How we grow no dig vegetables in the Mediterranean
Growing vegetables in the Mediterranean can be challenging due to the intense heat and long dry spells.
Traditional no-dig garden beds that work well in cooler climates, where compost serves as both mulch and growing medium, often fail under these conditions.
The harsh sun quickly dries out the compost, making it hydrophobic, and preventing effective moisture retention and nutrient uptake.
This can be incredibly frustrating, leading to wilting plants and poor yields.
I've seen this first-hand, having run a no-dig farm in France for five years, and now tending to a no-dig garden in Portugal for the past two years.
Adapting no-dig gardening methods to suit the Mediterranean climate has been a journey of trial and error.
But there is good news.
With the right adjustments, no-dig gardening can be highly effective, even in hot, dry climates.
By implementing a few strategic changes, you can create a thriving, productive garden.
In this article, I’ll share 7 tips that will help you grow no-dig vegetables successfully in the Mediterranean heat.
But first, what exactly is no-dig gardening again?
What is no-dig gardening?
No-dig gardening is a no-till approach to growing food where you leave the soil undisturbed.
Instead of tilling or turning the soil, you focus on layering organic materials on top.
This method promotes healthy soil structure and biodiversity, enhances natural soil processes, and helps with nutrient cycling.
One of the biggest benefits of no-dig gardening is that it improves the soil's ability to retain moisture, which is especially important in hot climates like the Mediterranean.
It also helps reduce weed growth by covering the soil with mulch and organic matter.
Plus, it saves you a lot of physical effort and time once the garden is in place.
However, gardening in a hot climate is different from gardening in a cooler one, and the approach needs to be adjusted to suit the harsher conditions.
Where we installed our garden on our homestead, we’ve had a real challenge with our soil.
It was extremely compact and poor, making it difficult to get our garden going.
But now, after spending a ton of time and resources on improving the health of the soil, it's finally starting to become how we like to see it.
We regularly add compost and organic matter to enrich the soil, and I have to say, we've also been secretly getting help from moles.
In fact, they’re starting to become a bit of a problem.
They’ve destroyed so much of the garden, including our beloved kiwi vine, much of our lettuces, and many of our root crops.
Since this specific area is the most hydrated part of our land, the moles tend to stick around more.
It’s a bit of a situation.
On one side, they are amazing because they help loosen and aerate the lower soils, create tunnels, and improve water and oxygen infiltration.
On the other hand, we’re losing a lot of food to them.
So, for now, we let them be because ultimately they’re improving our soil and getting rid of the hardpan, which means they’re preparing our garden soil and making it amazing for years to come.
But once their job is done, we do have to come up with a solution to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.
Anyways, now that you understand the basics of no-dig gardening and its benefits, let's dive into the seven most effective tips for growing no-dig vegetables in the Mediterranean heat.
I'll compare practices in the Mediterranean to those in cooler temperate climates, share what we currently do, and explain how these methods are working.
Tip 1: Protect your soil with mulch
Essentially, that’s the whole concept of no-dig gardening.
It is to cover the soil with a thick layer of organic matter in the form of compost.
But in the Mediterranean climate, using compost as mulch, completely exposed to the sun, is not a good idea.
The reason is simple.
Since the sun is so harsh here, and we get long periods with no rain at all, it dries the compost out extremely fast.
In fact, it becomes so dry, that it very quickly turns hydrophobic.
This means that the compost will repel water instead of absorbing it.
This prevents soil organisms from thriving and locks up nutrients, making them unavailable to plants.
When compost dries out, it forms a crust that water can't easily penetrate, leading to inefficient watering and nutrient uptake.
This not only stresses your plants but also disrupts the soil ecosystem, making it difficult for beneficial microorganisms to survive and support the health of your plants.
In this climate, if your soil isn’t protected, it will quickly dry out and overheat.
In fact, depending on your soil type, it can be so bad, that it turns your soil quite literally into something as hard as concrete.
Which is what happens with our soil, if it’s completely exposed.
Not ideal to grow vegetables.
To help with this, we need to protect our soil and use a thick mulch layer.
This is going to help retain moisture, regulate soil temperature, and protect your plants better from the heat.
In this specific garden, we still follow the same principle of creating our beds with a thick layer of compost (of roughly 20 centimeters - 8 inches) but after that, we also cover the compost with an additional thick layer of mulch, like straw or woodchips.
This double layer helps to keep the soil cool and moist, which allows us to grow great veggies, even in the intense heat we get here.
In our market garden, which was in a much cooler climate, the compost mulch we used was primarily used for weed control, moisture retention, and feeding the soil food web.
