Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 581
A No Dig Policy
Hello Everyone
As l mentioned before, my Auntie Alice employs a ‘no dig’ policy in her garden. and l thought as people are getting out into the garden this time of year, l would explain exactly how it works.
When children get into gardening, one of the most difficult things for them to do is digging – because you need a lot of strength to do this. Soil can be heavy and tough to dig into.
So setting up a no dig garden is perfect for children to have to work in.
lt is also the most perfect garden for people who care about the environment, or want to save time and effort.
The first thing you do, is choose where you want your vegetable garden or flower border to be, and then you lay down sheets of cardboard or many layers of newspaper and this will suppress the weeds or grass from growing in that place.
ln the past, when people wanted to clear ground, they sprayed it with weed killer and put down thick black plastic. The ground had to be then left for a long time. Once the plants under the plastic had died the ground had to be raked over and cleared of all the dead plants. The poison used was very strong and this is not really very good for the environment.
lf you put cardboard down that is cardboard cartons that have been opened up, you will have a lot of flaps. Make sure that they are overlapping each other because you should not leave any gaps for sneaky, little weeds to push up through. You will also need to make sure that there is no plastic tape left on the cardboard, we never need to introduce more plastic into the environment!
Do this on a windless day.
Then you need to put compost on top of the cardboard and plant into that. The first time you put a layer of compost down, it needs to be quite thick. You need a weight to keep the cardboard from blowing away, and a thickness of compost to plant into.
The cardboard will rot away as it gets wet left out in the outside environment. At the same time, as the plants grow and their roots push downwards they will push into the soil underneath the cardboard which by this time should be weed-free.
The compost spread on the cardboard is very loose. This means that if you want to pull up say, a crop of carrots it will be very easy to do so. Even potatoes are unbelievably easy to pull up. You just pull at the stem and all your potatoes should come up in one go attached to the plant.
Planting into loose soil is easy too.
Not having to dig into the ground means that you will never chop a worm with a spade or prong one with a garden fork. The worms being left undamaged will breed to produce more worms and worms improve soil health. The more worms gardeners have in their gardens, the more the gardeners like it!
A lot of farmers nowadays. are trying to not plough their fields as deeply as they used to. They only cut deeply into the soil when they have to sow certain crops that need to be sown deeply.
They want lots of worms on their land too. They can be working for them to improve soil health. Spreading lots of fertilizer over a large area of land can be very expensive.
Fertile soil makes your home crops taste better whether they are salad leaves or tomatoes.
Once you have a good layer of compost on your cardboard to plant into, you should add more compost at convenient intervals to thicken the layer of compost in your garden in the years to come. You will be adding nutrients, but more importantly ingredients that will feed all the little mini-beasts and chemical reactions in the soil that makes it healthy.
The added layers don’t need to be thick. You only need to put on a layer thick enough to cover up the surface you could see before. You only need to do this once or twice a year.
There should be very little weeding to do with no dig gardening but if you see the odd one here and there creep in, you can just pull them out with your fingers – and then throw them onto your compost heap. Because the soil is loose the tops of the weeds should not break off from the roots.
And talking about your compost heap – this is where a lot of the work happens; because you need compost to keep topping up your beds.
lf you just have a raised bed to grow a few salad items and herbs, you won’t need a very big compost heap. On the other hand, if you have an enormous garden like Auntie Alice, you will need a big compost heap.
But there is so much that you can put on your heap like: dead flowers out of a vase, cleanings from a rabbit hutch, peelings from the kitchen, weeds, grass clippings and more shredded cardboard and newspaper. They can soon build up.
People who own market gardens (places that grow vegetables to supply shops and restaurants) often have arrangement with other businesses whereby they take their waste off their hands. This could be sawdust from wood mills or coffee grounds from coffee shops.
lf you can’t do this, you may have some stables near you or even a city farm or zoo that will be very happy for you to take their waste away – that is to say animal dung. You need to use dung from animals that eat vegetation and not meat.
Some larger stables with lots of horses might have manure heaps taller than a car or even a person or even a van! These need to be cleared away from time to time – and there will always be more to come!
Betty Clutterbuck in the Rocky Bay Tea Rooms puts her used teabags in a cardboard box lined with newspaper along with dried flowers from her vases and Auntie Alice collects them when she makes deliveries to her.
The boxes are taken home, put on the compost heap and when everything rots down it will be put on the garden to feed the crops that she sells back to Betty. lt is a perfect circle.
You need a mixture of green waste like weeds and grass clippings and brown waste like straw and cardboard to make a good compost heap.
Never ever feed grass clippings from a mower to animals!
lf you give a pile of grass clippings to animals like horses or rabbits it looks like a lovely feast for them, BUT it will make them very ill!
