Are you planning a new flower bed or vegetable bed? Save yourself the backache of digging and create them using the "no dig" method.
By using the "no dig" method to create your flower beds and vegetable beds, you will be preserving the natural eco-system that is in the soil. Digging will disrupt this delicate system and soil structure, and it will take months to re-establish. Digging also brings weed seeds to the surface, so by not digging we leave those seeds lying dormant under ground.
Collect cardboard (fold boxes flat as you receive them from deliveries, and store them ready to be used to make a flower or vegetable bed). Make sure all plastic tape has been removed from the cardboard.
- Mark out the shape of your bed and lay the cardboard over the marked area and cut the edges to the correct bed shape. Make sure you overlap the pieces of cardboard so no light can get through to the ground beneath.
- Spread a thick layer of organic matter over the cardboard. Use either peat free compost or soil conditioner as your organic matter.
- You can then leave the bed for a couple of months for the cardboard to breakdown and for the worms to start drawing down the compost or soil conditioner in to the soil. Or, you can plant in to it straight away.
- Continue to add compost or soil conditioner to the bed at the end of each season, so the worms and eco-system can work its magic over the winter months, to give you wonderful beds in the spring.
When it is this easy to create new flower and vegetable beds, enjoy making plans for where they are all going to go and what you are going to plant in them!
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