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No - shot gardening seems like a new conception but it ’s been mentioned in garden literature for X — or longer . Let ’s have a feel at its account and some of the influential gardeners who have shared its benefits over the twelvemonth .
Is this right for your garden ? SeeWhat is No - Dig Gardening and Should I Try It?for more .
No-Dig Gardening Through the Years
It may seem like a new concept but mentions of no - gibe gardening in publication escort back over 75 years with older reference appearing in the 19thcentury . And that ’s just English print sources .
Since then , we have X ’ worth of experience and refinements to pull upon , and successful examples of great garden create under all sorts of soil and clime conditions with minimum digging .
But , at the same clock time , pile of great garden are created with digging . And maybe that ’s why it can be a contentious issue in gardening : both diggers and non - digger have lots of success stories to cite .
But the reason to give up so much tilling or digging is not just about the outcome but ways to relieve time and , perhaps , gain the surroundings in the process . I ’ve provided examples here : What is No - shot Gardening and Should I Try It ?
No - jab Gardening = Disturbing existing soil as little as possible
Modern gardening has a tenacious history of tilling and digging . For many years it was just the way things were done . It was done that way in agriculture with farmers plowing , and also in gardens . We dig trenches , break up the soil , tot amendments likecompostormanureand mix them in . We may even double dig , turning over the top layer of soil , come out whatever lurks below .
For a recollective time it was just generally accepted that that ’s what gardeners did and what their grease require specially if they were growingvegetables . It was grueling oeuvre , though perhaps eased with the role of a motorizedrototiller , and comprehend as necessary to get a garden off to a full start .
But is it really ? Could we achieve the same resultant , or mayhap even better result , without that digging ?
perhaps we could just add cloth to the Earth’s surface of the soil and give it time to decompose or subside in , letting the worms and microorganism take over , leave them to do the job .
I cognise I had never learn of no - dig horticulture when I started doing it decades ago . In my case the ground was so hard I could n’t compass . So I extemporize with what is now call “ no - dig”—adding serious compost and mulch on top of my own , atrocious , un - diggable dirt , gradually building it up to become a thriving , sizable garden .
For some , the chief motivating might have been to avoid all that work up front . Since then , soil science has made nifty advancements and we are find out that it ’s better for the wellness of the territory not to dig up it up , and possibly better for the surroundings as well .
relate : Which Animal Manure is Best For Home Gardens ?
No-Dig Gardening Influencers (Then and Now)
Here are some notable exponent of no - dig horticulture through the years .
1943 – Edward Faulkner
One of the early examples , now regard to be a milestone , was a volume written for Farmer calledPlowman ’s FollybyEdward Faulknerfrom Ohio , put out in 1943 .
Right at the start , he wrote : “ no one has ever bring forward a scientific reason for deal . Many check teachers have had awkward moments before classes of students involve to be show why it would not be good to bring in all organic matter into the surface of the grunge than to bury it , as is done by the plow . ”
And it was n’t long until that same agnosticism was express in gardening .
1946 – Frederic King
In 1946,Frederic King , had been a pass nurseryman at a manor house house in Cumbria in North West England for over 20 years .
King published a pamphlet title “ Is Digging Necessary ? ” He mentions Faulkner ’s script and acknowledges that “ To intimate that it is possible to clip a garden without the aid of the jigaboo is to evoke criticism from all quarter . ”
King spell about the importance of earthworms , bacterium , and fungi—”the biologic shape of the soil is of the furthest importance in the health of the soil ” and said he had been experimenting with no - slam vegetable gardening since 1920 . “ Nature leave an reply to all our contestation in party favor of using the nigra if only we are prepared to mind . ”
1949 – Albert Guest
King ’s piece of work was follow a couple of years afterwards byGardening Without Diggingwritten byAlbert Guest . We have no biographical detail other than he live in South Yorkshire .
His book seems to have done well . I could n’t find a digital version anywhere online .
Updated May 2025 with Guest ’s first name .
1955 – Ruth Stout
In the United States , one of the pioneer of no - dig gardening wasRuth Stoutin Connecticut .
Ruth started writing columns forOrganic Gardening and Farmingmagazine in 1953 .
Ruth ’s first book , release in 1955 , wasHow to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back , where she lecture about starting her garden in 1930 and doing a raft of weighty excavation , which she later figured out 14 age later was not necessary .
Stout jokes about being “ more than a fiddling let down ” when , after finally work out this out on her own , someone gave her a transcript of Faulkner ’s Plowman ’s Folly—”He had stolen my idea of not plowing even before I had thought of it . ”
Stout became known as the queen of mulch , and that was her reliever for digging — apply a very thick layer of mulch to the top of the soil through the twelvemonth . For her , it was also an alternate tocompostingbecause she took what most of us would put in a compost muckle and just added it to the mulch on the garden . One of the chapter of Stout ’s book was entitle “ My Garden is My Compost Pile ” .
Her follow - up record book six years later was calledGardening Without employment : For the Aging , the Busy & the Indolent .
Now , there ’s actually plenty of work involved with her method acting — just get all that mulch to your garden and applying it is oeuvre , but I ’m indisputable a book name “ Gardening With LESS body of work ” would n’t have sold as well . So it seems they were doing clickbait 60 years ago just as we are today .
1977 Esther Deans | Lee Reich
There have been enough more no - shaft books and article over the preceding 50 years .
Esther Deansin Australia wroteGrowing Without Diggingin 1977 .
Lee Reich , who ’s still conk strong , write a column in the New York Times 30 years ago called “ To grasp or Not to Dig . ” He wrote , “ How the filth is readied carve up gardeners into two camps : the diggers and the non diggers . I belong to the latter school . ”
2007 – Charles Dowding
The best - lie with advocate of no - dig horticulture today isCharles Dowding . He says he read Ruth Stout ’s book in 1982 and try out her all - mulch , no - dig approach path but found he got way too manyslugswhen he followed what she did using hay as mulch .
Dowding shift to compost , mainly , with much more success and wrote about it in his bookOrganic Gardening : The Natural No - Dig Waywhich first come out in 2007 . And he has n’t stop writing about it and create videos about no - dig gardening ever since .
And really , if you cerebrate about , multitude have probably done some version of the no - dig glide path for as long as humans have grown from germ . Because who want to dig if they do n’t need to ?
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~Melissathe Empress of Dirt ♛
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