How to Grow More Vegetables : And Fruits, Nuts ... - Shroomery

You can move the soil with the spade, in buckets, or by
wheelbarrow. Make as few motions and use as little muscle as
possible in this process. This will conserve your energy and
involve less work. In fact, as you dig the soil, you will discover
you can use an Aikido-like economy of motion and energy in
which you are virtually just shifting your balance and weight
rather than digging. (For a visual representation of this, see the
Dig It! video carried by Ecology Action’s Bountiful Gardens
international mail-order service.)
Now, standing in the trench, dig down another 12 inches
(if possible) with a spading fork, a few inches at a time if the
soil is tight. Leave the fork as deep as it has penetrated, and
loosen the subsoil by pushing the fork handle down and levering
the tines through the soil. If the soil is not loose enough for
this process, lift the chunk of soil out of the trench on the fork
tines. Then throw the chunk slightly upward, and allow it to fall
back on the tines so it will break apart. If this does not work,
use the points of the fork tines to break the soil apart. Work
from one end of the trench to the other in this manner.
Next, dig another trench behind the first one, moving each
spadeful of the top 12 inches of soil forward into the first trench.
Sometimes you will have to work over a trench a second or third
time to remove all the soil and obtain the proper trench size.
Repeat the subsoil loosening process in the second trench. Dig
a third trench, and so on, until the entire bed has been doubledug.
(When you are through double-digging, the aerated soil in
the bed will be enough to fill in the last trench at the end of the
bed, and you will have added some soil to the bed in the form of
cured compost.) It helps to level the soil with a rake after every
3 to 4 trenches during the digging process.
When you are sliding the soil forward from one trench into
another, notice two things. First, some of the compost layer
you have added to the surface of the bed before beginning to
dig slides 3 to 6 inches down into the trench creating a small
mound of soil or landslide. This approximates the way nature
adds leaves, flower bodies, and other decaying vegetation to the
top of the soil, where they break down and their essences
percolate into the soil. Second, the upper layer of soil—the top
12 inches—should not be turned over during the double-dig
and succeeding double-digs. Most of the microbiotic life lives in
the upper 6 inches of the soil. Also, the natural layering of the
soil that is caused by rainfall and leaching, leaf litter, temperature,
gravity, and other natural forces is less disturbed when the
soil is not generally mixed, even though the soil is loosened up
and disturbed somewhat. Aim for a balance between nature’s
natural stratification and the loosened landsliding soil. (As a
goal, strive not to mix the soil layers. The goal is important
even though it will never be reached and significant mixing
sometimes occurs. Without this goal, however, excessive
disruption of the soil layers will occur.)
29�
73 1 ⁄ 2 �
The U-bar (see pages 15 and 17).
BED PREPARATION 13