Building no-dig/no-till beds. BEDS.PATHS.EDGES

welcome back to another video folks and i'm on the beautiful island of scotland helping to prepare no dig beds for a new farm here now the rich dale style of no dig market gardening has influenced tens of thousands of farms around the world in the last nearly decade now and i've never actually been able to show making beds from scratch because the farm was set up before i made videos so i thought i'd show you along the process we're using here building a farm from scratch so the whole point with no dig is we're doing a big load of work in the beginning and then there's going to be virtually no wheeling to do in this garden for the whole summer as well as much better water retention because the amount of carbon one particle of hummus holding four particles of water and so these beds are particularly important here in gutland where it's super dry and they run out of water and there's watering bands it's a major problem on this island so this is a new method for the community here to see how that fares with saving water in the dry summer months so the basic process is putting out a roll of packaging cardboard that's about 1.3 meters and that covers a 75 centimeter bed and a pathway about 30 35 centimeters and then we're putting a 75 centimeter strip of packaging cardboard under the bed using that wooden framework both to have something to pour uh soil into but also to set the depths of the bed so we can make them all equal in volume and then we're putting down strong compost which is peat moss with cow manure and chicken manure it's the same compost that i put on my beds that switched up and then we're using this soil i'm picking up with the event here and dumping into the beds and then we put wood chips in the rows and big pathways in between the blocks 80 beds that we're doing here and so seven and a half square meters per bed and the beds will probably extend into the future here there's also a big polytunnel that you can see in the background behind me um but it's quite late in the spring so it's time to get the beds going and so we're working pretty hard i think four people in two days working like this can build 80 beds and all the edges and pathways in between and do a nice even tidy job something that's really important is putting down the compost equally so i think there's a video i put out a couple of years ago the worst mistake i've made ever where i mixed two types of compost one more fertile in the other trying to save team morale and save time by just putting down two compost and raking them flat here we're being very careful to put down the strong compost evenly on the base layer and then putting the soil on top that's super important otherwise you'll get very patchy growth it's really important if you're using different types of amendments etc to place them evenly on the bed it's a little bit more work but not much and you'll regret it big time if you don't it took nearly a year for me to correct those problems on our beds at ridgetown see simple construction and this also marks the depth of the bed and what's happening with these beds is we're putting some of the strong compost like i use on my beds at the farm and then covering it up with a sort of neutral and weed free growing soil and it's a bit late in the season but this project is only just beginning so it's time to really get the beds in start planting we're in zone one here so it's a much warmer climate zone here than where i am living this is a good method i've seen a few people use it i've always favored wheelbarrows because the way my farm is set up i can bring trailers close to some of the beds but i can't get in easily with machines if you look back on old videos you'll see we've made beds straight onto lawn without using cardboard underneath with rotten horse manure 12 to 18 months old we've also tilled and then converted it to no dig here we're just going straight on to the old pasture and using an event a front loader and we've also got a quad with a trailer here we've been very careful to put down cardboard under the pathways as well as two layers under the beds because the grass has already started growing here so it's quite important to nip that in the bud we're aiming for about 10 centimetres deep with the growing soil and compost underneath it and then even surface with the wood chip so that everything is level and perfect uh so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so like everything these jobs involve good workflow and that's something it's been really fun to work together with this it seems optimal with a machine like this event to have one on the machine running soil and picking up compost i'm just picking up bags of compost now have two uh working on the frame so one is laying out the cardboard two flip the frame over get in six bags of compost open them up break them out and then the event straight back with soil on top so you want to keep a machine like this moving full time so we found like four is good like one on wood chips keeping up with the two on the beds sometimes we've got other people coming in and out there's friends around just coming to help here and there but four is a good team for a job like this in the way that we're doing it here and it's all about keeping an optimal workflow it took about an hour and a half to get into that workflow yesterday morning that's the sort of thing i really enjoy that's the processes i've always loved at the farm is optimizing every movement to minimize movements minimize wastage of movement to just keep things rolling it's great for team morale to just see this job come together in front of you like that is beautiful and i think we're doing a really beautiful job here [Music] right now we're working on an edgeway so i showed the folks how i do my preferred edges and that's what we're going with and we've decided to cut with the edging spade straight vertically then the kind of 45 degree cut with the spade and then we'll have cardboard coming near the edge of that and then fill it up just below the soil surface with wood chip like so and that's got multiple benefits what happens then is that the plants will air prune slightly they'll get dry here and so you'll be able to cut the lawn and keep this bit looking crispy clean with a lovely straight edge the grasses will die back a bit on the edge and any creeping grasses that grow into the wood chip is a very easy job i do once a year at my farm cut with the edging fork and just pull any buttercups or grasses coming into the beds it leaves a lovely smooth edge so so here you see the edge that i was talking about so we just dug straight with an edging spade and that's really important this face here is what you want because that will cause the grasses to air prune here and then anything rooting back into the wood chip is very easy to come once you cut that with an edging spade and just tease out any roots so that's a little job to do all around the outside but it's much more preferable to put in landscape fabric or something like that i've seen people do that but what happens when you put landscape fabric is naturally compost gets dropped on their plants like grasses will root through and then you're stuck you can't ever get that out and that plastic's not going anywhere and in the end it's not doing anything for you that's why i favor a wood chip edge it's much neater looks beautiful and it's easy to maintain and that's the key to success in the no dig setup so we've had a mixture of different people helping out and i'm only here for a couple of days so we're aiming to get 80 of these 10 meter beds done this is the first day it's about three o'clock in the afternoon and we've got this much done so no reason why we can't finish that block tomorrow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] channel [Music] okay so using the event to fill the trailer this is the last of the wood chip we've got nine more beds to go so that's gonna be 80 beds in two days pretty good hopefully it'll be just enough wood chips gonna rain here a lot the weekend but these beds should just get nicely damped down that'll moisten the cardboard underneath which is perfect and they'll stay moist even in the hot sun are we gonna play during [Music] last threads so is this a good methodology i think if you've got machines then definitely using a frame to just pour from a big pile super helpful because you can just level it off and know you work into volume if you don't have machines or you're working at a smaller scale there's no reason to just not use wheelbarrows i don't think you need a frame unless you're working with loose piles because it just makes it easier to tip and level off when i built the beds at ridgetail we're just working with wheelbarrows to get into tight spaces and then it's easy to work with the volume of wheelbarrows so many ways you can approach this and i think this is a great method for the context and tools and machines that we have here and as you can see pretty straightforward it's a lot of work in the beginning but these two days that set this garden up will last for a long time into the future and very easy to maintain and the benefits of no dig well known now it's a lot of work in the beginning but a lot less work long term it's going to be virtually no weeding to do this year it's going to retain water which is very important here in the context of gotland where it's very dry and it's going to adequately feed high rotation crops into the future with small amounts of compost additions in the future and there's a lot of forestry on this farm and they've been cutting brash that they'll be chipping to be able to replace wood chips down the line and so hopefully as livestock come on to the farm it'll become a circular kind of system with the no dig beds so i hope you folks found that interesting it's been a pleasure to be here in a beautiful glorious weather my season kicks off in a couple of weeks with the team arriving although we'll be having a much more leisurely time because the farm is set up and ready and i'm really looking forward to that thanks so much as always for watching folks don't forget you can find out a whole bunch more in the links below our books and online offerings see you in the video soon bye for now you

Channel: Richard Perkins

Views: 102,290

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Id: YJpfJaupxR0

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022