- This is the first film of a series of three,
which are looking at different aspects of a trial
I've set up and been running for nearly four years now
in this block of ground here,
where there are three strips with different parameters.
So for example, I'm standing in a strip of ground
two meters wide, nine meters long,
and each little bed in this strip has been dug.
Then in the next strip, the same compost is used
as in the dug strip, but without any digging,
no cultivation loosening at all.
And then there's a third strip where,
again no digging but different compost.
So it's comparing how the same plants grow
in these different strips.
And this all came about through a chance meeting
with some Japanese farmers who practice natural agriculture.
And that is a very precise discipline
that's been created over in the last a hundred years
where they do not ever spread any compost,
they do not rotate their crops,
so they practice what they call continuous cropping,
and they save their own seed
for better health and resilience of plants.
I can't do all of those here because I'm in Britain,
a cooler climate than Japan seed saving is quite tricky,
I do what I can some of the seeds of home saved,
and we'll see in a minute, but I haven't carried on
with the no compost part of the experiment.
But let's now have a look in fact at the first film
which is comparing growth in dug and undug soil,
everything else being the same.
(guitar music)
I'm between strip one and strip two,
so this has had the digging.
And initially in the first year,
the plan was to use no compost at all on either the strip.
And the results that came in at the end of that year
were 41 kilos from the dug strip
and 40 kilos from the undug, not much difference.
But meanwhile we created a third strip with some compost
and the yield from that strip in 2013 was 62 kilos,
more than 50% increase from simply spreading
two inches of compost.
So I thought, "Nah, I can't carry on
doing this experiment like this."
So we now do dug, undug but with compost added,
except it's different compost to what's in strip three.
So the compost used in the first two years
has been green waste, recycled garden waste compost,
two inch layer, and the digging is done before.
So it's loosening rather than trench digging
where the soil has a fork or spade put into loosen,
break up the clods, aerate and then two inch compost on top.
So that takes about two hours here, and then this one,
two inch compost on top finish half an hour.
And then same crops, see what happens.
And it's been a very interesting experience
because actually over the last three years,
the strip which has yielded 5% more pretty consistently
is the no dig, but not for all crops,
and there's all sorts of hidden little stories within that
which are shown in the table which is on screen.
And you can see that we run this experiment very carefully.
So all crops are sewn or planted on the same date,
in the same conditions,
they're given the same level of hoeing and weeding,
and then the harvest made on the same day,
every harvest is weighed every single one
and the harvest are all of edible quality
we throw out anything that's not usable.
And that's given in the last year,
some quite substantial totals,
but again with the no dig that slightly ahead.
So each of the three strips has six beds,
and bed number six behind me has parsnips sown in March
to be harvested late autumn, early winter.
Number five here has chicories growing for radicchio hearts
in the autumn, and that's the second crop after lettuce,
so the lettuce finished already
and we harvested 18 1/2 kilos on the dug, 20 on the undug.
Next up is leaks, this is bed four,
where we had already potatoes
which gave 13 1/2 kilos dug, 15 kilos undug,
slightly surprising, yeah I think groomer
on the undug, and now we planted leaks
on the same day from quite well grown plants
for harvest in the autumn.
Bed three has cabbages
and these are beautiful autumn hearting cabbages
with long pointy heads, very sweet.
And they're a second crop after a big harvest already here
of broad beans, 19 kilos, there were more broad beans
on the dug bed in this case, 15 kilos on the undug.
Bed two has Chinese cabbage growing now,
very fast growing in early autumn there,
only three weeks since we've put them in,
and they were planted on the same day
that we harvested squash.
So these squash gave six kilos on the dug bed,
14 on the undug.
And finally, bed one beans and these beans are for winter,
so they're gonna be picked or they've been picked already
actually has dry beans that we've put in a jar,
and that doesn't give a very high yield,
but delicious beans.
For more information on organic no-dig gardening
check out any of my seven books
on different aspects of this subject,
growing vegetables above all.
And my website has fortnightly updates
to keep you up to speed on sowing, planting, harvesting,
and also you'll find information on my website
about courses I run, day courses here, weekend courses,
courses around and abroad even,
and lots more all about no-dig organics.
(guitar music ends)