But in those conditions, we didn’t have to use mulch like woodchips or straw on top of the compost.
In fact, this could cause huge problems with snails and slugs, that thrive in these conditions.
However, we did cover our pathways with woodchips at the time and it worked out great.
But if you’re in an overly wet climate and have to deal with lots of slugs and snails, you might want to consider mulching your pathways with compost as well.
This is what Charles Dowding does in the UK, and his results speak for themselves.
Right now, here on our homestead, we use a thick layer of organic mulch on top of the compost.
More specifically, we use untreated pine bark woodchips.
The straw available in our area comes from conventional farms in Spain and is treated with all sorts of herbicides and pesticides.
The pine bark chips, on the other hand, are untreated and sourced directly from the sawmill.
Many people worry that using woodchips will deplete the soil of nitrogen.
However, as long as the mulch is not mixed into the soil, this is not an issue.
During the wetter, cooler seasons, the woodchips will naturally break down into excellent compost, providing plenty of nutrients for the plants.
As the wood chips decompose over time, they will create what’s known as fungal-based soil, which is generally more suitable for trees and shrubs.
Vegetables, being mostly annual plants, supposedly do better in bacterial-based soils.
But we've found that vegetables also thrive in these conditions.
And the gardens of Jean Pain, who is maybe better known for his compost-based bioenergy system in the south of France, which has a climate similar to ours, show that vegetables can flourish in fungal-dominated soils.
So, it’s just a slight change in the approach we take compared to our previous farm, but last year, when we didn’t have the woodchips on the beds, the gardens were in a much worse condition.
And this year, things are actually doing much better.
So, we’ll definitely keep going forward with this approach.
Tip 2: Use shade to protect your plants
The sun can be extremely hot here, and when temperatures rise, it can literally scorch your plants, causing a lot of heat stress and even sunburn.
When plants get too much sunlight, they can start showing signs of stress like stunted growth, leaf burn, and just overall poor health.
And, it’s quite frustrating to see your hard work suffer because of something as simple as too much sun.
To help with this, one effective way to protect your plants is by installing shade.
And that is something we don’t have much of yet.
But the easiest way to do this is by using shade cloths, which is what we’ve installed on our greenhouse.
These can provide necessary protection from the intense sun, which will help your plants stay healthier and more productive.
The midday sun here can be relentless, and without some form of shade, it’s tough for plants to thrive.
Unfortunately, we haven’t yet installed shade cloths in our gardens, but it’s something we might do in the future if we see that it would significantly improve our production.
However, those of you who remember our market garden in France will know that we used to grow our no-dig vegetables under the canopy of trees.
And we’ve had such amazing experiences with that setup that we’re now trying to replicate it here in our new garden.
In France, the trees provided a perfect natural shade for our veggies, protecting them from the harsh midday sun and creating a microclimate that kept the soil cool and moist.
The results were great, and the plants thrived.
I also loved the synergy between the trees and the vegetables, where one provides shade and the other can benefit from it.
Inspired by that success, we’ve now planted bare-rooted fruit trees in this garden, including an apricot tree, a peach, a nectarine, and a cherry tree.
These trees are still young, but as they grow, they’ll create a beautiful canopy over our vegetable beds.
We’ll probably add a couple more trees at a later stage to improve this natural shading system.
Eventually, these trees will provide dappled shade to our veggie garden, giving the tender plants a much-needed break from the intense Mediterranean heat.
When doing something like this, it’s important to consider the behavior of the root systems of different trees.
Some trees have very aggressive roots that can take over the place, and compete for water and nutrients with your vegetables.
So, as you choose your trees, make sure to figure out first how they’re behaving, and plan accordingly.
Ultimately, this setup is going to help protect our vegetables from the intense sun and next to that, it’s also going to add another layer of benefit.
The fruit trees themselves, once they’ll mature, will produce an abundance of delicious fruits, that will only make our garden even more productive.
It’s a win-win situation: the veggies get the shade they need to thrive, and we get a diverse harvest from the fruit trees as well.
So, if you're in a hot climate, think about using some sort of shading system.
Whether it’s with shade cloths or under trees, it’ll be a big help for your garden.
Tip 3: Choose the right vegetable varieties
Here in a Mediterranean-type climate, everything is green in winter, and dry and barren looking in summer.
The cool and humid winter months are great for growing lots of leafy vegetables, including brassicas.
Whereas in summer, it becomes quite difficult to grow them and we need to focus on completely different plants.
That’s why it’s so important to choose the right vegetables and varieties and plant them at the right times of the year.
The biggest advantage we have now, compared to our previous farm in France, is that our growing season is much longer than we were used to.
