Re: Double digging
Subject: Re: Square-foot Gardening
Date: 26 Jan 92 07:23:49 GMT

This is a very important gardening technique.  Basically it is the corner-stone
to the French-intensive/Bio-dynamic methods prescribed by Alan Chadwick and
applied by gardeners like John Jeavons, Mel Bartholmew?, Tom Cumbithson, etc...
It is  an effective technique to enrich, arreate, and improve soil, while
building your raised beds, without the disruption of the natural layering that
occurs in top-soils, supposedly.

The double-digging technique is described in good detail in John Jeavons, 1974
Classic "How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible on less
land
than you can imagine."  This is  a $15.00 book that has been revised and
has been in print for nearly twenty years, from Ten Speed Press.

You can order Ten Speed Press' revised 192 page guide to double digging,
companion planting, family garden planing, and practical compost techniques
directly from the publisher:

        Ten Speed Press
        P.O. Box 7123
        Berkely, California  94707
        (415) 845-8414

This is by far one of the most practical and informative gardening guides,
I have been exposed to.  It seems like the foundation that many of today's
gardening books are preaching from -- titles like "Grow Bed Gardening" and
"Square-Foot Gardening".
If you are really interested in Double Digging, you should find the book at a
library or buy it at a book store.  If you can get thorugh all the hippie
b.s. about slugs and rabbits and weeds being adorable lovable garden
companions,
you'll understand double-digging.  Althoug it is simple once you have seen it
done or tried it your-self, It seems very difficult to describe correctly.
John Jeavons provides clever pictures.

Oh yeah, another great guide to Double-digging is "Alan Chadwick's Enchanted
Garden."  This is co-written by a bunny rabbit and lacks the illustrations, or
complete index of seed-sources, but describes the gentle practices of
raised-bed gardening.