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My backyard has just been cleared of convolvulus ( field bindweed ), and native bush/trees exposing what used to be a lawn a decade ago. I'm thinking I would like to try the no-dig method of layering down some newspaper, putting some compost on top, mulching on top of that, and then planting.

I just wonder if there's any benefit from using a fork to loosen the soil ( not turn it over ), before I put the newspaper down. This would be the same as the second step when double digging. I do understand that it is claimed that vegetables are shallow rooting so don't need this step, but others claim that they're shallow rooting because the soil has not been double dug!

So, does anyone who does no-dig gardening have any experience?

Or should I just double dig and get out as many convolvulus roots as I can?

Graham Chiu
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    You are growing vegetables there? – J. Musser Jan 01 '17 at 23:54
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    Yes, both root and leafy vegetables – Graham Chiu Jan 01 '17 at 23:55
  • My goodness Graham. Yes soil needs to be turned over. To raise the plant bed and get air into the soil. But once is all I have found is necessary. Gotta have raised beds (1') off the normal surface. Sides are too much trouble and totally unnecessary. Drainage is critical. Addition of decomposed organic matter at the time and then just applying decomposed organic matter to the surface of the bed. This makes the best soil. There is no other way. To think we can make artificial soil for the garden is a waste of brain cells. Apply 2 inches of sterilized soil or mulch to control weeds. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 21:30
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    @stormy Clearly there is no one turning over the soil in nature, and yet plants grow fine without human intervention. Double dig and no-dig beds have been compared and there is no difference except no-dig uses nature to aerate the soil. – Graham Chiu Jan 02 '17 at 21:37
  • I love this kind of comment, Graham. After thousands or millions of years plants become very acclimated. Us humans need to recreate great environments to be able to get plants to grow to thrive. And that means AIR, like now. Lots of roots, lots of decomposing organic matter and when a plant is able to take hold super duper. Maybe one in a thousand seeds are able to gain a place in the niche. We gardeners are never going to be able to recreate perfect conditions without dealing as if each plant is in a pot or terrarium. Flat, soggy ground won't be great for many plant seeds at all. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 21:45
  • The soil we want to improve to be able to grow vegetables or any plant HAS to have air. You might be able to get some growing after a 1000 years or so. We humans live on a different time scale. We want to eat or admire plants NOW. Digging is CRITICAL. Turning over. Getting air into the soil without making clay particles stick together like two magnets. Decomposed organic material is the best thing we can add to the double dug soil. Do you know what double digging is? – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 21:50
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    @stormy I suggest you try it before you dismiss it – Graham Chiu Jan 02 '17 at 21:50
  • Ha ha. Graham, I kinda have 'tried' it...my clients had gardens they knew little about and had flat soppy wet slimy no dug soil. Not happening ever with me. What is it that you like about no dig? Not one thing positive happens. I only dig ONCE at the very beginning. Never to dig again. Especially in a green house where rain doesn't compact the soil. ALL gardens are unnatural sweetie. All of them. And that means we are responsible to give our plants what they need or wait another 1000 years, with nary a crop to save our lives, grins! 'Natural' is a very nonsense word at our scale. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 23:03
  • And to make artificial layers beneath your plants will inhibit drainage I kid you not. I'd wait for at least a year if you try this to then plant anew. Weeds in my opinion are an indication to me the soil is healthy. Weeds not once in all my years have ever been a problem. Ever. Weeds, plants out of place are the easiest factor in a garden to 'control' never to eradicate. They are free organic matter as well. Have you ever done a green cover crop? Usually annuals that produce no seed until later in the growth season. Easy to turn into the soil for tilth and organic matter. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 23:15
  • Green cover crops are planted in the late summer/fall depending on your zone. First time I did this I used Annual Rye, Zone 5. My garden looked like an inverted graveyard...the graves were solid rye grass 2' high. Nothing on the walkways with compacted undisturbed soil. Not a single weed. Compacted ground is not good for growing anything. I've got to go find my pictures to prove what I am saying!! Buried in storage. Grins. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 23:18
  • And if you feed your soil (not the walkways) by dumping decomposed organic matter on your beds, YES, the soil organisms do the mixing for you. But you have to double dig to create plant beds for vegetables and ornamental plants. No dig, is just another 'trendy' thingy that makes no sense to plants. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 23:22
  • And to tell me to try it first? Sigh. I have tried all the wrong things. Still do wrong things. Still learning and will not stop until my last breath. Until then I hope I am able to help others as well as checking my own foundation of knowledge!! Half a century of work and worry and tears and 8 years of college and and and more work? I think I have a few things to add, sweetie. Michael Dirr is one of my favorite authors in this plant world. Shane Smith and my latest Jorge Cervantes. Ed Hume was a good friend! We thought to do a radio gig together. Had Ed come to my shops to teach. – stormy Jan 03 '17 at 22:36
  • @stormy here's your chance to defend your position http://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/30374/whats-the-rationale-for-establishing-a-no-dig-garden – Graham Chiu Jan 03 '17 at 22:47

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One thing - you've mentioned field bindweed, or Convulvulus. Whether the bindweed you have is Convulvulus arvensis or Calystegia sepium, I'm afraid you will need to disturb the soil, certainly annually, to try to keep it under control. I strongly advise you do not use a rototiller or cultivator or any kind of machine that turns the soil over where this weed is present - as I'm sure you're aware, regrowth will occur from a tiny fragment of its root, and any machine that turns the soil over will break up the roots and distribute them more or less evenly over the plot, making the problem worse.

