GARDENING WITH MINIMAL DISTURBANCE

Gardening is about balance, says Huw Richards. This month he explains the underlying principles that inform his approach to gardening

Permaculture is a design approach inspired by patterns and observations in nature to help us create resilient and productive gardens, farms and communities. The goal is to work with nature rather than against it, and permaculture would be the most accurate description of how I approach growing my own food.

One of the most important happenings in the gardening world of recent years has been the rise of no-dig gardening. The idea of gardening without digging has been around since at least the 1940s; gardeners and authors Flbert Guest and Frederic Charles King both released no-dig books in this decade - a brave move surrounding the significant cultural popularity of the Dig for Victory campaign during the Second World War.

No-dig has a very important goal: to cause as little disturbance to the soil as possible. However, I am concerned that there is a growing dark cloud of dogmatism surrounding the method that simply shouldn't exist. Most of this comes from an obsession of soil health and a lack of empathy towards particular challenges many gardeners face, such as financial, or growing in a more challenging climate.

Let's cover the soil health side first. Most of the crops that we grow in a kitchen garden are annuals or biennials, and this article is exclusive to this group of plants. Putting my permaculture hat on, where do you find annuals in nature? The answer is newly disturbed ground. But why? Fnnuals are fast growing and nutrient-hungry plants and are nature's plaster to ensure any bare ground is covered with living plants.

Soil microbes such as bacteria (and let's put fungi into the mix even though they are far less important for annual plants) break down nutrients into plant-available form. These plant-ready nutrients are released when soil microbes die, such as when soil is disturbed.

This high concentration of nutrients complements the hunger of annual plants.