The king of no dig is Charles Dowding. He has been trailing the method at his organic garden in Somerset for decades and has seen it work miracles on his crops. We asked Charles Dowding to explain the principles and benefits of no dig gardening in more detail.<\/p>\n
What is no dig gardening?<\/h2>\n
No dig is about two things:<\/p>\n
1) Minimal soil disturbance, as much as possible \u2013 unless you\u2019re planting a tree, for example, and have to dig a hole.<\/p>\n
2) Feeding the soil with organic matter on the surface.<\/p>\n
No dig is basically about copying nature, where you don\u2019t have soil disturbance and and debris falls on top, from old leaves and so on. Soil organisms come up to the surface, eat it, take it down, excrete it as food for other soil organisms \u2013 so you get a whole network building up in the undisturbed soil.<\/p>\n
The embellishment, if you like, for growing veg is to get your soil more fertile than it would be in nature. It\u2019s not a natural thing to have beautiful vegetables, so you need to feed the soil more than nature would. So putting compost on top of the soil is a short circuit of the decomposition process \u2013 it enables a rapid build up of soil fertility and rapid success, basically. You can make a no dig bed in the morning and plant it up in the afternoon, if you like.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>How big does a no dig bed need to be?<\/h3>\n
The beauty of no dig is that you can scale up or down very easily. A bed of 1.2m x 2.4m can grow a sizeable amount of food. If you\u2019re starting out, that\u2019s the size bed I\u2019d recommend. I\u2019m always saying, don\u2019t take on too much. Start out small and you\u2019ll make small mistakes.I like to think that people feel in charge of what they\u2019re doing and not feeling daunted.<\/p>\n
How do you create a no dig bed from scratch?<\/h3>\n
If you\u2019re starting on lawn, put cardboard on top as that smothers the weeds, enough to stop them growing. Then put compost on top of that \u2013 say 10cm.<\/p>\n
You can plant into that straightaway. The plants will root into the compost and eventually into the soil, once the cardboard has decomposed after around 10 weeks.<\/p>\n
What type of compost can you use?<\/h3>\n
When I say compost, I mean anything that is decomposing. I\u2019m not setting the bar too high here, as I think people believe it has to be perfect compost. But actually, especially if you\u2019re making a new bed, you can put quite lumpy stuff at the bottom as long as you have 3-5cm of fine compost on top.<\/p>\n
The origin of your compost can be anything from old manure to old leaf mould, the stuff you buy like green waste compost or mushroom compost, even really old woodchip if you can sieve out the big bits, or homemade compost.<\/p>\n
Can you use bagged compost?<\/h3>\n
Yes, if that\u2019s what you can get your hands on. And\u00a0it\u2019s fine to use an old bag of compost.<\/p>\n
One thing you don\u2019t read about is that there\u2019s a shortage of compost at the moment as so many people are gardening. And it\u2019s a bit too fresh and is still decomposing. One sign of this is that it feels warm in the bag. It\u2019s not really ready to use as it\u2019s still fermenting and is going to take nutrients for its own decomposition\u00a0 before the plants can get them. I\u2019ve had quite a few people reporting this year that they\u2019ve made new beds and put in their plants and they don\u2019t grow. Then about eight weeks later, they grow.<\/p>\n
No dig involves less weeding \u2013 can you explain why?<\/h3>\n
If you disturb the soil, it needs to recover and it will recover itself with weeds. Farmers around here say that chickweed follows the rotavator. In no dig gardens you very rarely see chickweed. There are obviously some weeds, but far fewer. You have a chance to have a zero weed garden by just regular removal very quickly, before they set seed, and then you\u2019re free to do other things.<\/p>\n
What about slugs and snails?<\/h3>\n
Pests are a massive discouragement for people wanting to grow veg. No dig, by not damaging the soil flora and fauna, allows the system of pest predators to flourish. Diggers will say that we dig the soil to expose pests to birds. If you think about that, it makes zero sense as it implies you\u2019re only exposing the pests. What about the earthworms, centipedes and spiders, and the mycchorizal network, which has been damaged?<\/p>\n
