Double Digging a Biointensive Veggie Bed

Double digging is excellent for anyone wanting to grow a large quantity of organic vegetables with limited space – and quickly! Here’s our step-by-step guide to setting up your veggie bed.

There are many ways to start a garden bed: no-dig to double digging. Each suits different situations, people and budgets; how you do it is up to you.

Double digging – the biointensive growing technique – is excellent for anyone wanting to grow a large quantity of organic vegetables in a small space, in a small timeframe. But you need to work for it.

This method is all about building beautiful deep, friable topsoil that can grow an intensive amount of good food, quickly. But to do this you need to create that soil structure yourself rather than waiting for the roots of well-chosen and tended plants, and the soil food web, to do that for you.

Tools and materials

Once you’ve designed and positioned your beds, get your tools together. You’ll need:

  • a good spade, preferably a post- hole shovel or similar;
  • a good quality garden fork;
  • a big board to lay over the bed as you work;
  • and a good rake.

You’ll also need to source some good compost to add to your bed: about four buckets per square metre is good.

Double Digging a Biointensive Veggie Bed

Double digging: The method

The aim of double digging is twofold, to create: a friable, nutrient rich topsoil to plant into; and a well loosened subsoil which allows plant roots to reach far down for water, stability and food.

Step 1

Start at one end of your bed, and work across it in strips, one shovel wide: dig a trench to the depth of your shovel all the way across the bed. Turf the soil from that first trench onto the ground beside the bed, or straight into a wheelbarrow (you’ll need it later).

Step 2

Work along that same trench with your garden fork, loosening the subsoil at the bottom of the trench to the depth of your fork, and working from behind the fork so that you don’t tread on the loosened soil.

Everyone has their own way of forking a bed, but standing on the fork and pivoting it back and forward until it sinks to its full depth works well.

Biointensive Veggie Bed

Step 3

Repeat that sequence, shovelling the top half of your second trench into your first trench, mixing it with some compost as you go and breaking up any large clods.

Move down your bed in this way, flipping each new trench’s topsoil into the previous trench. When you get to the last trench, you’ll need the first trench’s topsoil to complete the bed.

At the end of this process you will have a lumpy bed of goodness.

Step 4

Now it’s time to clean things up. Take your rake (or start with your garden fork if the clods are large) and break up the surface of the bed until it’s flat, and looks like a great seedbed for your plants.

Stand on your big board as you move down the bed, if your bed is too wide to do this comfortably from the side; the board will distribute your weight and reduce the impact on the bed.

Double Digging

And then – you’re done!

Proceed to planting or, if that’s not possible immediately, cover the bed with either hessian or 70% shadecloth until you’re ready to plant. This will protect the soil from sun and pests, and also from heavy rain washing away your precious and hard-won soil tilth.

You can find the full version of this article in issue #5 of Pip Magazine, available here.

Like more articles like this one? Subscribe to Pip Magazine’s print or digital editions here.

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