Has anyone tried any of the various "no-dig" gardening methods in Maine?

I'm thinking of e.g. Lee Reich's "Weedless Gardening", which advocates flattening the grass, laying down a few thicknesses of newspaper, covering with a few inches of compost, then planting into the compost. I have a small vegetable garden and am planning to try something like this with a bit of it, but I'm wary of our supergrass with its four-inch mass of hyperactive rhyzomes.

Would welcome some words of encouragement (or warning).

Thanks,
Andrew

Hi Andrew,

Have done lots of different no-dig gardening right over lawns, weeds, etc. There are several "recipes" for doing that. Lee's method works but I recommend something a little more substantial like sheet-mulching (google it or see excellent entry in the book "Gaia's Garden" by permaculturist Toby Hemenway) or lasagna gardening. I used to be a double-digger, had a kubota tractor for tilling large plots, etc. I'm over it. No-dig has given us really good results for much less labor and strain.
Thx
Lisa

Thank you! That's what I wanted to hear. (Coincidentally, I was just reading Gaia's Garden.) --Andrew

Great! Toby's recipe is pretty hardcore. You can develop your own method but we always do the wet newspaper sections LAST as a week block (under the final straw or hay mulch) so that we can use things that might sprout. Our recipe is something like lime (if applicable) and maybe rock dust then seaweed, rotted manure, fresh grass clipping, leaf mould, a few inches if finished compost ONLY if we want to plant in the next month or so, then wet newspaper sections followed by top mulch layer. My ideal is to do this in the fall then spring planting is an absolute cake-walk. But as soon as the snow melts is good too.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate all the info.

For a variety of reasons, I may have to do Reich's method rather than Hemenway's. It sounds like you've tried that too, so here's a question: My understanding from reading the book is that you whack down the weeds, cover them with wet newspaper, then put down 2-3 inches of compost. Do you really plant into pure compost? Or can/should the compost be mixed (say, 50/50) with clean soil?

Andrew

We have planted into well-finished compost with good results but the one downside of putting any planting medium OVER the paper is that you no longer have a weed block situation. Beyond soil building, one of my biggest motivations for sheet mulching is weed suppression. I never weed because I don't have to. But without the weed block layer on top, you need to be really certain your top "layer" (whatever you choose to use) is very weed-free.

Thanks again for the help! --Andrew

Hi Andrew A method that Jim Kovaleski is using Down East starts with freshly cut small saplings of Cherry (something thicket forming). These are the base layer for something like a modified Hugel Kulture system. This goes down on a newly scythed patch of (hay) field. He doesn't use a newspaper layer and this something that I have observed is possible. Freshly mown grass is placed on the top. A small amount of compost is spaced and placed for hills of direct seeded winter squash. More fresh mown grass is added during the season. Jim's site is wet and faces North East. He got terrific yields of squash this past year with no additional watering, the vines were extremely long and rooted into the sod. Jim is highly skilled with a scythe and his cuts have a manicured look He feels that the grass has actually benefited from the repeated mowings.
My own attempts at layering organic matter prompt me to look for long, coarse and diverse materials, well beyond just "hay". And it helps not to back off on the layering once you have started. I can find deep, dark, loose soil on the Mofga Fairgrounds where I have kept up with this method. It is remarkably different from the open, parched soil surrounding it and perennial plants love it. Hope your conversion is a success. Jack