And by planning the last plantings of fall correctly, even winter can be an amazing time to grow food here.
With temperatures not going far below zero, and with a little bit of planning, we can have 8 months of the year where temperatures are really pleasant for gardening.
The other 4 months, generally from June to September, and sometimes even into October, temperatures can be really high, and there's no drop of rain.
These are the months we really have to have varieties that can withstand these conditions.
During these more challenging months, we need to focus on selecting and planting varieties known for their resilience in hot and dry conditions.
By choosing heat and drought-tolerant vegetable varieties, we can achieve much better survival rates and productivity during extreme heat and dry spells.
It’s a simple yet effective way to make your garden more resilient and less dependent on constant watering.
Especially on our land, it's essential we choose vegetables that can withstand high temperatures and dry spells.
Some good examples include corn, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and okra.
These plants thrive in the heat and can continue producing even when water is relatively scarce.
Also, some varieties of Swiss chard and certain types of beans are also more resilient in hot weather, and they’re doing great in our garden.
Finding the right varieties and types of plants during these challenging months can take a couple of years.
The best way I’ve found to figure this out quickly is to talk with growers in your area and use seed companies that are in similar climates to you.
From there, you simply research and experiment with different varieties to find the ones that perform best in your specific conditions.
Every garden is unique, so what works well for one may not be as successful in another.
Right now, we’re trying out many different varieties of lettuce, tomatoes, and all sorts of crops, and we take note on what thrives and what doesn’t.
Like this, each year we select the winners of the previous season and each season becomes more abundant and productive as you find the varieties and plants that do well during different times of the year.
Tip 4: Use drip irrigation for efficient watering
Traditional watering methods can waste a lot of water and often fail to deliver moisture efficiently to plant roots.
This leads to dry soil, stressed plants, and higher water bills, which can be frustrating and costly.
On our farm in France, we’ve always used overhead irrigation in our outdoor gardens.
And it worked perfectly.
But right now, in these gardens, this isn’t exactly the most effective or best option to irrigate our beds.
Instead, the best option we have during the hotter months of the year is using drip irrigation.
Drip irrigation systems are a great solution because they deliver water directly to the roots.
They’re very effective and considerably reduce the amount of waste and give all our plants the exact hydration they need.
This method is particularly effective during summer here in our hot and dry climate.
In more temperate climates, drip irrigation is beneficial but not as critical as in hotter areas.
And personally, on our farm in France, we’ve only used them in our greenhouse to irrigate our tomatoes and cucumbers.
In these cooler regions, which typically have more consistent rainfall and lower temperatures, overhead irrigation can be more effective.
It certainly is better to help germinate direct seeded crops.
However, drip irrigation still offers the advantage of precise water delivery and reduced waste, making it a good practice in any climate.
Right now, on our homestead, we’ve installed both a drip system as well as an overhead irrigation system.
Every bed here has four lines of drip that water our plants directly at the root zone.
Plus, since we’ve covered them under the mulch (which protects them from the sun), the water stays relatively cool in the pipes.
This approach has significantly reduced our water waste and makes sure that our plants maintain consistent moisture levels, even during the hottest parts of the year.
But, we do use overhead as well.
Tip 5: Use overhead irrigation for cooling
In temperate climates, overhead irrigation is primarily used for regular watering rather than cooling.
These regions don't typically experience the same level of extreme heat, so the primary goal of overhead irrigation here is to make sure there’s even water distribution rather than temperature control.
In the Mediterranean, however, where the heat can be particularly intense, we now mostly use our overhead irrigation for cooling purposes during the hot summer months.
Extreme heat can stress plants, causing reduced growth and yield.
When plants are exposed to high temperatures, they may wilt, scorch, or even die, which can significantly impact the overall productivity of your garden.
One solution I’ve found effective for this problem is using overhead irrigation during the hottest part of the day.
By sprinkling water over the plants during the hottest hours, you can help lower the temperature of both the plants and the soil, providing much-needed relief from the harsh sun.
A lot of people think that if you water during the heat of the day, it can quicker lead to sunburn, but I believe that to be a myth.
We haven't noticed anything like it, and if anything, in our experience, it has only helped improve our production.
However, it's important to use overhead irrigation with limits.
Using this method too much can make the area too humid, which might lead to plant diseases.
To avoid this, we use overhead irrigation only when necessary and we closely monitor the humidity levels in our garden.
We typically use it once a day during the hottest times of the year, usually in the early afternoon.
This schedule allows the plants to dry before nighttime.
This simple technique can make a big difference in keeping a healthy garden in a hot climate.
