Forget digging, hoeing, weeding, feeding, crop rotation and pest control: veg growers are now embracing ways of growing food that is inspired by nature. Not only is this a more sustainable and resilient way of growing, it can also be significantly less work.
“I’ve found life is far easier and more enjoyable when working with rather than fighting nature,” says regenerative grower, Joshua Sparkes. “In my experience, nature has an answer for most problems and it is up to us to trust the process. Many of the things we are told to fear and worry about are usually man-made problems when we interfere with nature’s rhythm.”
His views are echoed by permaculture expert Huw Richards: "I find a lot of the answers to almost any problem in the garden come back to one thing, which is working with nature by embracing it.”
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Here, five growers reveal why they practise the methods they have chosen. Their techniques are all slightly different, but all work with nature. They are all based on organic principles - an approach that is free of chemicals and prioritises healthy and fertile soil.
Read on to discover which method might be right for you.
No dig
No dig gardening is becoming increasingly popular, largely thanks to Charles Dowding. No-dig, as its name suggests, is a method of growing veg without digging. Instead of turning over the soil, it focuses on minimal soil disturbance, adding layers of organic matter (such as garden compost or mulch) to the surface of the soil instead. Over time, this organic matter decomposes, enriching the soil with nutrients and encouraging healthy plant growth.
“No-dig is not the slog that we had before of digging and weeding and a four-year crop rotation, which actually comes from 18th-century farming and somehow made its way into gardening," explains Charles. "No-dig is basically about copying nature, where you don't have soil disturbance and and debris falls on top, from old leaves and so on. Soil organisms come up to the surface, eat it, take it down, excrete it as food for other soil organisms – so you get a whole network building up in the undisturbed soil."
He adds: “The embellishment, if you like, for growing veg is to get your soil more fertile than it would be in nature – you need to feed the soil more than nature would. So putting compost on top of the soil is a short circuit of the decomposition process – it enables a rapid build up of soil fertility and rapid success, basically.” And healthier soil means healthier plants.
According to Charles, no-dig can result in improved harvests and fewer weeds compared to his dug trial beds, and much less labour. At his current market garden, Homeacres in Somerset, he uses the no-dig method of growing veg over 1,300 square metres, involving just 10 hours of his own labour per week, plus 10 hours of part time help, mostly with harvesting. He adds: “You can make a no dig bed in the morning and plant it up in the afternoon, if it's the right time of year.”
Polyculture
Polyculture is a method of growing a diverse range of plants together in one bed. It is the opposite of monoculture, where only one species is grown at a time. Polyculture mimics the diversity found in nature, where various plants, animals, and microorganisms interact with each other in a balanced and mutually beneficial way.
“The main benefit is that by having a diverse range of plants in one space, you also get a vast range of wildlife, including lots of toads, newts and predatory insects,” explains Joshua Sparkes, polyculture grower at Birch Farm, in Devon. Over time, this creates a natural balance, keeping pests in check.
A basic polyculture is planned in three stages: long term, secondary and intermediate. “Long-terms will generally be a crop that will last more than nine months, such as brassicas and parsnips. Secondary are shorter crops of around three months, such as beetroot and turnips; and our intermediates are a quick harvest, which for us is our salad crops such as lettuce and rocket.”
He adds: “Every polyculture also includes a range of flower types, such as Asteraceae and Apiaceae, and an aromatic herb. One of my favourite combinations is kale, chard, beetroot, lettuce, rocket, peas and fennel.”
Weeding is kept to a minimum. “Many of our polycultures include more than ten to 15 different weeds that have a huge diversity of rooting depths, with roots being our main soil improver,” explains Joshua. “Weeds are kept in check for the first six weeks of planting when we sickle or harvest the emerging weeds. We have found that giving the vegetables a helping hand for six weeks means they have enough of a head start to out compete them. After that, we no longer manage the weeds, and let them grow as part of the polyculture. “We want to keep all the root systems in the ground, so we never hoe or pull our weeds out.”
He adds: “The weeds can be cut back and dropped as mulch multiple times during the year and we harvest them daily with vegetables for eating. Weeds are some of the best pollinators, adapted for our local insects and those insects are also key food sources for our other wildlife.”
Biodynamic gardening
Based on Rudolf Steiner’s (of Steiner School fame) philosophies, biodynamic growing is not dissimilar to organic growing in its focus on soil and plant health and biodiversity, but acknowledges that other elements – water, air, the sun, moon, planets and stars – play an important part too, and seeks to harness their effects. Dorling Kindersley has recently published Biodynamic Gardening, which explains that biodynamic gardeners use ingredients from the animal, mineral and vegetable worlds to make nine preparations. “The role of the biodynamic preparations to guide and ameliorate this influence that is constantly coming to use from the wider universe.”
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“When you first read about it, biodynamic growing can sound complicated,” says Jane Scotter, head grower at Heckfield Home Farm, which was certified biodynamic in 2020. “But I’m a very practical person and to me, it just makes sense. When you’re outside working with plants and seeing how insects and animals and the weather interact, it seems obvious that larger forces are at play. There’s always much more to things than we think.” Many of the processes required are deliberately slow and time-consuming, which Jane appreciates for the chance for reflection they afford. “You realise you’re part of nature and connecting with it,” she says.
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is standard practice in the tropics, where gardens mimic the rainforest in assembling layers of productive planting beneath the canopy of tall trees. In the lower light levels of northern Europe, forest gardens more closely resemble the more open woodland edge, with a top layer of larger fruit trees, often hung with vines and climbers, a lower layer of smaller fruit and nut trees, and an understorey of bamboos and berry-bearing shrubs. Below come perennial vegetables, while mats of herbs and sprawlers cover the ground. Not all the plants are cropped in a forest garden – some encourage beneficial insects, others aid fertility by fixing nitrogen or ‘mining’ trace elements deep in the soil.
The process has been pioneered in the UK by Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon. He grows more than 500 different plants and has tested every edible to ensure it is not just safe, but actually pleasant to eat. “All our growing systems should be storing carbon; plants and soil are currently the only way of taking carbon out of the air," he says. "No-till agriculture will help a bit, or even scattering a few trees through a grassy field. But forest gardens are the system that stores most carbon while yielding lots of crops.”
Permaculture
Permaculture is not new – the movement was founded in the 1970s - and there is overlap with several of the methods described above. Dorling Kindersley has recently published The Permaculture Garden, and its author, grower Huw Richards, has been interested in permaculture since he was 12: "I found a copy of The Permaculture Magazine at my friend’s house. I picked it up and thought ‘wow, this is cool." He explains that permaculture is “nature inspired design - you're creating gardens or beds that are inspired by patterns in nature. If you look at a forest, there are different layers. So if you're planting an orchard, instead of just having the apple trees, you’d look at what to plant underneath it.”
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Permaculture gardens are also often created in layers, with a tree canopy (such as fruit or nut trees), a smaller fruit trees such as hazelnut or elderberry, a shrub layer such as berry bushes, a herbaceous layer of herbs and vegetables, a ground cover layer (such as strawberries), a root layer (root veg such as carrots and onions) and a vine layer – climbers such as kiwi or peas.
"It isn't a sexy simple solution." says Huw. "You have to use your brain, it’s not about just telling people what to do. Things like companion planting, or crop rotation, for example. I never follow companion planting as the guides are often contradictory, and crop rotation is just another form of dynamic monoculture. In nature, so many different things grow together.
He adds: “Nature wants to grow. Plants want to grow. All you need to do is to try and encourage the right environment: focus on the soil and plant at the right time. And then it will do its own thing."