No Dig Allotment is taking shape

Still a fair way to go but the plot's looking good (probably only 20% left to cover). 
An allotment neighbour enlightened me with his pearl of wisdom that no-dig gardening is lazy and only for idle gardeners. Haven't a clue how many barrow loads I've trundled up from the car park to date but I'd estimate it could maybe take another 150. 


The most recent fresh green mulch is already turning brown. 

Compost for covering beds

Compost from the 12x6 bay is ready. Six weeks back I started adding new material at one end to draw the brandling worms, no point exporting compost worms to the beds.

Rich brown and crumbly.

Green mulch for paths

Over the last couple of weeks I've been busy barrowing wood chips. According to Google Earth it's 330 metres to the car park (660m round trip), yesterday I made fourteen trips making it 9,240 meters or 5.75 miles. The uphill return journey with a full barrow seemed to get heavier each time. The most recent delivery to the site was very green and mainly Leylandii but it's covered pathways between beds.

Not covered the red cabbage bed yet (obviously) but the cabbages are starting to heart up nicely. Difficult to see in the photo but a plastic bottle swinging from a bendy tent pole is so far keeping the pigeons at bay.

Tea Shed painted

Door end of the tea shed was taking on water so needed an oil-based paint to get into the wood grain. We mixed this from old tins of cream and black and added soot to dull the gloss.

Compost

Beetroot did really well this year so any with slug damage contribute to the compost heap.




Back in the summer the 12x6 bay was well above the sides.

More wood mulch

We're still using whatever mulch we can source including last autumns leaves, compost and wood chips. Because of the Leylandi content the wood mulch is given a few weeks to begin breaking down before it's used on the beds.

Most of the beds are the same width so hoops and nets fit easily.

Initial breaking down is much quicker if the wood is left in a heap for a few weeks.

Green Manure

Phacelia used as green manure.




After chopping down it was covered with wood chips.

No-Dig Allotment

After their first growing season the wood mulched beds have proven a success. Watering and weeding has been minimal and below ground worms and other critters are returning. Fungal growth too is evident and the soil is softer and looks altogether healthier.

Blight resistant tomatoes

Mountain Magic blight resistant toms are certainly living up to expectations. They're very hardy and although slow to ripen are extending the season.

Have covered a few more experimental beds but in these early stages I'm also scattering chicken manure pellets.
I'm hoping as the wood rots down and the soil balances, nutrients will occur naturally. I'm also hoping natural predators will increase to keep the pests at bay. Have read it'll probably take about three years.

 

Wood mulch

Last year we experimented with a few no-dig beds which were a success, however one of the main stumbling blocks is getting enough mulching material. We're unable to produce that much compost, don't trust municipal supplies and are keen to keep costs down. We bought two deliveries of stable muck but it came with loads of stones (scraped from the stable yard), weed seeds (of types of weeds we didn't have before) and it didn't go very far.
As we have free deliveries to the site I've been looking into using wood chippings .

Change of direction

Have been noticing of late that despite getting a fair amount of organic matter back into the soil it's soon flattened by the rain and readily compacts.

The rotovator  has now been sold.