Having devoured the sprout crop on Christmas Day and brought in the new year with a steak fried in the last of 2024′s garlic harvest, the vegetable gardener’s thoughts will begin to turn to the growing season ahead.
Not many will venture out for very long just yet but in a matter of weeks there’ll be a noticeable stretch in the evenings, enabling us to spend longer outdoors.
Alongside favourable weather conditions, the foundation of a successful growing season in the edible garden is preparation, whether it’s nurturing your seeds and seedlings or ensuring the ground which they make their home provides the right conditions for them to prosper.
Unless you’ve been vigilant and kept your beds well maintained and weed free since last they yielded a crop – or you’re especially attentive and have planted green manure – you’re likely going to have to work on your ground in order to get it ready for sowing direct or transplanting.
Although some would argue that it’s best to leave it alone; interfere with your soil as little as possible - but more about that approach in a minute.
Everybody agrees, the secret to a good soil is bulky, quality organic matter, which as well as improving condition and fertility, will enhance its ecology, meaning more micro organisms and worms.
Those with clay soils will have work harder to break down the muddy clumps but again adding the likes of well-rotted manure, homemade compost, leafmould, or anything of that ilk you can get your hands on will help create the optimum growing medium, while sharp (horticultural) sand also improving drainage.
Sub-zero temperatures are your friend in this regard too, as when the moisture in the ground freezes it expands, breaking down the soil and organic matter, making it easier processed by the micro organisms and worms.
While there’s consensus around the components that make a good soil, a schism emerges when it comes to the methods of preparing your ground.
The two factions can crudely be divided into those who advocate digging and those who don’t.
The former are traditionalists who believe the no dig method is for wimps who just can’t be bothered. They argue that there’s no faster way to break down your soil, making it more amenable to root growth, than turning it over with a spade each year.
Certainly, if you’re creating a veg bed from scratch it’s recommended to double dig it in the first year, in order to remove perennial weeds and big stones. After that, however, regular weeding and the addition of organic matter by top dressing should be enough for the soil to remain fertile and retain its favourable texture.
To be fair, there’s little new-fangled about the no dig method, which can also regarded as a traditional, having been tried and tested over centuries before being popularised in the second half of the last century by a new wave of hippy organic growers, who very likely couldn’t be bothered with digging.
No dig’s chief 20th century exponent, Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese agricultural customs inspector turned lazy gardener, would simply add straw and poultry manure to the surface of the soil and allow nature to do the rest.
It’s a method not unlike that once used in lazy beds for potatoes around the coast of Ireland, where seaweed was placed on top and left to rot down.
