Stop digging, feed the soil from the top, and grow more vegetables with less work and fewer weeds
Grow more by digging less
British grower Charles Dowding has spent more than forty years growing vegetables without digging the soil. Instead of turning the ground, he spreads compost on the surface and leaves the soil structure and its fungal life undisturbed. In this book he explains how to set up a no dig plot from scratch, keep weeds down and grow more than eighty crops through the year.
Who will enjoy it
Beginner and experienced vegetable gardeners who want healthier soil, bigger harvests and less hard labor.
What you will get
A clear, encouraging guide that turns vegetable gardening into less work and more harvest, with photographs, simple steps and advice drawn from decades of experience.
No Dig Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Nonfiction · Gardening · Vegetables · Soil health
Length
288 pages · ≈ 8 h
More about this book
Charles Dowding is the best-known champion of no dig gardening, and many gardeners know him from his videos filmed in his market garden in Somerset, England. His central idea is simple: digging damages the soil's structure and the networks of fungi and tiny creatures that feed plants, and it brings weed seeds to the surface. If you leave the soil alone and add compost on top each year, it improves on its own.
The book starts with the reasons behind the method and then becomes very practical. Dowding shows how to turn grass or a weedy patch into a productive bed by covering it with cardboard and a thick layer of compost, how to make good compost, and how to plan beds and paths. Later chapters cover sowing, raising seedlings, watering, dealing with pests and keeping the garden productive all year by planting a new crop as soon as one is harvested. Techniques such as multi-sowing several seeds per module and interplanting quick and slow crops help small gardens produce more. A large section gives advice on more than eighty vegetables, herbs and salad plants.
Calm, practical and convincing. About 288 pages, illustrated throughout with photographs.
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