I was still busy pickling sweet peppers and canning tomato sauce until all of a sudden the first storm hit our corner of the Peninsula. And that was the end of the summer. It has been raining ever since and autumn is in full swing. Time for a review!
When starting out a new garden there are so many questions, doubts and uncertainties, it can be pretty daunting. But, the only way to figure things out is by doing. So, last autumn we redesigned the garden completely. I have been experimenting with different garden techniques and after a full year, I know what worked well, and what didn’t. I’ve learned a thousand lessons and I’m eager to share them with you.
High-raised beds on concrete
Pouring concrete in your garden is obviously never a good idea, but when you inherit a garden with a concrete slab there’s little you can do. Basically, you have two options: 1) try to break it up with heavy machines and fill in the gap with new soil or 2) create new soil on top of it. We picked the latter.
We filled the beds with logs and prunings and topped them off with soil and some compost. A kind of Hügelkultur. Getting the soil right without contact with the earth is a tricky thing. Without soil life, things will simply not grow well. I have been able to grow a good variety of vegetables in these beds, but just not as big and good-looking as the same varieties planted elsewhere. Keeping these beds moist enough has also been more work than for the other beds.
One thing I have noticed though is the amount of funghi. These beds have a lot more than the other beds. That’s a good sign as funghi play an important role in the food soil web. So, I won’t give up on these beds. Instead, I will give these beds an extra dose of compost. I will also install bigger ollas (underground irrigation systems made out of terracotta pots).
So, would I recommend high-raised beds? Yes, if … it’s the only choice you have. Just know it’s going to be tricky to get things right.
Ruth Stout method
In June I got permission to use the plot right next to our house. The soil is of poor quality, but the vision of a field full of pumpkins made me really want to plant here. Not wanting to spend a dime I decided to try out the Ruth Stout method. Ruth Stout was a remarkable old lady. Tired of waiting for the garden man to come and dig her garden she decided to grow in bales of hay. And with great success!
But, Ruth Stout started out on better soil and lived in a more humid climate than I do. Nonetheless, I had wanted to try this out for years and this was the perfect excuse. Not being able to find any hay, I scythed my neighbour’s plot to make it myself. Three days of hard work and I had enough for the whole season!
Blessed with enough rain this spring, things looked good. I had popped in some potatoes, beans and pumpkins and everything was looking lush and green. Very promising.
But, the poor plants couldn’t cope with the intense summer sun, and I couldn’t keep up watering these beds. Altogether I had a good bucket of potatoes, a couple of hands full of beans and one cute tiny little pumpkin.
The potatoes deserve an extra mention here. The harvest wasn’t very big, but it couldn’t be easier. Just scratch the surface a bit, lay a potato on top, wait, pull the hay apart and harvest! How? Well, the potato plant actually consists of three parts; the roots, the tubers and the leaves. When you lay a potato on top of the soil it will shoot roots down into the soil and new tubers will form on top. The thick layer of mulch will prevent the potatoes from going green whilst the leaves have no problem finding their way out of the hay. Finally, you can harvest the potatoes without any digging.
Check out the guys from Back to Reality if you’re interested. They’ve put together a great resource about all things Ruth Stout.
So do I recommend the Ruth Stout method? Yes, but … only if you have easy access to hay (making hay yourself is hard work), when your soil is reasonably good and/or you only want to grow potatoes.
No-dig — Charles Dowding style
No-dig (or no-till) gardening is gaining more and more popularity and this is not a coincidence. It works! When you say no-dig, I think of Charles Dowding. Inspired by Ruth Stout himself he has perfectioned the no-dig methods in his market garden for the last 40 years. Aiming for the easiest and most consistent way of growing healthy and delicious vegetables. He has an amazing amount of educational material on his website and YouTube channel. Check it out or, treat yourself with a copy of his book.
A website, a YouTube channel, and book … If there’s so much information, it must be complicated, right? But, it’s really easy peasy. Lay some cardboard on the ground, top it with ca. 15 cm (5 inches) of compost, et voilá! You have just created the easiest and best vegetable bed ever. To maintain fertility and to feed the soil life, just add 2,5 cm (1 inch) of compost every year and that’s about it.
The results don’t lie, I have had my kitchen full of flavour and freshness. Enough to be self-sufficient in terms of vegetables – and we eat a lot!
So, do I recommend following the advice of Charles Dowding and creating a no-dig garden? Yes, definitely! The biggest drawback is getting enough compost to start out, but it’s well worth the effort.
Woodchip wonders
Even though we had quite some rain this year, the grass turned from a beautiful green carpet into an ugly-looking piece of barren land rather soon this summer. How lovely would it be to cover it all with woodchips … if I only could get my hands on enough …
And there it was, a big pile of woodchips. If you know what you need, you will find it. I truly believe so. It happens that we live in an area where the acacias grow wild and vigours. So much so that the municipalities have to cut them down and chop them into chips. I was lucky enough to take some home. Enough to cover the whole garden and to top it up in the following years!
Woodchip, okay, but what’s the wonder? We tend to think of our garden beds as just the space we plant in, but the area right next to it is equally important. The beauty of woodchips is that instead of requiring water like grass they will retain the moisture. It will also slowly break down and feed the soil life, feeding the whole garden. It works wonders, all with less water and less effort if compared to grass.
The citrus garden
Last year we also planted some citrus trees, right next to our house. The soil here felt sterile and dead. It had been covered with a plastic anti-root cloth and topped with stones for years. Nothing was growing here.
Besides the citrus trees, I also added some local tussock grasses, heathers and mosses. If it grows in my surroundings, it will grow in my garden. I am also leaving the upcoming weeds to do their thing. This is a labour of love and a garden in progress. And with little to no effort, it’s getting its charme and life back.
Good appetite
Some say you need a green thumb to be able to grow a garden. I say all you need is a good appetite. The best gardeners are the ones who love to eat their vegetables. You really don’t have to be an expert. Besides, most of the real work is done for you. The sun puts in all her energy for free and the soil and plants do the rest. All you have to do is to create the best possible space to get things started.
And talking about appetite …
… time to roast some chestnuts. It’s autumn after all. I’ll catch you later!
Puerto Marita 
¡Hola, Marita! It’s great to catch up with your gardening news, everything is looking wonderful considering it’s only been a year. You must be really pleased with your harvest, those vegetables look fantastic. Very interesting to see how you’ve got on with the different methods you’ve been trialling and to compare notes with similar experiments here, I sometimes think our garden is more of a science lab than anything else! Thanks for pointing out that the Ruth Stout method only works well on good soil; I think it’s often overlooked that Ruth herself put the hay down on land that had already been cultivated for many years. I had a decent success with potatoes under hay this year ~ it’s definitely easy ~ but I have a feeling that if we had a wet summer, there could be a lot of slug damage. Charles Dowding is certainly the no-dig king, I’m currently chopping and dropping the asparagus ferns in a bed created following his guidelines. The only drawback is having enough compost initially so I have to use more of a lasagne method using whatever organic matter I have to hand when building new beds. Aren’t fungi wonderful? They make my soil-obsessed heart sing! Enjoy those chestnuts, we’ve had a good harvest here this year but I still miss the Asturian walnuts.
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Hi Lis,
Thanks for reading and for your comment. This post was long overdue, but I really wanted to share the results with the Ruth Stout method (especially with you) and the high raised bed (since those are expensive and I had very few not-so-successful stories on the web). Getting your hands on enough compost is indeed tricky. We bought some horse manure, but it’s still very hot. We’ve mixed with our own compost and are turning it every now and than to speed up the proces. Making compost / collecting organic matter is definitely one of the most important tasks for the garden at the moment.
But, yes I’m very happy with the harvest. Hopefully next year we will have more fruits as well. And less work so we’ll have more time doing other ‘simple’ things that make life so wonderful.
Have a lovely day!
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A very good morning to you, Marita,
A question about the woodchips, agreed with what you state, that one will find what you need, how did you get them home? I find such sources in the woods too but don’t want to haul them by trailer and car, so it would have to be done by pulling a walking trailer with a bin on it or so. And then many times over to fill our desired places. How did you do this?
We put the wood chips (from our own branches and cut down trees) on paths where we don’t want weed growing. You too? This doesn’t work that great, unless we place a real thick layer (20 cm), I guess where you live is less unwanted weed growth?
The Charles Dowding technique comes very close to what I am following: a Belgium book by Velt, ecological gardening. The book is so huge that I only check it out when it is too late or when I really need acute help. The thing is, contrary to you, I dislike reading about things I like doing.
‘Besides, most of the real work is done for you.’
I don’t fully agree ; ) however true when red less literally, the sun and rain do a lot of work, but I feel I put more effort into my garden than I ever did in anything else! Sure, my garden is definitely too big for two people and I try to make it smaller yet the amount of work is a lot! But…. so true ‘The best gardeners are the ones who love to eat their vegetables’.
I think the next stage is to learn how to minimise the work.
Loved reading your thoughts! Thank you for this post : ) and enjoy a well deserved garden rest X
Greetings Cindy
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Hi Cindy,
Thanks for reading and you comment.
We brought the woodchips home by car as we found the pile about 15 kilometers from our place. The ‘camper furniture’ of our car is easily removable leaving about one cubic meter of space. We went back and forth 4 times, so we have a lot now. Before adding them to the garden we cut down the grass very short and removed any stubborn weeds – like the ones with long and strong taproots. Than we added a layer of cardboard and finally on top about 10 cm to 15 cm of woodchips. Specially on the edges weeds are finding their way to the light and it’s a matter of keep removing them. After two years almost no weeds are left.
I like to understand the workings of things, to find the logic, to know why certain things work and others don’t. Books are great for this. Once you have a better understanding it will become easier to interpret the feedback you receive from the garden and to make the necessary adjustments. Also, once you understand things you can start improvising. That’s the fun part! (works the same in the kitchen, hence my preference for basic recipes rather than full ones).
The plants grow all by themselves. All I have to do is a walk through the garden in the morning, pick some small weeds when I see them, tie some plants that requiere help (like tomatoes), cut the old leaves and side shoots and to water the plants in the evening. A very relaxing way to start and end the day, it takes time but it’s not hard work. Preserving the produce feels more like a job to me.
In regards of your garden being too big, maybe choosing other varieties will give you less work. I’m thinking of potatoes, garlic, onions… Vegetables that take up a lot of space during a lot of time, but requiere little work to grow and to preserve.
No garden rest for now. Today has been pruning day and if it stays dry I want to start with weaving some fences to keep the wild boars out of the new garden. The days are short, so no overwhelmingly big tasks, just little by little, poco a poco, slow and steady ❤
Not sure if you are one the road, but if you are – enjoy!
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Hi Marita,
Thank you for the wood chips explanation. We do it the same way although I started out differently with way less available matter to place on top of the path ways (and without cardboard). I am going back and forth, trying to cover the paths between the beds but have finally uncovered them again, to have them bare, so that I weed less in the end. My beds are not bordered so mulch or leaves will not stay where they were placed. I don’t know if it makes sense, but only the sides around the whole garden are with wood chips, not the paths between beds. It is trying things out, and I think (?) I have a good idea now.
As for the size, I would like to go a bit smaller (by broadening the paths and by trying to not use some of the other 2 hectares) and I do include onions and garlic but like to have lots of vegetables, like okra, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and so much others too. I went down with the tomato amount this year and with some others as well. I have found that planting flowers and less bulky (herbs) and far away spreading crops (pumpkin) in between the other same plant famiies works well.
I guess each year is a trial and weeding is something that has to be done, and I don’t mind really. I just have to find the best balance between less weeding/acceptance of weed/clear paths. Ha, the acceptance that a garden do what it does is the biggest task, I think, for me.
What I love is that quite a lot of wild growth is going on on the beds right now: while coriander and portulak are very useful, red beet and carrots are covering the beds nicer than weed.
Days are short here, at 4.45 PM it starts to get dark. Without sunshine I have very little desire to do gardening. Pruning is a task for Geo, which he doesn’t do really.
Are your days not wet? Will you work nevertheless if it raining? Warm greetings Cindy
p.s. your flowers are one of these species that cover the ground nicely in between tall growing vegetables. My garden hasn’t been so beautifull as this year.
p.s. we are not touring. I’m not on the road either.
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Gardens are ever evolving beings, just like us. We change and grow together ^_^
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True. Can’t add to that 😍
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