The clippings are hot and will start to ferment inside the animals and cause terrible trouble in their tummies.
lf you crumple card up before you put it in your compost heap you can create air pockets which is good. A lot of people turn their heaps once the bin is full to get air into the heap again.
Autumn leaves are not supposed to be put on a compost heap because they take twice as long as everything else to rot down and they don’t have much nutrition in them – the tree sucked it back out before it dropped them at the end of the summer.
But if you mow autumn leaves up off the lawn with a lawn mower and mix them with grass clipping, the chopped up bits will be tiny and will rot down more quickly than if they were left as whole leaves.
lf your compost heap ever gets too dry, you can always put the hose pipe on it, or throw some other waste water or collected rainwater on it to get the microorganisms in the heap working.
You don’t want your heap to be too dry, too soaking wet, or without air in it – so compost-making has an art to it.
Making up compost is easy, and very importantly free. lt saves your dustmen having to carry away some of your rubbish, and it saves councils having to provide landfill.
Piles of stuff put on a compost heap will rot down into a much smaller bulk once the microorganisms in the heap get to work – this is what nature does.
lf you have a large heap it can get so hot that weed seeds can be killed.
Don’t put cooked food on a compost heap because you will attract rodents like mice and rats who will want to set up a nest inside your lovely warm heap.
Keeping plants healthy in a garden by looking after your soil health ensures that you have less trouble with pests and diseases because when your plants are strong and healthy, they will be able to fight off attack from anything like that more easily.
No dig gardening is neat and easy and works well with nature. Make lots of compost and your heap will soon disappear when you start spreading it over your garden!
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: You don’t like him much do you?
Bill: Not at all, when l heard he was suffering for bad hay fever, l sent him a bunch of flowers to cheer him up!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Compost is built up in layers
A large compost heap
A small compost heap
Heaps can be home-made
Compost can be made for free
Being outside can make you feel healthy and happy
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, my Auntie Alice wanted me to do her a favour; I was only too happy to help, and I roped the children in too.
She told me that she had too many foxgloves planted up in pots.
They seed themselves everywhere, but as she doesn’t have the heart to throw them away, she puts them into pots to get them out of her beds.
She also wanted to free up all the flowerpots they were in so that she could use them for other things.
So I went into the Rocky Bay Woods with a wheelbarrow loaded up with pots of foxgloves and Bill, Bob, Emily and Henry in tow.
We left Auntie Alice behind in the garden putting some agapanthus into pots to put outside her kitchen door.
They will not ever flower unless their roots are bound tightly into a pot so they are usually grown in big pots rather than in a flower border – unless you have an enormous cliff in your garden full of crevices – which of course most people don’t have!
She grew the agapanthus from seed she had collected from the garden and it took a long time for them to grow into healthy plants.
Foxgloves also take a long time to flower if you grow them from seed.
They are biennials; that means they grow leaves in their first year and flowers in their second.
Foxgloves like growing in woodland settings with lots of shade – and bumble bees love feeding from them so they are always a good plant to grow for wildlife.
You will often see a fluffy bumble bee bottom sticking out of a foxglove flower!
So we went into the woods and planted the foxglove plants out in small groups here and there.
We planted them in groups of three and hope that they will seed themselves in the years to become to make bigger patches.
It will take many years, but at least we have started the project off.
While we wandered about, the children were playing about; but we did spot a tree here and there that we have planted and it is good to see how they are getting on.
I did the hard digging and the children helped ease the plants into the holes I made.
The foxgloves should flower this year and seed themselves without any further help from us.
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Quick Quiz
Do you know the names of these flowers?
The names all begin with ‘A’.
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A SELF-WATERlNG PLANT POT
There are lots of ways to use plastic bottles in the garden.
You can cut them down to make plant pots to go under a plant or cloches to go over a plant to protect it from birds wanting to dig it up.
You can use plastic bottles as ollas.
Just puncture a few holes around the bottom half of a bottle and bury most of it in a plant tub. Make sure the top is poking out above the soil.
You may want an adult to help you with this so that you don’t stab yourself because the surface of a bottle is very slippery.
Water your hanging basket or window box well.
Then you can fill the bottle up at the top and the water will seep into the compost gradually as a back-up watering system.
You can use the size of bottle that will fit well into the size of tub or trough or pot you have.
Using a plastic bottle to make a bird feeder
You can use a whole bottle to make a self-watering plant pot.
Cut the bottle across about two fifths of the way up.
Get an adult to drill a little hole in the lid and thread a coarse piece of string through it.
Put the lid back on the bottle and turn the top part of the bottle upside-down and put it into the bottom part.
Compost goes in the top part and water goes in the bottom part.
The compost will draw water up through the string because it will act as a wick.
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- agapanthus
- astrantia
- alstroemeria
- allium
- antirrhinum
- aquilegia
- aster
Which is your favourite?
Aster
