Dig Not! Use newspaper mulches instead!

The Eyesore...

I have this small patch in the kitchen garden.  It used to have a pear tree in the middle of it.  All the pears were stripped just before they ripened by hoardes of squirrels - one day they were there, the next, gone!  In order to deter the squiggles, I ran up the thorniest rose I could find but alas to no avail.  I decided that the pear tree had to go as it took up such a lot of room for no crop.  This meant I also had to lose the rose, which had by now developed its own trunk and sinewy root system.  Not ever really wanting to tackle the ground it became uneven and unloved and sorting it all out seemed such a long job (given that soil levels varied by as much as a foot in some places) it has long remained a guiltmaking eyesore.

So this year, having decided that the garden had to be both hasty and tasty (with the emphasis on hasty) I decided on drastic measures which came in the form of a newspaper mulch.

The Permaculture Association in conjunction with the likes of Sepp Holzer have pioneered this method as a no-dig alternative to cultivation.  Digging often disturbs the soil structure (I'm so glad), and mulching has so many advantages as you'll see.

First of all I used a huge pile of newspapers for the first layer.  I opened each newspaper out and spread it at 4-sheet thickness, weighted down by a few stones.  Then I emptied the contents of my compost heap over the newspaper.  Now some of this wasn't fully rotted down but any organic matter will generally do, particularly if going for deep trench mulching.  I then covered all this in some bagged farmyard manure.  OK so the latter was bought - unavoidable - but fully organic and, better still, delivered to my door!  Job done.  Imagine!  I could have spent an hour digging, then raking, then composting and instead after half and hour:

Job Done!

• soil structure undisturbed
• newspapers recycled and able to rot down to give the soil extra carbon
• layer of domestic compost down together with a good thousand worms to nourish what was a very neglected patch of soil
• layer of organic farmyard manure to further add nourishment and fibre

This left me time to plan the layout of this new bit of kitchen garden.  Next blog post!

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For more information why not try:

The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell