Reginald Verhofstede

This is year one of our new vegetable garden. Correction: year two. Because unlike what we were used to doing (up to three times), this time we did not start digging and fertilising - but composting.

I used to often feel disappointment in my vegetable garden when my carrots did not look in the slightest like the orange power carrots listed on the packaging. I had a lot to learn about adding the right fertiliser, at the right time, for the right vegetables.

Until I understood through No Dig that with compost, we feed the soil in all its facets and complexity. We bring life to the soil, so to speak.

Point - that's all I need to know. With No Dig, I don't need to know it all in detail. By disturbing the soil as little as possible and working with compost, I let nature do its work.

So last year, Vegetable Gardening began by starting compost bins. Chopping wood, mowing the lawn and going to ask our (surprised) neighbours for more - slowly but surely the bins got filled.

Happy as a child, I watched the temperature rise in the compost bins, how I set in motion something that has been working this way for millions of years. I felt how the stored solar heat radiated 1:1 from the compost.

Insects, fungi a rat that began to set up this heated house - vegetable gardening had begun long before it began.

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