With no dig, you get fewer slugs but you\u2019ve still got to maintain the tidiness of your garden. It\u2019s something I\u2019m really big on. For example, removing the lower leaves of brassicas. It\u2019s also better to not have sides on your raised beds. If they\u2019re new, fine, but once the wood starts to decay on the inside where it meets the soil, it creates cavities in the wood that slugs live in \u2013 the perfect habitat on a sunny day, and then they come out at night and eat your plants. I\u2019m always looking for the places where they hide by day to reduce their population \u2013 not to get rid of them, as we want the toad and blackbirds that might eat them.<\/p>\n
Find the area in your garden that doesn\u2019t have much habitat around it, if possible \u2013 if you plant veg next to your herbaceous border, they probably will be slugged. This can be a challenge in a small garden.<\/p>\n
You often advise against sowing too early, and you sow most things in modules under cover first. Can you explain more about that?<\/h3>\n
I\u2019m always advising people to not sow too early! I got an email this year from a seed company on 20 February, saying it was time to sow cucumbers. I actually recommend mid April, because the plants won\u2019t get checked by cold conditions then and they\u2019ll grow fast once you get them in the ground in May. In my book, I lay out the best sowing times for each vegetable. There is a lot of misinformation out there.<\/p>\n
Can no dig work anywhere in the world?<\/h3>\n
I\u2019ve had positive feedback from people in very different climates.\u00a0 No dig is working brilliantly for a man in a tropical rainforest environment in the Philippines. He said he gets less erosion in the heavy rain and better moisture retention when it\u2019s not raining. I\u2019ve also had good feedback from the high desert of Utah, where they have very little rain. In really hot sun, I\u2019d advise putting dry grass or hay on top, to protect the compost a bit. I\u2019ve had lots of positive feedback from south India and Bangalore, and a lot from Canada and the USA. I had feedback from a lady running a rooftop garden on an office block in Singapore and she couldn\u2019t believe how much fewer weeds she had.<\/p>\n
Can no dig be applied to herbaceous border?<\/h3>\n
Totally. I think something like 80 per cent of British cut flower growers are no dig now. If you\u2019ve got a problem with couch grass or ground elder in a border, cardboard is a useful way to tame it. You can butt cardboard right up to woody stems. You can cut cardboard like a jigsaw and put a little bit of compost on top to hold it down. That will give you a lovely weed free start. The later regrowth won\u2019t be as strong and easier to remove. Weeds give up more easily when you don\u2019t disturb them.<\/p>\n
Do you think no dig is finally becoming more mainstream?<\/h3>\n
For years, it was all crop rotation and artificial fertilisers and chemicals, and looking back now, that just seems crazy and old fashioned. It\u2019s all happened in the last few years. People find it easier to change the way they look at things if a lot of other people have done it. There has been a growing environmental awareness. I noticed a big shift in 2015, which was the year of the soil. People started looking at soil as an entity in itself. When I was going to lectures in the 1980s, lecturers would say that soil was like a bank balance \u2013 nutrients in, nutrients out, like it was a holding mechanism. Plus a lot of people have heard about the myccorhizal network now.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>You\u2019ve really embraced social media and have a popular channel on YouTube. How did that come about?<\/h3>\n
I felt frustrated by the lack of media exposure from the mainstream media, so I\u2019ve embraced social media. There\u2019s a lot of bad information out there, and I want to correct it. I can go direct to gardeners with a beautiful image and an explanation of how I\u2019ve done it, and they can embrace that and try it out. It works, and they tell a friend, and it\u2019s actually building a strong worldwide movement.<\/p>\n
Tell us about the dig and no dig trial beds that you run.<\/p>\n
They really show the problems with digging I get much more weeds on the bed where the soil has been disturbed.<\/p>\n
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