A cold, bright January day

It was perfect winter day today; cold air, a bright blue sky and a low, low sun. I love days like these. We walked to the allotment with the sun weakly warming our backs, stopping in the park to let it shine on our faces for a minute.

I love walking to the allotment on a weekend afternoon. It feels like there’s no time pressure, no hurry, no real purpose really. Just one foot in front of another for an hour there and an hour back, and a bit of pottering while you’re there. It calms me and grounds me, taking my time like that. With all that’s going on in the world and the extent of brain frazzlement that flows from it, little bits of calm like this are really important.

There’s more going on on the plot than you might think at this time of year with such short, cold and dark days: lettuces, chard, kale, broad beans and purple sprouting broccoli are all looking perfectly happy.

The spring bulbs are on their way, promising that longer, warmer days are not far away. This year even more than usual, I can’t wait for the springtime to get outside in daylight after work, start sowing seeds and seeing the garden and allotment do their amazing spring growth sprints. I bought a SAD lamp back in November and have been using it daily – I think it makes a difference and has helped me keep myself bouyant through these short dismal days. But it’s obviously not the same as being outside and growing things.

Now that we’ve adopted no-dig, there’s not very much to do on the plot at this time of year other than keep on top of the weeds so they don’t take hold before the spring and just generally keep an eye on things.

Today I sowed some broad beans in the bed where the courgettes will go – the courgettes won’t go in until late May or June, by which time the beans will be done, so it seemed like a good idea to use the ground rather than leaving it empty. I added a couple of trugs of rotted manure to help them along a bit. It seems completely implausible that seeds could germinate and grow in this cold weather but I know from experience that they do. I won’t really believe it until they start poking through the earth, though. The magic of that process never wears off for me; I love it.

I had sown some green manure seeds there, but very few of them have come up and survived so they weren’t really doing their job. It’s odd because in other beds, the green manures are romping away, covering the ground nicely, capturing nitrogen ready for the spring’s crops and building organic matter in the soil. It must have been something about the timing of my seed sowing, I guess?

Not digging feels really weird – every winter for the last 15 years I’ve dug at least some of the allotment over, adding whatever organic matter I can get my hands on. I’ve learned that while this might be fine for the soil’s chemistry, adding more nutrients, it’s terrible for soil biology and that’s actually much more important for the health and vitality of plants.

Charles Dowding has written a lot about no-dig gardening, and I very much recommend his books, blogposts and videos. But it was actually Gabe Brown’s book, Dirt to Soil, that finally convinced me to go no dig earlier this year after many years of thinking about it. In his book, he explains why it’s so important not to disturb the soil, to keep it covered, to grow diverse species and to work with nature rather than fighting it.

When you dig the soil, you destroy the habitat of the essential fungi and micro-organisms that healthy plants depend on. You stress it so that it produces more weeds, and you release more carbon into the atmosphere rather than storing it in the soil. In no-dig, you just add organic matter to the top of the soil each year and leave the worms and soil micro-organisms to do the rest.

Even after just under a year of not digging on my plot, I’ve seen more fungi blooming and the soil has absorbed a thick mulch of leafmould or compost I spread over it in spring (depending on the bed), leaving a beautifully crumbly tilth covered in piles of lovely wormcasts, even after all the wet weather we’ve had recently. I can’t wait to see what it’s like after another few years.

I do miss digging though. In the winter, digging is a brilliant way of getting outside, getting moving and getting fresh air. Afterwards I feel refreshed not just from the fresh air and exercise, but also because when I’m digging, my mind relaxes and gently processes all the stresses and worries of the week.

So, I’ve been making up for the lack of digging with plenty of walking. I’m fortunate enough to live near a lovely park that includes a bit of woodland, so I can do a really lovely circuit from my house for half an hour taking in views across London suburbia (not that pretty but at least you can see a horizon, which is enough to calm an anxious frazzled brain down a little bit), woodland, lovely big park trees and a couple of open green spaces.

With everything that’s going on in the world – another lockdown, a quite terrifying escalation of the pandemic so that our hospitals are overwhelmed, the storming of the Capitol building in Washington, the huge hardship many people are suffering as a result of successive lockdowns – I’m incredibly grateful for this local green space, and even more so for my allotment. My place of refuge, peace and connection. A place where I can touch the earth, experience the absolute magic of growing things in it and rest my frazzled brain for a while. I would be lost without it, I really would.