Digging for gold

For a "no dig" gardener I seem to do an awful lot of digging. I am planning to follow a more natural, wilder form of vegetable and fruit cultivation but there are some things that have to go first, like couch grass and bind weed and black plastic. The person who owned the plot before me only grew fruit I've been told. This could have been about 10 years ago as the site lay empty for a long time. I have a large carpet of wild strawberries that grow in couch grass, on a layer of soil on top of black plastic bags (that must have been used as a mulch all that time ago). I can almost roll the soil off the plastic. The strawberries don't grow well here so I have transplanted them to an area that previously had potatoes, then onions, then beans. I attempted to turn the soil over but it was so dry it was like an old, dried out loaf. Perfect habitat for slow worms, but I would rather have earth worms and rich, dark soil that my plants will love. This may take some time. (The slow worms already have an area at least a metre squared all of their own; a large family live under an old carpet).

Much of my plot is covered in clover. I never have to cut the grass where the clover grows. I am enjoying reading The One Straw Revolution at the moment. The author, Masanobu Fukuoka revolutionized a natural form of agriculture in Japan. He used clover (as well as straw) as ground cover on his fields and in his orchards as a living mulch. When you 'top' clover it stimulates the roots to grow more and fix more nitrogen. My plan is to use clover more in this way. Nature has been kind enough to do much of this work for me already on my plot; I'm a lot slower to catch on.

Barney spaniel settled himself down for his umpteenth snooze of the day. He watched me through heavy eyes as I struggled with the spade. "Do nothing" Fukuoka reminds us. By using nature more we are able to work less. He thinks a person should have time in their lives to sit and write poetry or to take part in community activities. That's the kind of world I want to live in! So I followed the lead of my enlightened dog and left the digging until some rain comes to soften the ground. A few days later my Polish friend asked which areas of my plot I want dug over. Her husband has finished work on theirs and wants to help me now. He has already completely transformed the plot of a single mum who hasn't had time to get up lately. Amazing.