No-Dig Organic Food (how to grow your own)
Of course, all no-dig gardeners know that Charles Dowding is the man to go to, for extensive advice. His website has a beginner’s guide (which you can convert to pdf. and print) that covers all the basics, and he has many videos on his YouTube channel if you prefer ‘moving pictures advice’. He also has an online beginner’s course‘
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers and fruit trees are not safe). Also avoid netting to protect food (just leave some for wildlife!)
Avoid facing indoor plants to outside gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
No-Dig Children’s Gardening Book is a fun easy book to grow own organic food (forget that it’s for children, this simple illustrated guide is good for everyone and much easier to understand!)
This book begins with an overview of no-dig gardening and healthy soil. Then learn how to create a no-dig garden bed in a day, and what to plant in it. You’ll learn how and when to sow common garden vegetables, along with tips to grow giant sunflowers!
You’ll also learn of the benefits of no-dig gardening to native wildlife, and how to create a no-dig market garden in your community. Plus learn how to save your seeds for next year, so you can plant them again, without having to buy more at garden centres.
Grow Together condenses 40 years of experience to create 50 proven companion planting combinations, so you know what to plant next to each other, for better harvests (this naturally deters unwelcome visitors to avoid chemicals or harming native wildlife).
Learn where to plant carrots, lettuce, fennel, spinach, garlic, coriander, broad beans, asparagus, cucumbers, peas and strawberries!
The New Natural Food Garden (create a bountiful harvest)
The New Natural Food Garden is a wonderful guide to grow a bountiful harvest of vegetables, in harmony with your environment and suited to your region. From starting seeds, to harvesting and storing produce.
The authors (who have taught thousands of people to grow their own organic food) share decades of experience, using gardening techniques and practices rooted in permaculture.
They’ll teach you how to create a garden that suits your growing conditions, and empower you to make your own choices:
- Turn unused lawn areas into food-growing spaces
- Decide how much to plant, and where
- Create rich topsoil in just six months
- How to transplant baby plants!
- Select and make the best fertilisers
- Use the most efficient harvesting methods
- Plant, grow and harvest 36 common vegetables
What is No-Dig Gardening?
No-dig gardening (called ‘no-till’ in North America) is the new way of growing food, that does away with spades and forks, and instead uses clever methods including mulching, to grow food in good soil, without the back-breaking work of digging.
This has the added benefit of not disturbing garden creatures like earthworms (that do most of the work in organic gardening) and baby endangered stag beetles (those big grubs you sometimes see in soil).
The method has been made popular by Somerset gardener Charles Dowding, who grows all his own organic food, teaches others and has written many best-selling books on the subject. He says that it’s also important to share some food with wildlife – he writes that occasionally rabbits ‘wave at him past the window’ as they help themselves to a little of his organic bounty!
Most gardening books focus on digging up soil (hard work and kills wildlife), then adding all kinds of chemicals and fertilisers to make the soil healthy. Just like junk food, the soil then becomes addicted to ‘receiving help’.
No-dig gardening focuses on preserving good soil by boosting nature (worms, retaining water, cycling nutrients etc). This leads to not just easier maintenance by also less watering and weeds, and locking carbon in the soil to prevent climate change, and produces bigger harvest yields.
Garden Organic has a good simple post on how to start a no-dig garden (or create one on existing soil). It says to avoid suppressing weeds with plastic or carpet (most has chemicals that would leach into soil).
It instead recommends a combination of mulch made from homemade compost, fully-rotted manure, leaves, straw, grass cuttings, to suppress weeds (this could take months, so be patient).
And for already-cultivated beds, again it’s simply to transfer to no-dig gardening, applying an annual mulch each autumn. Wonderful worms will do most of the work for you, rising up to eat and digest the mulch, to create black gold soil for your garden goodies! RHS also has a good post.
