My No Weed Veggie Bed System

The easiest way to prepare your garden, and it’s also the best.

Last week we covered soil temp as the forgotten pillar of successful highland gardeners. It is the central pillar and worth further exploration. This week let us look to one of the known four pillars; living soil and the nutrient it provides. Your vegetables are only as strong as the nutrient they can access when they grow, so it is very important for us to supply the best we can. 

My Preference

I prefer to grow in an untilled, living soil. A home to millions of unknown microbes, bacteria, worms, beetles, and fungi creating a soil structure desirable for long term use. They are better at producing soil than I am, and they work very well as a team. If I supply fresh materials, they will make nutrient for my plants.

Plants grown with access to enough nutrition produce fruits, berries, roots and shoots that I can only describe as flavour country. The kind of produce a Michelin Chef would die for, and one of the main reasons I grow my own, all year round. 

Make Your Own

This is how I prepare my beds with success every year, and you can do it too. It will provide two years nourishment for high feeding vegetables, following my crop rotation plan. It is all focussed around the Summer Queens in my garden, Tomatoes.

I write about it every year and my article in the Braidwood Bugle last year explains the reasoning behind it. This technique requires no digging. It is literally making a compost heap across the surface of your garden bed, that will be turned over by the microbes, worms and beetles, not by you. 

My No Weed Veggie Bed Recipe

Makes bed of approx 4m x 1m.

1 Bale Lucerne 

4 cups Worm Castings

3-6 Barrows of Cow Manure

1 Bale Pea Straw

3-6 Barrows of Compost

2 Bales Sugar Cane Mulch

Skywater supply

Seaweed Solution 

Layer 1 Lucerne

Start with lucerne, it attracts moisture as it breaks down. Put a layer of lucerne down so that you cannot see the mulch/grass underneath. This process holds water in the bed, at the junction between earth and new materials. The lucerne effectively composts the grass, weeds, and leftover root vegetables underneath it. 

Layer 2 Worm Castings

Apply worm castings to the lucerne in handfuls to spike the system with microbes. The worm stomach is a biological composting machine, and the castings carry the same biota into the garden with worm eggs. Sprinkle it over the wet lucerne and start the party. I have recommended adding extra microbes in the past but have found the worm castings provide enough.

Layer 3 Watering

Water each layer well with Skywater. As an optional bonus you can add a seaweed tonic for trace elements like magnesium and calcium. If you don’t have access to Skywater, you can use tap water left in a bucket or watering can overnight. Microbes and fungi are not fond of the chemical salts in tap water.

Layer 4 Manure

Now add a layer of manure so you cant see the lucerne. The manure you choose is important. My preference is for cow manure, it’s what my Grandma swore by and her grandma before her. 

I prefer to get my cow manure direct from the farmer when I can, but I often buy it in from landscape centres already composted. Cow manure has no weeds in it as the cow stomach processes it completely. Chickens do the same thing and eliminate the seeds from their waste. The chicken manure can be good, but it needs to be composted well before use or it can burn delicate roots as they grow into it.

I have been trialling Alpaca poop recently. They also process the seed in their stomach. It appears to be a good source, and well worth a try if you have access to it. Avoid sheep and horse for this task, I prefer these poops to add new seed to pastures as these animals don’t fully digest it. 

Manure based composts are better than green waste composts, last longer and allow me a full 2 year crop rotation before I need to refresh again. I have recently trialled no manure beds and the 2^nd year was lacklustre at best. So, I’m back to collecting poop.

Layer 5 Pea Straw

After the manure, I add a new layer of carbon in pea straw. This presents different building blocks for the microbes. Apply it thick enough that the manure underneath isn’t too visible. 

Layer 6 Compost

The layer that you will grow directly into is the top layer of compost applied in a thick layer on top of the Pea Straw. This layer can be added from your personal compost. If unavailable, I go for Mushroom compost. It is a by product of the industry and has no weed seed in it.

Following this technique, you can plant straight into the compost layer with new seedlings. By the time the roots get to touch the original surface of the garden, the composting process will be complete.

Layer 6 Sugar Cane Mulch

The top layer of sugarcane mulch should be applied very thick 70-100mm, to protect soil from sun, wind and to keep the temp stable. This thick layer of protective mulch is a haven for microbes, fungi and worms.

Providing nutrient is best left to the professionals. Every 3 months I apply sugar cane mulch to the top of my garden beds or when I see exposed soil, to protect my little critters. Some mulch blew away, but most of it has added to the composting process and fed the soil. The living soil needs constant protection from the elements, or it will quickly become dirt.

Soil is Alive: Dirt is Dead

Dirt can be built back into soil, but it takes time. It’s best to keep your soil alive. Keep it wet and protected with mulch, and your plants will love you with an endless edible bounty. Neglect your soil and expose it to the elements, is like committing microbe genocide. So, let’s do our bit for soil health. If our soil is healthy and we eat from that soil, we will be healthy too. There is no down side.

Don’t waste your time on lesser methods, get your No Weed Veggie Bed on your patch of earth and grow better tucker. There is no time like right now.

Stay Awesome.

The Gordon Gnohm