Turning lawn into a vegetable patch

[TreasuredMim]

Novice gardener here. I plan to turn part of my lawn into a vegetable patch. Intending to start soon with the No dig method. Currently collecting cardboard Intending to start small with the intention of growing a few vegetables this year to keep my interest and enthusiasm going.

Can I run this past you?

• Put double layers of cardboard down onto lawn and cover with compost. Or do I need a layer of mulch first? What even is mulch? And I read about manure too but where do I get this from? No stables nearby. How thick does the compost need to be?

• A compost heap - how do I create one? I get the bit about adding vegetable peelings but otherwise can't get my head around how to make one.

Any tips much appreciated.

Mulch is a layer of material put on top of soil to retain moisture and suppress weeds. It can be anything from compost, wood chippings, bark even gravel.
Manure is usually sourced from horses stables.
You can start off a compost heap in a covered bucket, just keep adding stuff. Once you've accumulated a full load you can transfer it to the 'heap'. This can be just that, a heap in a corner of the garden, or better still in something constructed from re-cycled wood (youtube is your friend here). Keep adding material from your garden and kitchen, including cardboard cut up into pieces.

Hi Treasured, I have a decent veggie garden so I thought I could help here, although I am in a tropical climate and I know most MN users are in the UK, so some of what I do may be different to what you need.

I use mulch and spread it over the top of my compost after I've planted stuff. It helps keep everything moist on very hot/dry days. So it's basically a load of compost, plant your seeds/seedlings, spread a thin layer of mulch over the top, and then thoroughly water.

I use local sugar cane mulch, which basically looks like straw or hay to the untrained eye. Different areas will have different types of mulch.

For compost we have one of those standing barrels which you can spin. It was fairly cheap and works fantastically. I was told I needed to add compost worms to it to get everything going but I never did and I always get decent compost. The bugs seem to just find their way in there and do their job. Ours is mostly full of veggie and fruit scraps, grass clippings, and coffee grounds/tea leaves.

Like I said, my advice may not work in your climate, but hopefully it will be of some use!

Get a good book eg something by Charles Dowding - he's the no dig guru or Veg in one bed by Huw Richards - that has simple instructions for each month.

For mulch I use homemade compost or once a year well-rotted manure bought by the bag from the garden centre.
Compost bin - I've got several black plastic ones from local council. I just lob any paper, cardboard, some weeds and veg peelings/ waste in it. A year or so later I empty it out and sieve it. Big bits go back in and good stuff gets used on mostly on the veg beds. Nasty weeds I stick in a bucket of water for a couple of months. The gunk goes on the compost bin and the juice is used as plant food (only a good idea if you've a really big garden as it stinks)
Good luck!

What you suggest will work. I'll tell you how I converted my lawn to vegetable garden.

I started by double-digging - yes, I know you're no-dig, and I haven't dug it since. So - 1) strip the turf off a trip about a spades width and put it to one side at the other side of the proposed bed. 2) Dig a trench least 6 inches deep and put the soil aside next to the pile of turf. 3) strip the turf off the next strip and place it upside down in the base of the trench. 4) dig another trench and tip the soil into the first trench, on top of the turf 5) Repeat 3 and 4 until you've reached the other side. 6) use the set-aside turf and soil to fill the last trench.

It sounds all very neat and clever but in practice it doesn't work as well as that. But you're basically burying all your turf so it composts and enriches the ground, and you can start planting immediately

Your plan of cardboard on top to kill the grass will work as well. You could just leave it at that, but you probably wouldn't be able to plant next spring, the grass wouldn't be quite dead enough. Putting a layer of compost on top means you can plant into it without worrying about whether the grass is yet dead, so you basically need your compost deep enough to sow seeds and the seeds to get large enough to have the vigour to push their roots through the compost.

Compost heap - make some sort of container. As big as you can and as cubic as you can (compost loses heat through the sides so you want to minimise the ratio of sides to volume). Ideally open to the ground. Throw in whatever you have available - weeds (but not roots of perennial thugs), veg peelings, paper/cardboard old cotton or woolen clothing, grass cutting, lawn turf that you have stripped. When it's about a foot deep, add about an inch or two of soil. And keep going. The ideal is to have 3 heaps - one that you're building, one which is maturing and one which you're using.

Charles Dowding has a YouTube channel with hours and hours and hours of videos - well worth your time to get familiar with everything no-dig veg related.

In effect compost is also the mulch in the no-dig method.

With ours I stripped the turf back and dh built basic raised beds from old pallets. I laid the turf upside down on the bottom of the beds and added half done compost from our bins, leaf mould and then topped with the done compost . Left it to settle a week or two and topped it up with more compost. I'd run out of home-made so got a couple of big bags from b and q

I managed to persuade DH to let me cut out some of the lawn for veg last year. I lifted the turf and put it aside. Later I used it for growing potatoes in sacks (quite successful), during this process it broke down and when I'd got all the spuds out I could add it to the veg beds.

