No Dig, No Cry

Wednesday evening I rushed straight out after work to see Charles Dowding talk about his No Dig market garden business in Somerset. What Sarah Raven is to cut flowers, Charles is to No-Dig (although hopefully less sulky than Sarah revealed herself to be in the recent Sissinghurst series). When I first decided to go the No-Dig route, I was worried that adding that much organic matter would result in all leaf and no flower, so I emailed Charles to get his opinion. Despite not knowing me from Adam, he was very kind, readily imparting advice and wishing me luck and when, on Wednesday, I introduced myself to him he said he remembered me and was interested to hear how it was going.

Accompanying his talk was slide after slide of beautiful, pristine salad leaves and veg growing in crumbly, weed-free compost. Of course, we all do a bit of titivating when taking photos for public consumption but something about these photos made you believe that, yes, his place actually does look that fab. I didn’t know whether to be  inspired or depressed.

There was lots of “ooh-ing” and sideways commenting when the pictures first came up.  I can’t say I wouldn’t have joined in had I not been on my own and already sideways-commented often enough to make the woman next to me start edging her chair away. But although deeply impressed, at the same time a tiny little voice inside me was saying “Mine looks a bit like that! Mine’s like that! It is! It is! Miss! Miss! I can do that!”

So, OK, it doesn’t look EXACTLY like that – my paths still have annoying clumps of grass coming through if I don’t hoe down them regularly and the edges of the plot are messy and buttercuppy, with great piles of sort-of-composting debris and hoeings dumped along them, but the beds are more or less weed free, the compost dark and crumbly and the plants tall, strong and lush.

And assuming there’s no little team of elves coming out at night to do the work for me,  that must be down to them there mycorrhizae – cos it certainly isn’t me!