Organic Natural Fertilizers: Double Digging Our Vegetable Gardens

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Double Digging Our Vegetable Gardens

Image by Paul Stainthorp via Flickr

We only started our little vegetable garden a couple of years ago. We soon discovered we had concrete for backyard soil. Okay it’s not concrete but it’s heavy dense clay that’s almost concrete. We could barely grow grass in our yard.

It took some labour but I dug it up to about a foot deep, maybe just a bit deeper and then started amending the soil with fresh top soil, compost, manure and peatmoss.

Each year since I have dug it up deep and amended the soil again. We add more peatmoss and the compost we had created since we started. It’s great to have compost and it’s so much better than putting all our yard and kitchen waste at the road side to be put in the landfill.

How To Double Dig Your Garden

The idea is simple however be prepared to work a little.

I start at one end of my garden and start digging a trench that’s about a shovel or spade depth. I flip the shovel full to my left as I am right handed and move through my garden left to right.

Once I reach the opposite side of the garden I have a trench that’s about 10 or 12 inches deep. The content or dirt is piled along the one edge.

Next I start digging again, in the same trench, and dig another shovel depth and just turn it right in the trench.

Once I reach the opposite, which is back where I started, I start a new trench to the right of the first one and take that dirt and put it right into the trench to my left.

This is a great way of turning your soil and aerating it at the same time. Over time, as I do this for the first couple of years and then I will continue doing this every 2 or 3 years.

Our garden soil is getting so rich now I don’t even need to use my foot to get the shovel in the dirt. You wouldn’t know it’s the same area that not so long ago seemed like concrete.