We are a group of Product Design and Manufacture-students at the University of Nottingham, and our latest group project brief is to design an innovative rotavator. None of us have much experience with this tool, or gardening in general, so we need to do some research on the target audience for this product.. which is you!
Basically we need some general information on how often you use your garden, where you store your tools, what you use your garden for, etc. We have made a short, anonymous survey of 8 straight-forward questions which we hope you will answer for us.
The more answers we get, the better we can design the product! :) We can post up pictures of the final design when we are done (end of March) if anyone are interested.
No-till Gardening: Sustainable Alternative to the Rototiller
No-till or no-dig gardening is a method of preserving the natural integrity of the soil. It preserves soil structure, promotes biological activity, and preserves soil fertility. All of this is compromised by cultivation. Here I will explore the ?Why¹ and ?How To¹ of No-Dig gardening.
³If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.² Masanobu Fukuoka [1] What is No-Dig Gardening? Origins. The origin of no-dig gardening is sometimes attributed to Australian writer and conservationist, Esther Deans [2] who outlined a method of piling mulch over newspaper to prepare garden beds for planting. The mulch suppresses weeds, conditions the soil, and invites natural soil making processes. Others attribute the invention of no-dig gardening to Japanese Microbiologist, Masanobu Fukuoka who advocated a method of natural soil building in this book, The One-Straw Revolution [1]. The Permaculture movement, a world-wide organization promoting natural gardening or no-dig techniques [3] embraces both Esther Deans and Masanobu Fukuoka¹s work. In the United States origins are more apt to be attributed to Ruth Stout [4] [5] [6] who advocated fighting weeds by piling on a mulch of straw, pine straw, leaves, and compost. The thicker the mulch, the greater was the deterrent to weeds. Updated versions are Patricia Lanza¹s Lasagna Gardening [7] and Lee Reich¹s Weedless Gardening. [8] No-Dig garden writers are profiled in Shapiro and Harrisson¹s Gardening for the Future of the Earth. [9]
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