no dig for selling veg

 

With great excitement & relief we moved into our Cornish smallholding in July 2007 on a rare glorious summer’s day. At 6am the next morning we were already in one of the 80ft poly-tunnels pulling up the ceiling-high mustard. This exposed  ground like cracked concrete which the fork bounced off, dry mineral content with not a single worm to be seen. The veg patch was no better, 400 m square of ground that, though well-fenced, had been rotovated to death, aided by pigs which had eaten the docks & spread the seeds throughout.  

 

As the summer got wetter armies of slugs moved in, even onion shoots became feeding ground to the writhing mass. Dave nearly broke his back trying to dig 2 beds. We despaired & covered the veg patch in plastic mipex until we knew what else to do with it, deciding to concentrate on just one tunnel. We barrowed in as much compost as we could find, to make beds for our first season of tomatoes, rocket, basil & aubergines.

 

Even before we really heard of no-dig, we knew we had to bring life back to the land which had been squeezed dry with nothing returned. Organic seemed to = no chemicals, but no nutrition for the ground either.  Dave’s mission became to compost, aided by a kilo of worms by post to try & help with aerating the soil! Meanwhile I came across Charles’s books & used them as my bible for developing our fledgling salad-bag business which we had fallen into on discovering watercress in our pond under all the weeds. This started with a village delivery round but expanded to local farm shops (including Lobbs at Lost Gardens of Heligan) & one hotel so far.

 

A visit to Charles in Somerset inspired us & confirmed we were on the right track. In fact it revolutionised our approach even further as we started covering our veg garden with organic mulch of cardboard & 5 year old haylage bales to grow on top of, instead of the mipex which was turning into reels of cassette tape & providing comfortable housing for the legions of slugs of all shapes & sizes. We imported tons of horse manure from our neighbour which we mixed with piles of leaf mould (full of weeds but at least not docks!), and bought-in green waste compost (fine & easy to use).  We have started using our chickens as a chicken tractor, clearing & preparing the soil; we hope they will be a first barrier to any slugs eying up the veg patch, with a border of bark chippings within them. 

 

So it finally feels like we have made progress & are almost ready for the season to come. Seedlings are germinating. The poly-tunnels are manageable & productive. The veg patch looks orderly & almost weed-free. We even hope to grow some lettuces outdoors this year, slugs-willing! And there are worms helping us out throughout. We hope to really increase our production this year & try to meet the peak demand this summer, which has defeated us so far. Our salad bags have an excellent reputation among their eaters, who say it tastes like real salad as it used to, & have converted an initially sceptical hotel owner who last week conceded that our leaves ‘seem grown, not just produced’. 

 

Yes, the answer IS in the soil!