No Dig Gardening – From Weeds to Vegetables Easily and Quickly

Published end August 2020 – £22.50 – Hardback – 240 pages

Available to order via www.charlesdowding.co.uk Nationwide distribution

Organic pioneer Charles Dowding reveals how to create a successful ‘no dig’ garden, as well as the history of this time-saving and highly productive method of gardening, in his new book ‘Charles Dowding’s No Dig Gardening – From Weeds to Vegetables Easily and Quickly’.

Charles is a world authority on no dig vegetable gardening which involves simply mulching soil with compost, rather than laboriously digging it. With millions of views of his YouTube videos over lockdown alone, Charles’s no-frills methods resonate with novice and experienced gardeners alike.

In this highly detailed resource, which is based on the written content of his successful online course, Charles explains the concept of no dig vegetable gardening, the art of making good compost for your garden and the differences between soil and compost. He explores the history of no dig over the last 100 years, how it often challenges the gardening ‘norm’ and why only in recent years the method has become popular and valued.

Although the book is not a manual of vegetable growing, it has two chapters with detailed planting plans for small spaces based on what Charles has grown and how no dig helped to achieve these outcomes. He uses the results of growing trials at his Homeacres market garden in Somerset to show how no dig works, and questions the need, or not, to grow vegetables in a different place each year.

There is a chapter on site evaluation and planning your layout, and a section on clearing weeds by mulching, with all the associated details. Readers will also learn how to:

• Use no dig on different soil types
• Ask questions and recognise gardening myths, to save time and unnecessary effort
• Create and look after beds and paths, with a whole section on paths and their value
• Recognise and reduce different types of weeds
• Understand and use different types of mulch or soil cover
• Know the differences between soil, compost and various types of compost
• Make their own compost
• Grow an abundance of vegetables using the no dig method. There are growing plans for one bed and for a small garden, with photos and tables to illustrate the results.

The book has 19 chapters, 85,000 words and 900 photographs. Each ‘lesson’ is comprehensively illustrated with sequences of before, during and after photographs from Homeacres. Lessons finish with a multiple-choice quiz to consolidate learning. This is the ideal book for anyone wishing to learn and garden with the no dig method.

Charles Dowding’s Vegetable Garden 2021 Calendar

Monthly calendar A4 opening to A3 – £10 inc VAT 

Available nationwide in stores and via www.charlesdowding.co.uk

Illustrated calendar with photos from Charles’s garden and handy vegetable growing tips. Charles gives a vegetable growing summary for every month, plus his favourite sowing dates for each vegetable at their best times of year, based on decades of fine tuning. Use these dates to help you enjoy a regular supply of fresh produce through all four seasons.

Enjoy the seasonal beauty of his famous vegetable garden, as seen on You Tube and BBC TV Gardeners’ World, in magazines and newspapers. 32 pages printed on 200gsm Premium Gloss Paper, with 350gsm cover. Hole-punched, for hanging on a wall.

ENDS

For further information contact Emma Mason on emma@emmamasonpr.co.uk 07762 117433.

Charles Dowding has made no dig popular and is a world authority on the subject. His productive and weed-free garden illustrates the benefits simply of mulching soil to feed its microorganisms. They “turn on the tap” of making food and moisture available to our plants, as well as improving soil structure.

• Drainage and aeration improve, in an easy and long-lasting way
• The method is simple and requires less work
• The result is fewer weeds and healthier, more resilient plants
• Carbon is retained in the soil

Since 1982 he has created and cropped four no dig market gardens on different soils, from stone to silt to clay. In the 1980s he cropped 7.5 acres (3ha) of no dig beds. In the 1990s he farmed in France.

Currently he grows vegetables on 0.25 acres/1000 square metres in Somerset, SW England zone 8. He sells £20,000 of harvests locally, mainly salad leaves, and vegetables are served on courses at Homeacres.

There are two crops a year from beds which are cheap to establish and quick to maintain. Charles’s methods are easy to understand and work on small areas as well as large ones. No dig scales up and down easily.

He has written nine books and an annual calendar of sowing dates, runs a You Tube channel with 21 million views, writes for national gardening magazines, and gives talks and courses at home and abroad. He has created online courses in no dig gardening and on vegetable growing.

More information can be found at charlesdowding.co.uk

Twitter @charlesdowding 

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