I grew up in an environment where it was taken for granted that you dug the garden every spring using a spade, then, a few days later, you would go over it again with a fork to remove the weeds. During that first digging you would create trenches into which you would pile organic matter. Living in a farming region there was always plenty of farmyard manure available for this purpose. The point being that the organic matter was buried, to be accessed by the roots of the plants you subsequently grew on the plot.
If there was an area on which nothing was grown during winter you might do that first dig in autumn, leaving the turned soil exposed to frost in order to help break it down. Because we had a heavy clay soil, all of this work was deemed essential. That remains the basic principle with which I still garden.
It turns out that my parents were wrong, and so am I. You don’t have to dig at all; instead you place your organic matter on the top of the soil and plant into it.
At 77 digging is noticeably hard work these days so I’m going to embrace change, leave my spade in the shed, and have a go at “no-dig” gardening. My parents would probably turn in their graves at the thought!
The same principle can be used to ensure a sustainable source of nourishing vegetables to replace the vast numbers that are imported over huge distances.
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Frank Parker's author site 
That will save my back! I guess the worms will soon pull it underground
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A great plan!
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I followed those gardening links in your text, and what I saw reminded me of how I successfully raised potatoes by sowing the seed pieces directly on the surface and covering them with a thick layer of straw. At harvest time, I pulled off the straw, and the new potatoes were lying there, easy to pick up.
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That’s how they were grown in Ireland prior to the Great Famine.
https://franklparker.com/2016/07/09/final-solutions-the-road-from-scapegoat-to-genocide/
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Nature doesn’t plough, doesn’t dig, doesn’t hoe and doesn’t weed. It relies on gravity and sunshine to grow things in balance and those things seem to be quite able to take care of themselves and still feed the natural world adequately.
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I learnt something new today. Thanks for the insight. 🙂
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I’m glad!
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I have to laugh. Despite being just a few years younger, I’m past seventy and my wife will arrive there soon. She gave up on gardening even before we moved to New Mexico. We live on a rocky hill–for which the electric company took an hour per foot to set poles (six hours per pole). No gardening here. Oh we could do raised beds, but the deer and sundry other critters would enjoy the plantings whatever they might be.
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Wow. Did not know this. Thank you for sharing
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This is a great story Frank thank you! I’m going to try it. My back has been taking great strain while planting at our home by the sea. Much of the soil is quite clay-ey and digging and turning the soil is HARD WORK. At a nursery this afternoon I asked a man about this clay-ey ‘soil’ – he said bark chips first layer, then compost. Makes sense – protect the roots that way along with organic waste ..
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I hope it works out for you!
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