Living With The Land Part 5 - No-Dig Gardening

Growing organic vegetables commercially for over 30 years, Charles Dowding has developed a no-dig method of cultivation for temperate climate gardening.

Charles and his partner Steph Hafferty introduces us to Homeacres, his 1/4 acre market garden. Now supplying year-round salad and fresh vegetables for local restaurants, Charles took just one winter to transform it from weedy pasture using mulch and no-dig gardening.

No-dig gardening is a technique regularly used in permaculture. The use of a mulch on top of the soil mimics the leaves that drop from the trees, which then rot and are drawn into the soil by worms and microbes. In nature, soil is rarely disturbed, with all work being done by the bacteria and creatures in the soil. Charles explains the importance of soil, the beneficial bacteria and how soil disturbance reduces nutrients and affects the microbes good work.

Read more here.

How to Create a new Vegetable Garden – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

How to Create a new Vegetable Garden
Producing a beautiful and fruitful garden from scratch
by Charles Dowding
Published by Green Books, 12th February 2015
Hardcover,  224 pages, 23.5 x 16.5 x 1.8 cm
ISBN: 978-0857842442
£19.99

Charles Dowding draws on his years of experience to show how easy it is to start a new vegetable garden. Any plot – whether a building site, overgrown with weeds or unwanted lawn – can be turned into a beautiful and productive vegetable area.

In his foreword to the book Steve Mercer, former journalist for Which? Gardening magazine, says: “Charles has had years of experience growing his own veg (not forgetting fruit and ornamentals) and his advice is founded on his experimental approach to growing, which is the real strength of his latest book. It doesn't just provide advice on starting your own veg plot, but also documents in detail the first year in his own new garden. If there are alternative techniques for clearing land and building fertility, you can be sure Charles has tried them – as you would expect of a teacher and experimenter.”

This is a great book in which the author leads the reader step by step, with every chapter, from planning to running a garden, through the task of establishing a new vegetable garden from scratch, with all different methods and findings presented in a very understandable way, covering all the possible aspects and stages and various different ways of creating and establishing a new vegetable garden (from scratch) via using as example his own experiences and trials establishing a new at Newacres. Not that I would have expected anything less from Mr Dowding.

While this book, or should I better call it manual, is more or less aimed at those starting a new vegetable garden those of us who have an established garden can learn a great deals for it as well, especially as regards to the “no dig method” of gardening for which he is famous.

He proves in this book that there is no plot of land too wild to tame, nor does anyone have all the answers – if you have but a vision then this book will give you the helpful hints and tips to save you time as well as giving you the confidence to have a go and find your own solutions.

Charles Dowding won the 2014 Garden Media Guild Practical Journalist of the Year award. He has written several books including, Organic Gardening, Salad Leaves for all Seasons, How to Grow Winter Vegetables and Gardening Myths and Misconceptions. He is the leading authority on no-dig gardening as well as a gardening writer. He also grows vegetables commercially and runs popular courses for amateur gardeners.

This is yet another book that I would love to be able to give six out of five, but alas, as said so often, as this does not compute it will have to be five out of five. And let's add a star for good measure even though that, once again, does probably not work either. This is yet another book that will, as a manual, be on my bookshelf, but it will sure spend more in my hand than on the shelf, I should guess.

© 2015

Gardening Myths and Misconceptions – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Gardening Myths and Misconceptions
by Charles Dowding
Published by Green Books, March 2014
Hardback 96 pages, with illustrations
£9.99 hardback
ISBN: 9780857842046

• Have you ever wondered how certain gardening practices arose?

• Have you wondered whether they were just eyewash, but followed them anyway, because it's been too confusing to work out the kernel of truth behind it all?

• Have you ever asked yourself why containers must have pottery shards for drainage? Why cucumbers and tomatoes should not be grown together? Or why we must water only in the evening?

In this collection of common gardening myths, Charles Dowding examines how some of these practices, though started for good historical reasons, have become unbreakable rules.

Asking why gardeners are always told to do things a certain way, he debunks some of these myths and clears up some misconceptions. Based on his own vast experience, he tests the relevance of such hard and fast rules himself and radically rethinks them into simpler, quicker and more successful ways to garden.

Conventional wisdom is difficult to question, even when it is misguided and contains many contradictions. Gardening has its share of such 'myths' - some with discernible origins in history, others that have become established for no obvious reason - and they often obscure simpler and easier methods of working. This delightfully illustrated book reveals how common sense triumphs and crops are more successful when these 'rules' are overturned.

This is a fascinating but practical book that will save the seasoned gardener time and give new gardeners heart.

Beautifully illustrated, this is an invaluable book, full of good sensible gardening advice.

Being a professional gardener and – originally – a forester it is absolutely amazing the myths that we have been taught and that we have used without, all too often, questioning them. Though I have advised against staking trees for years and years but always met with resistance for colleagues with the comment that all newly planted trees must be staked; it says so. Well, it is a myth and it is best for trees not to be stakes in the great majority of cases with a few exceptions.

This is indeed a beautiful little book. Hardback bound and with its own little red ribbon bookmark. A book to keep and cherish and to give as gift.

This book will make a great gift for any gardener and with Father's Day coming up soon it might just be the ticket. It won't break the bank and even the most seasoned gardener will appreciate the information contained within the pages of this book.

Charles Dowding is an internationally recognized organic gardening expert and adviser, and author of 'Organic Gardening', 'Salad Leaves for all Seasons' and How to Grow Winter Vegetables'. He says: "I have always been interested in looking 'behind the scenes' and asking why things are as they are, and questioning practices that are taken for granted. This led me to grow organically, at a time when the chemical approach was rarely challenged." He talks on radio and television and writes for many magazines on his unique approach to gardening.

© 2014

Disclosure: I received a copy of  Gardening Myths and Misconceptions for review purposes, but all opinions here are mine.

The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.