It sounds like you're intending to grow edible plants in the area, which effectively rules out the glyphosate solution (where you insert canes when you see bindweed appearing, let it twine up those to the top, then spray thoroughly with glyophosate, which is a reasonably effective method to control or actually destroy some of it), so I'm afraid it sounds as if the only thing you can do in preparation is to thoroughly and carefully hand dig the whole area, extracting bindweed roots as you go. Or as much root as you can, anyway, but there will inevitably be regrowth during the first year, because some root is always left behind, and more and more in the second and third years and so on...

The presence of this particular weed means that area is probably not well suited to the no dig method of gardening, I'm sorry to say.

Bamboo
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  • My bad, it's convolvulus sepium or hedge bindweed. – Graham Chiu Jul 12 '16 at 10:38
  • Convulvulus/Calystegia sepium, not quite so large as convulvulus arvensis, but still a right pain - the gift that keeps on giving, unfortunately, and my advice remains the same. It's a great pity its present in that area. – Bamboo Jul 12 '16 at 12:03
  • Nice information, Bamboo! If he puts a couple of inches of mulch on top will that deter the seeds/vegetative bits from growing? Weeds are a 'right pain'...but so easy to manage, gives us a good reason to get out in the garden and have something to do! – stormy Jul 12 '16 at 19:40
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    @stormy - nope, absolutely nothing will deter calystegia sepium, nor convulvulus arvensis come to that. Can be pulled or dug out on a regular basis but will always return, which means no dig gardening in such an area isn't going to happen. Sorry about the 'right pain', that's a very English cockney expression! – Bamboo Jul 12 '16 at 19:54
  • I LOVE YOUR English Cockney expressions!! Don't you dare stop writing/talking as yourself. So...colorful and a little different!! How about 'painting' these guys with glyphosate? Would that affect the soil chemistry adversely? I've never had trouble with weeds, but I don't think I've come across this one, two...I had a 'weed garden' with the cute plant labels in this Park-like place us Master Gardeners were able to get our points to repay our education. I had tomatoes/blight and the weed garden. I can barely remember what I did a couple of years ago much less decades!! – stormy Jul 12 '16 at 20:08
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    Yep, glyphosate, but it doesn't work first time and regrowth is to be expected. The presence of bindweed, equisetum and japanese knotweed, in reverse order of noxiousness, are reasons not to move in to a house as far I'm concerned! – Bamboo Jul 12 '16 at 20:35
  • Black plastic laid down with weights at regular intervals to make it tight to the ground may heat up the soil enough to bake any living bindweed roots left in. If the area gets direct sun for 8-12 hours a day this may be the best way to "sterilize" the soil. – William S. Jul 12 '16 at 23:29
  • @cathode solarisation doesn't kill bindweed as the rhizomes are too deep. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74145.html – Graham Chiu Jan 02 '17 at 00:18
  • But until you want to use that particular bit of soil to grow anything else, solarization WORKS...with CLEAR plastic, not black, not white. I'd plant whatever I wanted after making raised beds with perimeter trenches. When anything green came up to the top I'd simply wack it down, pull out roots when they show themselves. No plant that isn't fungal or one of the weird plants that need no light for energy will survive with no green topgrowth. NONE. Roots are storage organs and thus can keep trying to get to the light until the energy stored is depleted. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 22:52
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my first garden in this crappy pumice soil and freezes every month see raised bedsThe first time new plant beds, vegetable beds are created, YES one needs to dig and turn over. If you have sandy sandy soil then rototilling is ok. If any clay forget it. Simple to DOUBLE DIG. I've always gone as deep as a foot (actually more but that was a different story). Start at the head of the bed, remove a good 2' length of soil down at least a foot. Then dig and turn the rest of the soil over beginning just behind the removed soil, replacing that soil and then replacing the soil you just removed. At the end take the first removed soil and throw it back onto the bed. I've had beds 4' high, raked down and compacted for planting and it was back down to 1 1/2 ' and soon 1' or less. The less manipulation with clay the BETTER! At the same time I add decomposed organic matter. This is the last time I mess with manual digging and turning of the soil. I always have 'raised' beds without any boards or blocks. A trench along all of the sides between the walk and bed.

