In the 1960s and 1970s double digging was the proper way to garden. That opinion persisted for many years, and the method also known as “bastard trenching” still has its fans. (You can read more about the process, and just how unpleasant it is, here.)
As arduous as it was, gardeners persisted in doing it because their gardens grew well.
Today there is a new method gaining popularity that is the exact opposite of double digging: no dig. In this method you disturb the soil as little as possible and routinely add organic matter to the top of soil, never mixing it in. British gardener Charles Dowding is the most widely known expert on no dig gardening but there are plenty of successful gardeners singing its praises. Check out Charles’s YouTube channel to be very inspired.
So how can two gardening methods, the exact opposite of one another, both offer excellent results?
Because we’re all overthinking this gardening thing.
Plants are genetically programmed to grow. This is how forests come to be, not because someone double dug mile after mile and planted saplings.
The fact is that most plants are going to grow regardless of the treatment we give them, assuming they are planted more or less the conditions that they like. They will grow better with some treatment than others, but odds are, they will grow, produce and perform.
All the coddling we do as gardeners can help, but what is the perfect treatment for a given plant? Nobody really knows. Forty years ago the answer would have been double digging. This week it might be no dig. Maybe the answer is that the little things we do may make a difference but in the end, nature is going to take care the big picture.
But we all still try to grow the best tomatoes, the most onions, the biggest flowers. And really that’s one of the true joys of gardening. You are always learning. Always striving to do it better. Because you can’t ever know when you have it just right. After all, if you had mastered double digging in 1970 you’d probably be very fit by now, but you certainly wouldn’t have known everything there is to know about gardening, because that gardening technique probably wasn’t the best after all.
So maybe we all need to relax a little and enjoy the gardening journey a little more. The plants can handle it.
15 Responses
Very well said! I have spent more time, money, and stressed out as if the world is going to end if not done just perfect. At this point, I have wasted the same amount of time for me to regrow the seeds all over again 3 times if I do happen to screw something up, I am literally going to plant everything and test it out. I will follow my gut and read this over again when I feel like I have to google my billionth question about gardening!
Thanks for sharing this useful info about gardening, really useful for maintaining my garden
When I bought my current house six years ago the garden was an overgrown mess of poison Ivy, bittersweet, Moss, and rocks. Lots of rocks. It was an enormous amount of work the first year or two to clear out all that junk! The yard also held many mature oak, maple, ash, black cherry and pine trees, so every a Fall I have covered my perennial and rose beds with loads of chopped leaves, to a depth of six inches or more. Over the winters, the worms did their jobs and drew all that leaf mulch down into the soil, with the result that my perennial and rose beds now have rich dark soil with plenty of worms. There are still loads of rocks, but they promote good drainage. And my peonies, lilies, dahlias, phlox, rudbeckia, and many other perennials are lush this Spring with all the rain we’ve been having.
Sounds wonderful!
Hi, Erin!
Great post! Concise yet very clear! Thanks a lot for sharing this to everyone. Best xx
Great post Erin. Bastard trenching – I love that!, well the description, not the digging 😉
Thanks for posting this – I’m a new gardener and all the information out there can be overwhelming. It’s hard to separate what’s essential from what’s someone’s preference!
The only plants that want attention from us are tomatoes and lawns, as someone at the symposium commented. Much more talk about not using bark mulch and chopping leaves and leaving our plant debris in place unless it is diseased. I read about double digging when I started but we never tried it. We did add compost and manure in the early days. Now it’s much more a case of let’s see what survives and that will tell me what I need to do — if anything.
When I got my very first 10X10 P-Patch in a community garden, I read all about vegetable gardening and double dug it. What was essentially a raised bed that already had good soil…. I double dug. Let’s all laugh-laugh at the newbie!
My current philosophy is that vegetables really liked to be coddled with soft, cushy soil and they do not enjoy this no-dig thing, especially when you basically live on a quarry like I do. Perennials want an OK home and to be left the hell alone other than a bit of mulch and, if you pick the right ones, they will set about the business of taking care of themselves.
I have more or less abandoned my vegetable garden in favor of perennials LOLOLOLOLOLOL (sob).
I’ve been there! The ecosystem that is my yard won’t grow veggies unless I fuss over them to the extreme. So I gave up until I’m retired and have more time. Meanwhile, I plant hardy plants that are suited to my zone and conditions, and if they can’t handle the spider mites, slugs, and fungus in my yard, I pull them out and try something else the next year. I’ve been doing it this way for about 10 years, and things are pretty well settled at this point. I spend most of my time enjoying the garden and planting out my pots every year.
I really like the idea that gardening is a journey. I have been enjoying my journey for many years and have had wonderful successes and colossal failures, but I continue on the journey to seek not perfection, but great pleasure.
It all depends on what you’re growing, in my view as a plant ecologist and gardener. Vegetables are nutrient and water hogs, so they need fertility, good soil, and plenty of moisture (usually). Herbs are different depending on what they are. For herbaceous perennials, it depends on their natural habitats and the nutrient levels they evolved with – ditto for shrubs and trees. The only plants that I can imagine that double digging would benefit are vegetables, and I’m with Dowding’s approach with essentially deep composting in place.
If you want to grow woodland wildflowers, lots of soil amendment is usually needed, unless you alrealy live in a cove forest. Composting your leaves is always a good thing!
Whew!! I have never ‘double dug’ my garden – I add organic matter every year to my veggie garden and work it into the soil, and plant! I think I’ll stick with that method as it has served me well.
I certainly remember all the double digging. I have gardening books that explain how to do it. However, a long time ago, I found a book about lasagna gardening and since we were tired of digging, we tried it. I would stop tree guys and ask them to dump chips for free in my driveway so I could spread them in our beds. We had a pick-up and we went to the local horse farm and brought in a truck load of manure every weekend to add to the beds. We bought a used leaf shredder and shred our leaves and the neighbors leaves to add to the piles. We even got cheap broken bags of top soil to spread and once even had 27 yards of compost delivered. Everything broke down and we had the most wonderful soil and beautiful gardens. It was even a pleasure to pull weeds in that wonderful soil. After 40 years we moved to be closer to our kids and of my, such horrible soil is in the yard of the new house. I do not have the energy to build new soil, so we will see how the do nothing to the soil approach works for gardening.
Somehow, as trends come and go, I think it is somewhere in the middle. A little digging here and there and a little leave it alone. We always seem to swing on the extremes of the pendulum. Mother nature has her own way of heaving and hoeing, too, now doesn’t she? It’s always a good idea to find the balance in work and rest. As you say, the garden will still reward us!