It has taken me a very long time to write this article! Mainly because what I learned on Charles Dowding’s No-Dig Gardening course covered pages of my notebook but also because I spent an inordinate length of time watching his Youtube videos which each give an enormous amount of USEFUL information, and partly because I bought some of his books and haven’t been able to put them down! Principally No-Dig Children’s Gardening Book and Gardening Myths.
Charles Dowding is a simple man. Simple = the opposite of complicated. His gardening philosophy is very simple – copy what Nature has always done and you’ll be fine. Watch how leaves die back on plants and trees and fall to the ground to create the nurturing soil of the future. He offers free and subscription videos on Youtube and he gives one day, two-day and online courses – all with his gentle, calm and exhaustive knowledge, gained over running his market garden near Castle Cary for 40 years and his No-Dig courses for the last ten years.
He is also a worried man. “Food is getting more precious, more serious,” he says. “I’m concerned about food production in the future.” The message is to produce your own – it’s not difficult, and it is SO rewarding.
I attended his one-day No-Dig (ND) course in mid April. Two students from Berlin and others from Gloucestershire, Sussex and central London made the pilgrimage to Homeacres, just outside Castle Cary. Pilgrimage is the right word: students are fanatic followers of his every word; one girl was upset that she wasn’t at home to sow the seeds he recommended for that particular day in his colourful and very useful Calendar. He reassured her that she could do the job the next day.
Everything hinges on compost, whose corner I have personally been fighting for over 50 years since my father separated his kitchen bins into one for compost, one for paper to burn, one for glass recycling and the rest for the dustbin men. Making this friable, rich, essential material is almost as rewarding as growing the plants within it. “It is central to gardening, not just ND,” he enthuses. “It is very efficient in keeping carbon in the soil and can get rid of the gardener’s greatest enemies like couch grass, bindweed and ground elder within two years. Don’t give slugs anywhere to hide in your beds, add compost. Raised beds offer a hiding place around the edge for snails to lurk.” A pity, since I’ve just converted my veg patch to very raised beds to make weeding and harvesting easier!
If you don’t produce enough raw material - vegetable peelings and other ‘green’ kitchen waste, or grass cuttings or have access to a pony’s rich production - collect coffee grounds from your local café, ask for grass mowings from the cemetery or sawdust from a joiner, put in broken up cardboard and shredded paper. Add fine wood chippings – or if the supplier gives you bigger pieces, run your lawn mower over the pile. Add everything – citrus, mildewed and blighted leaves. If it’s too moist, add paper; if too dry, add water. Use lots of cardboard (he has unending supplies from his publisher) and add woodchip on top. You only need to turn the compost heap once, after about six weeks, then leave it, covered, to dry out; once sieved, you will have perfect rich, friable, essential food for the earth. Nothing more is needed – certainly don’t add any chemicals or fertilisers. Spread the compost after the last autumn harvest and before Christmas; give it a light raking in the spring – and get sowing. Once the compost is spread on top, you can walk on it to firm it in.
Dowding himself can only create two thirds of his own compost, so buys it in from the local recycling company. He’s wary of the quality – it might contain some chemicals from other people’s garden waste. He also has suppliers of spent mushroom compost but doesn’t add it to the heap if it is still hot – it won’t be ready.
All the nourishment needed for a perfect growing medium is already there – compost doesn’t leach nutrients. “Don’t believe what you hear or read,” he says. “Don’t put stones in the bottom of pots; don’t plant out til the growth is quite strong, but you also don’t need to ‘harden’ the plants; don’t ‘rest’ or ‘fork’ the soil – you disturb the mycorrhizal roots. Digging can also make drainage worse, so only use a spade to dig up woody weeds – docks, couch grass, dandelions etc. There is no need to rotate plants – he has grown potatoes in the same bed for eight years and the harvest is still great. As mentioned above, his
Gardening Myths and Misconceptions is reassuring as well as amusing.
When sowing, put four seeds of onions, beetroots, turnips or carrots in one seed module tray (he has sourced robust plastic module trays which you can buy on the course, along with a sturdy dibber and any of his 11 books). Plant the root module in its place in the bed then later, twist the largest gently to harvest; the others will remain and continue to grow. There is no need to ‘pot’ on. Leave carrots, parsnips, spinach, parsley, fennel and onions to go to seed and potato plants in the ground – they will grow and produce their own seeds for the following years.
To start from scratch in a field or weedy bed, you need to exclude light. If you are just using cardboard, add a two inch layer of compost on top and plant straight away; if you need to use black plastic, put the compost on top of the earth and plastic on top of that; make holes in the plastic and plant straight away. Spuds and spinach respond well to this method.
Dowding permanently maintains a dig and No Dig bed next to each other to compare; every year, ND has stronger growth. He has always grown poppy seeds and rye for his homemade bread which was served at our lunch - utterly delicious, accompanied by six different dishes using vegetables grown on site. Unsurprisingly, he has published his No Dig Cookbook.
Wise words fell from his heart all throughout the day. “It’s not what you know, it’s what you understand.
“Leave the soil undisturbed and feed its life on the surface.
“That’s gardening; you never stop learning and nothing is exactly the same year after year.“
Wise words indeed.
www.charlesdowding.co.uk