Anne and Phil Doyle
We have been growing using the No Dig method for 4 years now, with lots of successes and some failures.
We are doing this at our son and Daughter-in-law’s farm, but as we live in Surrey, we cannot get over there as often as we would like, once a week at most.
We raise the seedlings mainly at our home in modules, and transplant them when they are ready.
As they have sheep on the farm, we use spent sheep manure from the lambing shed for compost, and we make more from the grass clippings, veggie foliage and kitchen waste in dalek composters. One of our jobs this year is to make bigger compost bins from pallets.
The photo shows some of last year’s harvests.
Since going on one of Charles’ learning days in 2021, we have been hooked on no dig, and the results, on heavy Essex clay, have been very good. One problem has been that the parsnips grow so big that it’s difficult to dig them out of the clay which they grow down into!
We’ve been growing vegetables in our own garden here in Surrey for 50 years, but the results are so disappointing now, by comparison with my son’s veg plot, that we are gradually cutting down what we grow at home.
We have a productive and old asparagus bed, and we grow our salad greens at home, and that’s about all we will grow here now, when we can get so much better results on Essex soil.