Your method will work but will take some time to be established, I think you should plan on som digging for the first year. Potatoes are a good first crop as they help to break up the soil.

The whole point of no dig is you don’t want to break up the soil - the soil has a complex structure and a whole interlinked network of fungi, bacteria, teensy animals that are all super important to transporting nutrition and water to plant roots. The soil works by itself and the whole point of no dig is you disturb that as little as possible. It’s a completely different way of thinking to what we’re used to with traditional gardening/vegetable growing.

Personally having started an allotment with potatoes “because they help break up the soil” I’d say never again! Never got on top of the weeds thanks to constantly disrupting the soil, and stray potatoes kept growing everywhere for years! Potatoes will be kept corralled in designated potato bags/planters in my garden from now on!

Potatoes are a good first crop as they help to break up the soil. John Seymour (pioneer of self sufficiency movement) reckoned on Jerusalem artichokes as a first crop, then send in the pigs to root them out and turn over the soil .

The whole point of no dig is you don’t want to break up the soil - the soil has a complex structure and a whole interlinked network of fungi, bacteria, teensy animals that are all super important to transporting nutrition and water to plant roots. That's very true, but I see very little difference between disturbing the top layer of soil to get rid of the turf; and leaving it intact and covering with a very disturbed layer of compost. In either case, the fungi/bacteria/invertebrates will need to get established.

It's really interesting how ideas have changed in my lifetime. When I started gardening, the ethos was to double dig every year, sterilise any soil that was being used in pots, and use chemicals as a prophylactic - spray to prevent, rather than to get rid. Organic gardening was regarded as a fad entirely without scientific basis.

Then it was discovered that terrestrial orchids were really strange - they had a symbiosis with fungi, so couldn't be grown unless the fungi were already there.

Now symbiotic fungi have been found to be important in over 90% of plant families. RHS and Gardener's Question Time are no longer recommending you spray your garden into oblivion, soil sterilisation is no longer a routine, and most of the chemicals available to gardeners in the 50s and 60s are now banned.

There are still problems. Why are we still using peat for recreational gardening? Why do so many people routinely use so many weedkillers on lawns, over fertilise them, and even use worm-killers? Why, when the effects of too much nitrogen in our rivers and on our wildflowers are clear, are we still recommended to apply fertilisers regularly to plants that are growing in the ground?

@MereDintofPandiculation

Potatoes are a good first crop as they help to break up the soil. John Seymour (pioneer of self sufficiency movement) reckoned on Jerusalem artichokes as a first crop, then send in the pigs to root them out and turn over the soil .

I've got that book but don't know anyone who can lend me a couple of pigs.

Have you considered raised beds?

We've had much more success with raised beds than we have with growing in the ground. It saves your back/knees too.

I love that book! As a child I used to pore over my Dad’s battered copy imagining the small holding I’d have when I grew up. Remember the plans of the one acre and five acre plots? (I think?)

But yes a lot has definitely changed since then! Geoff Hamilton did a lot to popularise organic gardening as well didn’t he? He’s the GW presenter of my childhood. I have his Cottage Gardens book as inspiration.

Btw just looked it up and Geoff recommends (in 1995) that you “cultivate deeply” and advocates double digging as “much the best thing for a new plot”. Apparently “yes it’s hard work, but old William Robinson will be proud of you” (he’s referencing a gardener/writer who was publishing in the late 1800s!)

I fully understand why no-dig is better for keeping the soil structure and not disturbing the natural balance, but I think when you are on a virgin plot, especially in a garden, you never know what lurks beneath the surface. I remember digging up the remains of an air-raid shelter buried a few inches deep, and modern new-builds are notorious for the developer to use a thin layer of topsoil to bury whatever crap is lying around.
So i think a once-only double dig is not a bad idea, you can get rid of any unwanted rubble, rocks etc. and use the opportunity to incorporate plenty of organic matter, especially if you are on a lawn which can become compacted over time.
Once that's done, then no-dig is an excellent way to go.

I did this last summer by building low raised beds (just one railway sleeper high) - I did that as my lawn is on very heavy clay but it also looks neater! I lined the inside of the wood with DPM so it doesn't rot then laid cardboard on the lawn and added manure, compost and topsoil for some body. It worked really well and no need for digging. In the autumn I added more manure which has been rotting down over winter and should be perfect for planting in spring.

So much great advice as well as opinion.

I'm enjoying watching all the Charles Dowding videos.

Must actually venture out into the garden at some stage