Tip 6: Optimize your watering schedule
Just as it’s important to use the right type of irrigation, it’s also important to have a good watering schedule.
In hot climates specifically, high temperatures can cause water to quickly evaporate, which leads to water loss and under-hydrated plants.
And so far, we've found that the key to maintaining a healthy garden in these conditions is consistent and strategic watering.
To address this, we do a deep watering of our garden automatically each morning using a drip irrigation system on a timer.
This makes sure our plants get the needed water directly at the roots before the day's heat kicks in.
Then, in the early afternoon, we use overhead irrigation for cooling.
This helps to reduce the heat stress on our plants and keeps the overall garden environment more comfortable during the hottest parts of the day.
This approach, in combination with the mulch, using the right heat-resistant varieties, and eventually, the shading from the trees, allows us to grow great vegetables despite the challenges of a hot climate.
On extremely hot days, it is possible that your garden will need additional deep watering once or twice per week at night.
This helps keep the soil sufficiently watered and moist, even during long periods of extreme heat.
And that’s something we do as well.
We closely monitor the soil moisture levels and adjust our watering schedule as needed to keep our plants healthy and productive.
However, we do want to avoid watering any of the foliage of more sensitive crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and others that don't like it when their foliage is wet for too long.
Excess moisture on the leaves of these plants can make them more susceptible to diseases.
So, it's best to use drip irrigation for these sensitive crops to get water directly to the roots without wetting the leaves.
Optimizing your watering schedule and using both drip and overhead irrigation at the right times of day can greatly improve the health and productivity of a garden in a hot climate.
And so far, we like the results we’re getting.
Tip 7: Create Windbreaks & Microclimates
In hot climates, wind can be a major factor in drying out your soil and stressing your plants.
To protect your garden from hot, drying winds, creating some kind of windbreak is a must, especially if your gardens are too exposed (as is the case for us).
Windbreaks can help to reduce the wind speed, which in turn minimizes soil erosion, reduces water loss through evaporation, and protects plants from wind damage.
In fact, I remember our first year on this land, right after we had completed all the major earthworks.
Most of the soil was exposed, and there was no protection from the wind at all.
During that time, we experienced several smaller tornadoes, that were quite strong, showing us just how important good windbreaks are.
So, right now, on our homestead, we’ve tackled this challenge by planting a windbreak on the exposed side of our garden.
But we didn’t want just any windbreak.
We wanted one that would be productive and beneficial to our homestead.
So, we selected a variety of trees and shrubs that in time will effectively break the wind, but also provide us with a bounty of fruits and nuts.
Our windbreak now includes hazelnuts, almonds, apples, cherries, strawberry trees, pomegranates, feijoas, and much more.
These plants are all strategically placed to eventually form a dense barrier that slows down the wind before it reaches our vegetable garden.
Which is going to help reduce the stress on plants, maintain higher soil moisture levels, and ultimately lead to a healthier and more productive garden.
And secondly, as these plants mature, they provide us with a variety of fruits and nuts, improving our self-sufficiency.
So, it not only is going to protect our garden but it’s also contributing to biodiversity and offers additional harvests.
Which is awesome.
If you want to do something similar, when planning your windbreak, you’ll need to consider the mature size of the plants, their growth habits, and their compatibility with each other.
It’s also important to note that the effectiveness of a windbreak can be influenced by the height, density, and length of the plantings.
A well-designed windbreak can reduce wind speed for a distance of up to ten times the height of the tallest trees.
Apart from some short-term biomass species, in our case, we haven’t included any extremely large canopy trees.
Instead, we planted shorter sub-canopy species that are tall enough to help block the wind but will not become so large that they will overshadow the garden and dominate the space.
This is a great strategy for protecting your garden in hot climates.
It provides a dual benefit of wind protection and food production, that will make our homestead only more resilient and productive in the long run.
So, if you haven't yet considered windbreaks, now might be the perfect time to start planning one for your garden.
Next Steps
These are the 7 tips that allow us to grow no-dig vegetables in the hot Mediterranean climate.
While gardening in a hot climate requires some adjustments, these strategies will help keep your gardens healthy and productive.
By focusing on:
protecting your soil with mulch
using shade to protect your plants
choosing the right vegetable varieties
using drip irrigation for efficient watering
using overhead irrigation for cooling
optimizing your watering schedule
creating windbreaks and microclimates…
…you can create a productive and resilient garden even in challenging conditions.
It’s all about working with the environment, not against it.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to improve your current setup, these tips can help you achieve a thriving garden in a hot climate.
Thank you for reading this article.
I hope it was helpful.
Happy gardening & Till next time,
Moreno
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