Permaculture-ish Experiment

Snow's gone, so I've finally got around to giving the allotment a bit of the permaculture/no dig treatment. The idea is to try to maximise natural processes and minimise the effort that goes in. A big part of this is not walking on the soil which compacts it and ruins its structure, so I dug a couple of paths to keep feet off the beds. Then I spread compost over the bed to add organic material which the worms should process down into the soil. The last thing I did was to spread some horticultural fabric on the soil to keep weeds down. I'm going to plant through the fabric on at least one of the beds.

Here's before:



And after:



I'm not 100% sure about this approach, I have to admit - at the minute it looks very artificial and not very wildlife friendly. And I may have dug the paths a bit deep, so they may need flags or gravel in case they get muddy. We shall see...