Preparing the Site – Digging
These essential preliminaries having been completed, the basis of a successful garden will lie before one. Irrespective of the time of year that the garden is started, it is a good policy to turn up uncultivated soil in hefty lumps to allow it to weather. Most advantage will be gained by autumn digging, for then weeds will have little chance to grow and the frost and rain can work on the soil eroding and fragmenting it so that when spring comes it will knock down into a powdery tilth. Done properly, with all the top growth buried, digging will dispose of at least half the weeds on the surface of the plot.
Perennial weeds with deep roots such as thistles, dock and bindweed should be pulled out where practicable and subsequently burned. Where infestation is bad, the worst should be removed and the emerging shoots killed in the spring with a suitable weedkiller, or else the plants grown on that area spaced far enough apart to allow regular hoeing to remove the weeds as they appear. Few weeds survive for long if their shoots are regularly decapitated.
On the other hand though, the use of a rotavator amongst weeds of this type can lead unwittingly to proliferation, the rotors chopping the roots into tiny pieces which will then shoot and grow into separate entities. No method of initial weed control is perfect, but much can be achieved by sensible digging.
Most textbooks on gardening reveal a lot of nonsense and non-practice by their exponents on the digging operation. Double digging, single digging, bastard trenching and several other kinds are all described, together with complicated diagrams showing plot A and plot B and how the soil from the trench on plot A should be wheeled to the far end of plot B for replacement at the end of digging operations. Gardeners are generally practical people, and while erring on the side of caution when anything new is revealed, usually pick out the best bits of both old and new methods and come to a compromise. It is my opinion that few gardeners do not realize the folly of double digging (i.e. the digging and breaking up of soil two spades deep), but most do appreciate the value that single digging and trenching can have if applied sensibly.
Single digging is merely the turning over or completely inverting a lump of soil so that the surface covered with plant growth is at the bottom of the spit. This is only performed on well-cultivated ground, being unsuitable for use when rough land is involved. This needs trenching in order to knock it into shape, the first row being inverted as with single digging, and the second row inverted on top of the first. An open trench is now revealed which will accept each row of digging as the soil is turned over. Turned over is the operative word, for weeds will not die if the spadeful is merely tipped on one side, reversal must be complete. My slightly unconventional method of starting trenching leads to a raised first row and a trench at the end of the bed, but this is of no account as the trench facilitates drainage during the winter and is easily filled when the soil is knocked down and raked level. This latter inconvenience is nothing compared with the interminable harrowing of soil which the purists would have us do.
A bare border or bed waiting to be dug is a formidable and disheartening spectacle even for the most ardent gardener, and breaking with convention once more, I have found that a little personal psychology can ease the somewhat distressing state of mind that a newcomer in particular may suffer. First of all do not tackle the job all at once, take it in stages building each day’s digging upon the next so that the neat brown rows seem to grow, or as one old gardener told me: ‘When digging always keep your back to the ground you have yet to dig!’ This latter remark although seemingly frivolous, has a moral, and that is not to look at the bed in its entirety, but concentrate on the piece you can manage that day. I find it a big help to kid yourself that you are actually digging faster than you are by taking narrow strips a metre (yard) or so wide and digging the full length of the bed. Obviously the ground is not covered any faster, but the illusion is that this is so.
