No-Dig Gardening Masterclass with Charles Dowding

This No-Dig method of organic gardening is regarded as the best way to build soil health. It’s a method that has boomed in popularity due to its success in boosting crop yields and overall garden health, as well as being easier on your back. Win-win!

Charles Dowding is reputed as the absolute Godfather of the No-Dig method and when you watch this video it’s clear to see why!
Here at Grow Veg we are advocates of the No -Dig approach to organic gardening. In this week’s episode Ben goes to pay Charles a visit and learns a few tricks of the trade from the king of No Dig.

And enjoy a no-obligation, completely free trial of the Garden Planner here:
www.GrowVeg.com/planner

To receive more gardening videos subscribe to our channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/GrowVeg

If you’ve noticed any pests or beneficial insects in your garden lately please report them to us at https://BigBugHunt.com

Today I’m at a garden I’ve been looking forward to visiting for years and I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most highly regarded vegetable gardens in the world and it’s all down to the humble yet famous gardener who’s created it over the past decadem Charles Dowding. Charles hello Oh hi Ben. For those of you who don’t know him, Charles is the absolute granddaddy of no dig or no till gardening, which is the very simplest, yet most effective way to grow vegetables that more and more gardeners are adopting. This guy has a wealth of knowledge and experience built over years of experimentation so I think we’re going to learn a few things today. I can recognize this straight away, this is the dig and no dig bed which is kind of the hub of proving your point that you don’t need to dig the soil. Why no dig for those who might not appreciate that? Well it’s partly why I’ve got this experiment here, it’s for me to learn more about soil and about digging actually cause I don’t do it much, this is the only dig bed in the whole place and it’s teaching me a lot about why I do no dig which is that we get earlier, more abundant crops as you can see this is no dig here, dig bed there. We get better drainage in wet weather, we get fewer slugs and also I had to replace quite a few lettuce on the the dug bed cause the slugs have been much more damaging there compared to here. So do you think by digging the soil you’re creating more crevices and cracks for the slugs to hide in, is that the theory here? I think it’s more to do with biology that you’re damaging things like the ground beatles, which eat slug eggs. I mean I’ve only learned that myself in the last few years, you know I’ve kind of done this without necessarily knowing all the details why but I discovered more and more of the reasons and soil analysis showing how you get a better crumb structure so that’s why rain flows through better but why it also holds moisture better and roots can get in there more easily. And I guess adding all the organic matter on top not digging it, you’re getting a lovely kind of rich spongy texture aren’t you, that sort of drains better I guess in wet weather, but also retains the moisture better. It’s fantastic for clay soils you know, people often ask, oh does no dig work on clay? But actually that’s the best soil for it cause it makes life so much easier for you and actually clay soil is really good it’s just difficult to work. [Music} Charles I can really see the difference here with these luscious kind of fullsome onions here and these guys which will catch up I’m sure, but you reckon that’s obviously cause you’ve not dug this bed and the organic mass is just added on top in what, the autumn or winter for these beds here? December. December okay. It’s kind of copying nature you know how you’ve got a leaf fall or plants dying, but it never gets dug in. It’s the same amount of compost in both beds, so that one has the compost dug in, two wheelbarrow fulls for this much and that one has it on top. But I had a PhD researcher here recently and he was looking at the carbon content of these two beds and guess what that one has a lot – 14%. 14, wow! Yeah compared to farmland would be about 2%. Wow! that’s incredible! Maybe pasture land might be 5-6%, so 14 there, but this one has 18%. 18%! that’s crazy! That’s from the same amount being added every year. So what’s happened to the 4% difference just could have gone back into the … I think it’s lost in oxidation through the digging process. So I suppose carbon is the biggest visual sign of how well this is working because it’s staying in there, that carbon staying in the soil and that’s obviously helping with all the soil life and and so on. Yeah exactly, carbon is the building block of plant growth, of everything in the soil. It’s the fuel for soil organisms so the more we can have in the soil, as I understand it anyway, the better. Makes sense! These beds here pretty much sum up the entire case for no dig or no till gardening. Charles you were telling me that this row here is forked and disturbed to help aerate it, the traditional kind of folklore if you like, and