whole garden under a year round mulch, please try it on a small portion, then expand your mulching area as you see its benefits.

Planting

Are you wondering how your plants are going to grow through all that mulch covering your garden? They can't.

When you plant seeds, you just pull back the mulch until you have exposed the soil, perhaps in a row. You just need a narrow ribbon of soil, only wide enough for the seeds. Sprinkle the seeds as usual and cover with a little soil, tamping lightly. As the plants sprout, gradually bring the mulch up to them, a very thin layer at first then thicker as they get taller.

Plant sets, such as peppers or tomatoes, can be put in the ground but don't immediately bring the mulch up to the plants. They are of tropical origin and need warm soil. Pull back the mulch in the early spring. Give the ground a few weeks to warm up, put in the plants, then push a thin layer of mulch up to the stems. Again, increase the depth as the plants get taller. If you let the tomatoes sprawl without using cages, the mulch will keep the fruit cleaner than if they were left lying in the dirt. I should also mention that tomatoes that lie on the ground or the mulch may invite mice to sample your fruit. If you have the tomato plants in cages or stake them, the mice won't climb the plants to get to the tomatoes.

A few weeks before putting in seeds for plants that need warm soil, pull the mulch aside just enough to expose soil to the sun and warming temperatures. Only pull it back for the row or hill where the seeds go, don't take the mulch off the whole garden. As the seedlings begin to grow pull the mulch up to the new plants.

Potato sets are placed on top of the ground and covered right away with a few inches of mulch and as they get taller the mulch is piled to at least a foot in height. Many of the new potatoes will form inside the mulch instead of in the ground. No hilling is needed. There may be a few formed in the ground. They can be dug up to eat or left for next year's crop. At no time let the tubers grow in sunlight, it’s been said this makes them poisonous when they turn green. It’s not something I care to test.

Let me insert a note of caution regarding newly cut green mulches. This would include things like green grass clippings and chipped tree trimmings. They both have leaves or stems that decompose rapidly producing a lot of heat. By that I mean heat so intense that if you made a large pile of them, in a few days you could put your hand deep into the pile, but you couldn't hold it there for more than a few seconds. Don't put large quantities of this mulch right up against your plants. Keep it several inches away. Perhaps you could scatter it on top of the mulch that's already there. In a short time the heat will dissipate from the material and it will be safe to use anywhere.

You know better than to use grass clippings that have been sprayed with weed killer, don't you? Thought so.

Expanding your garden

If you begin to use these methods, you will see that the garden requires much less work, the temptation will be to expand it. Leave the tiller in the garden shed. You can prepare the soil without it. Quickly, easily and without pulverizing the earth.

During the summer or fall, just mow the grass as usual, cutting it as low as the mower will allow. If you're really ambitious, use a weed whacker to scalp the ground. Then place a good thickness of mulch over the spot you will be using next year. The grass and weeds will exhaust themselves trying to grow and by spring there will be bare soil under the mulch. Their dead roots will help loosen the soil and allow water to penetrate.

This would be a good place to use the green mulches mentioned earlier. The heat will kill the vegetation even quicker than the lack of sunlight, at least the part that is above ground.

Insects

Will insects be a problem? They will be there for sure, but a problem? -Probably not.

You will notice the mulch is alive with bugs. Never fear, this is natural, they are playing the part they are supposed to. They are breaking down the mulch into smaller particles and then the microscopic critters are completing the job. If they are not bothering your garden plants, by all means leave them alone.

You will find that your garden plants may show a nibble here and there, but it may be less than you've seen before without mulch. This is because the mulch also provides living quarters for insect predators. Their job is to keep the bad guys in check. Leave them alone also.

During wet summers slugs can be a problem. They eat your plants and leave slime trails everywhere. Some books advise you to pick them up and drop them into a can half full of kerosene or detergent and water to kill them. Yuck!

I put a couple of saucers near my plants in the evening and pour in some beer. No, I don't tell my wife when I'm using the family dinnerware for this, but it's for a good cause anyway. At night, the slugs smell the hops in the beer and crawl in and drown themselves. The next day I dump them out and add more beer. The only thing wrong with this method is that it seems like a waste of good beer, but we all have to make sacrifices.

No one has to tell you that earthworms will be present in abundance. They eat dead plant material and mix it into the soil. They constantly aerate the soil, make it fluffy, and bring nutrients to the plant roots. There's no need to dig, just let the worms do all the work!

Avoid artificial insecticides whenever possible. There are many books written about safe alternatives to insecticides. There just isn't room enough in this article to cover all the information available in these volumes. Please read them. Dumping pesticides on your plants will kill vast numbers of beneficial insects and worms that are working so hard to make your gardening successful.

So try this natural method of gardening, its advantages and rewards are many.

Read the book!

There are a few books on this subject and they will give you a more in depth look at year round mulching techniques.

About forty years ago Ruth Stout wrote a few books on the subject. They are out of print now but may still be found at some libraries and used bookstores.

Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent. Ruth Stout

How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. Ruth Stout

No Work Garden Book. Ruth Stout

A Northeast Gardener's Year. Lee Reich (About $12 paperback)

Lasagna Gardening. Patricia Lanz

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