Why the newspaper? For weeds? Forget it. That soil is so full of seeds no barrier in this universe will stop weeds from growing. Turning the soil over is HEALTHY. No dig is just plain SILLY. Make your beds the right way the first time will be the last time. This no dig stuff is nonsense. You don't want any barrier, even newspaper to hamper the soil organisms from coming up to the top to eat decomposed organic matter and then go back into your soil profile to poop it out and do the mixing of organic matter into your soil with no manual help from you. Get used to pulling weeds, so easy, such a non-issue I wonder about people that are afraid of WEEDS. Mulch the tops of your beds and that will reduce any germination of weed seeds (which are by the millions in your soil).

Mulch IS compost. Depending on who is trying to talk. What you want is DECOMPOSED ORGANIC MATTER as mulch/compost. Otherwise you have to wait for non-decomposed matter to be decomposed by the decomposers. A year, 2 years...depending.

You WANT to dig into your soil, turn it over and just keep going. Do it right the first time and you'll not have to do it again...depending on what you grow, how high you allow your 'beds' to be and what your soil composition IS. The only ONLY ONLY way to improve soil is by the addition of DECOMPOSED ORGANIC MATTER. Nothing else! After this first time to build your beds, all you have to do is add compost to the top of the bed.

stormy
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    I don't think this is true " The only ONLY ONLY way to improve soil is by the addition of DECOMPOSED ORGANIC MATTER. Nothing else!" because humus is formed by bacteria/fungi creating complex sugars based on secretions from plant roots. The formation of humus improves soil. – Graham Chiu Jul 13 '16 at 00:21
  • The only way I know is the addition of organic matter, decomposed organic matter. That is what I've been taught, what I've read, what I've found to be true and what I have every reason to put out here for others to know. Nothing else can or should be added to any soil. Secretions from plant roots is part of the symbiotic process. Organisms with enough food are able to procreate, enlarge their population and create great great soil out of any soil type. Decomposed organic matter is faster so that all organisms are fed. Don't have to worry about the decomposers...they will always be there. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 21:24
  • And btw, this is another point for NOT rototilling. Using the shovel, one can double dig and pull out whatever roots they come across. It will take a couple of years but weeds like these should not dictate you planting cash crops! Easy peasy to keep pulling up chopping down. Glyphosate would work if you painted it on the green foliage of the weed plants. But not any quicker than simply pulling, wacking or covering...manually. Glyphosate painted on the top growth of weeds will not ruin your soil. It could hamper newbie plants and seed germination. Manual labor is much maligned. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 22:58
  • Humus is DECOMPOSED ORGANIC MATTER that the micro and macro organisms have eaten and gone back into the soil profile to poop it out. Digging in no way is detrimental. Humus can be formed and mixed into the raised beds just by the addition of DECOMPOSED organic matter to the surface of the soil. I did a test where I had BLUE PORCELAIN clay beneath the grass. I dumped 4"+ on top to start a new plant bed. The next year, taking a shovel and slicing down that blue clay was completely black down 2" and 4 to 6" streaked with 'humus'. Just allowing the organisms to feed and poop. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 23:10
  • Decomposed organic matter isn't really the ONLY way - green manure crops are very useful – Bamboo Jan 03 '17 at 01:14
  • I'll concede (again)...take decomposed out of the verbiage and 'the only way to improve any soil is by the addition of organic matter'...if one wants to grow something in that soil they should try to use decomposed to wake the life in the soil faster. – stormy Jan 03 '17 at 21:42
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I came across this video from Charles Dowding which addresses this issue. He says this is method one of preparing a no-dig vegetable garden. The video then goes on to show ground that is covered in grasses, weeds including bindweeds, thistles, dandelions etc.

He covers the whole area with black plastic for a month to kill the plants growing underneath. He then rolls back the black plastic and puts down a layer of manure, and compost so that he can no longer see the dead weeds. And then he replaces the plastic. In the video, three weeks later he then makes holes in the plastic and plants some marrow plants.

The video doesn't go into detail as to whether the plastic remains in place for another year. They usually say it takes 3 years to exhaust the roots of bindweeds so that they die. And of course in the no dig method, the channels left by the decomposing weed roots are open to the plants you're growing.

https://youtu.be/Mmv2zGfhG8w

Note that this technique is not solarisation as the rhizomes of bindweeds are often too deep to be killed by that method. This appears to work by depriving the roots of any place to send leaves above the ground to sustain themselves.

