Chop-n-drop (also written “chop n’ drop”) is a gardening technique applied widely among organic gardeners who practice permaculture and the likes.
The basic idea is to return the ‘out’ material in conventional gardening such as weeds and pruned plant waste back to the garden directly. It works as mulch and gives the nutrients back as it breaks down.
You don’t need to take the waste out and bring extra material for mulching, and it makes soil rich. Hey, what a good idea! You think so, don’t you?
I thought so. I dreamed about the beautiful picture of saving time and effort in the garden by this special technique chop-n-drop. But, after 3 years practice, I have been realizing what the reality is.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying chop-n-drop is not worth it. It is.
But my point is that the dropped material is not enough at all to mulch your bed. It is definitely better than nothing but you will need to bring much more to cover the soil effectively. So forget about your beautiful daydream to be free from weeding but take it as one of the tiny steps to make your garden more nature friendly.
Here is my garden.
It’s really weedy, isn’t it? But believe or not, I let it be so purposely.
I have been experimenting a type of natural farming – no-manure, no-till (mechanically) – in Digby, NS, Canad since 2013. I am learning the basic method called Shizen (nature) Noho (gardening/farming) from Japanese resources and combine with my North American gardening experiences such as permaculture and French intensive.
Generally a permaculture bed needs 3 to 5 years to reach the most production. Manure certainly gives the first boost so that things grow decently from the beginning. Lacking that boost, my garden has been slow but consistently improving year by year.
It seems mulching (covering the soil surface) is the key of this method. Mulching itself is already a widely practiced garden technique, but the difference is I use weeds, both dead and alive. Many people avoid it because weeds produces more weeds. I take it weeds produces more mulching material, so fairly easy with roots and seeds of most weeds.
Indeed the first year was quite a mess. Weeds were wild and I was overwhelmed. But each year it is getting better. I started to feel I am getting somewhere instead of losing my garden in the jungle of weeds.
And here is my chop-n-drop when I harvested garlics.
I chopped the roots off and peeled the dirty skin with a few outside leaves off on site. The debris was spread over the bed. You can see how sparse it is. To cover the soil completely, I did chop-n-drop with the weeds around. It is not enough so usually I go to my weed patches in the yard, chop the top and bring it in.
On the first picture, the brown area that looks like soil is actually covered with weathered weeds from previous chop-n-drop.
And my garlic was a great success this year. These are not elephant garlics but regular ones. Huge!
No manure, no irrigation.
So I say chop-n-drop has a certain potential.
Just do not expect a beautifully manicured weed-free garden applying chop-n-drop. This is more growing-bed-with-weeds method and you will need to adapt your mentality to it.