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74145.html

Graham Chiu
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  • Someone decided to use black plastic and came up with a lame reason why it works...clear plastic accumulates enough heat to kill all living things in the top few inches. Roots of vigorous weeds are starved if no green plant parts are able to produce food for the plant...starving the 'weed'...I don't care what roots, what plants are buried in the soil, keeping the top growth down and unable to photosynthesize WILL diminish/kill unwanted plants. As well as micro and macro organisms. They will beat it to the cooler darker regions of the soil and go dormant while decomposers do their job. – stormy Jan 02 '17 at 22:42
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    @Stormy, sorry, wrong. But best to take it to chat – Graham Chiu Jan 02 '17 at 23:31
  • Not true that clear plastic is the only thing that works - it depends where you live. Try solarization with clear plastic in the UK and you might as well dance round the moon at midnight chanting spells, it'd be about as effective, complete waste of time, uv levels aren't strong enough. What works here is thick, black plastic, tightly pegged down, to exclude all light, air and water - but needs to be in place for a year minimum, preferably two or three for serious root systems like Hedera – Bamboo Jan 03 '17 at 01:11
  • What zone is London again? Why black? The plastic would absorb the rays of sun but beneath just ain't gonna get very hot. The black will kill top growth but no more. Solarization I've done lots with clear plastic in zones 3 and 4 with excellent results. I am still giggling with your analogy, damn. I would LOVE to be able to take you to lunch, preferably Thai with Sake and Cigars!! Clear plastic acts similar to glass, magnifying the light, holds in the heat. Black definitely not white effectively keeps the top growth from feeding the roots. I am not keen on killing all biota of soil. – stormy Jan 03 '17 at 21:55
  • @stormy you know it's common for growers to plant in black plastic, and why? – Graham Chiu Jan 03 '17 at 22:02
  • Love this question. Because EVERYONE else does!! Grins! Because they think 'weeds' will make a big difference, because they are lazy and don't know any better!! How can I be more arrogant, huh? Black plastic INHIBITS weed growth and it also inhibits the exchange of gases, moisture reducing the life in the soil. Hate being such a damn know it all but I know enough to know I couldn't possibly know it all!! Who just said that nature doesn't do any tilling? Whelp...nature doesn't use plastic either! Great for a one time solarization but to install plastic more permanently is just wrong. – stormy Jan 03 '17 at 22:20
  • I charged BIG BUCKS of the clients who had plastic laid beneath mulch on top of planting bed soil. I dragged all that stuff to the dump where it belongs. I put as much of their non decomposed bark chips out in their 'wild' areas where it could be a bit of use. I used good ole beloved Gro Co mulch on everything. No weed seeds no pesticide residues quite a bit of nitrogen to FEED THE SOIL. My guys, hispanics, were blown away one week later to see wimpy plants turned voracious healthy unrecognizable gorgeous plants. We forget to feed the soils of our gardens. Plastic starves soil. – stormy Jan 03 '17 at 22:25
  • I think you're misunderstanding the intent – Graham Chiu Jan 03 '17 at 22:30
  • @stormy - black and thick because it excludes light - this method is nothing to do with heat/solarization, it works, as already said, by excluding light, air and moisture. Usually done on areas which are overgrown with something (brambles or ivy) but the owner hasn't time to attend to it for a year or three. By the time they get round to it, all growth and roots has died (except for knotweed,equisetum and most likely bindweed) – Bamboo Jan 03 '17 at 23:46
  • @stormy - and yes, it kills everything including soil microbes, but solarization is not an option here even in the south. Repopulation and reparation of the soil has to be made after the process is finished, obviously. Even when its hot here, our uv levels are still lower than, say, the Channel Islands or southerly parts of France – Bamboo Jan 04 '17 at 00:10
  • There is still good organic matter beneath the plastic, cutting out the light is a big deal for 'control' of plants out of place. The moisture is pretty high because of condensation. No light, no way to make food so a plant will die. Solarization is not one of my main gigs. I LOVE life and I do not fear weeds...grins! I will always double dig soil down at least a foot if not 18" and make raised beds no matter the soil type. I love feeding the soil organisms. Can't overdo that unless one doesn't know the chemistry of their mulch. I am glad you made solarization a bit clearer!! Grins! – stormy Jan 04 '17 at 01:19
  • @GrahamChiu Please treat me as if I am an alien. Explain what you mean by 'intent'..I do need all the help I can get and I am being very serious. – stormy Jan 04 '17 at 01:20
  • @stormy the intent, or purpose, of the black plastic is as Bamboo says; it's not for solarization. – Graham Chiu Jan 04 '17 at 06:53
  • @GrahamChiu I think I have a number of answers regarding this subject on file where I was a major contributor, grins. Gardeners who use black plastic I would love to debate with a show and tell session!! Temporary usage OK but dang if people don't take a thing and stretch it out of shape. Example; landscape fabric. This stuff was designed for the barrier between gravels and soil so the pumping action doesn't drive the larger particles down bringing the fines up and losing the gravel installation. Never ever was meant for 'weed control'. But people believe the advertising...sigh. – stormy Jan 05 '17 at 06:07