then the rest is no dig. What’s the difference here between yields? Ah well, in the first 10 years of doing this, we’ve harvested 8% less from where we fork the soil, just putting in a fork once a year to loosen or aerate. Isn’t that funny cause you feel like your gut’s telling you, well that’s the right thing to do you’re introducing air, you’re loosening it up, that has to work surely. Probably breaking the mycelial network. You know it’s it’s shattering a lot of fungal threads that we now know are really important. You say that vegetables like growing in little groups together don’t they, like companionship Yeah they’re like friends, and for me that’s companion planting if you like, you know, companionship of being close to another. Absolutely yeah. You’re a bit of a troublemaker in the vegetable growing world cause you like to blow up myths and all sorts, and one of those is crop rotation which is a little bit controversial. These potatoes here, they’ve been growing in the same piece of ground for how many seasons? This is year 10. Year 10, that’s insane! I grew up on a conventional dairy farm and and I have to almost fight myself a bit every spring I’m planting the potato in the same place and yet over 9 years of doing that the health of the plants has not deteriorated at all. I mean great harvests, the harvests haven’t gone down, and I even keep my own potato seed from the harvest to replant. I’m a bit concerned about alium leaf miner which has only just arrived here and I don’t quite know, what do we get, a new pest you know and how does one adapt to it. In fact the lettuce beyond there, that’s the eighth year in a row of lettuce in the same place, They’re super healthy plants. Last year we got 62 kilos from that amount of plants. 62 kilos! That’s like, that’s the weight of, it’s the weight of an adult isn’t it! That’s mad! This is the hub of the garden obviously and look at this thermometer it’s at 65 celsius What’s that in Fahrenheit? Well it’s very hot that’s what it is! One of the questions I want to ask, this has got so much organic matter on it and you add what, sort of an inch or 3cm every year, do you produce all of it yourself? Because obviously a lot of the foods being eaten and going off site with people. How much of it is created here and imported? By volume it looks to be about two thirds I reckon that I’m making. Of that I’m actually importing some wood chip to make it as well, so the materials, it might be about half the materials coming from here, which is not coming only from the vegetable garden, but hedgerows that we cut and also Ben, I’m totally happy to put weeds on the compost heap like docks, buttercups, I guess when it’s getting up to that sort of temperature. Well that helps but actually I’ve done bindweed in a cold compost heap and it’s not Invincible you know, it will if you keep putting new stuff on top even if your heap’s not hot eventually it runs out of juice. I guess so yeah. But that’s pretty good though, like half the material. And yeah I’m happy and I’m selling a lot and you know my customers don’t return their their poo obviously. What I find with these heaps here cause this is quite a big operation, bigger than most people might want in their gardens and these get a bit too hot and a bit anaerobic in the middle and that’s why I got this pipe here. I see get some air in there. Yeah particularly once we finished adding which will be fairly soon. I don’t know if you can see it look, steam coming out there. Cook your porridge in there I’m sure! We use the same principle and we turn only once but that helps to get a bit more air in. But I’ve got the pallet bays up there. Oh yes, yes. We line the sides with cardboard that helps to keep the warmth and moisture in. It’s beautifully low tech isn’t it cause these you can pick up pretty cheaply, pretty widely available just about still, cardboard obviously, plenty of Amazon deliveries and then you’ve got your stuff. The only difference, well it’s smaller, but also it hasn’t got a roof over while we’re making it. I really value the roof to keep the rain out. I see, so once you filled it then the roof goes on. Exactly. So how old is this stuff in here then? This is six or seven months. Right, wow! Look at that. Is it weird to say it just smells so beautiful. Look at that. And some worms in there. Yeah they’re turing it into worm cast. Properly alive. So that’s what we turned into here, from there, about two months ago and this one was the heap that was being made while that was happening and has now been maturing for about six weeks since we finished it. We’ll turn that from here on to the middle. [Music] What’s under here Charles? It feels like we’re unwrapping a beautiful present. This my wormery. Oh yeah, wow! Anaerobic coming in. So I’m giving them anything really, stuff which is half decomposed, The result I want is the worm cast cause I’ve noticed with potting compost it really improves if you can get some. I see, so this is super, super concentrated compost. Full of enzymes and you know when you’re making potting compost you need it concentrated cause you’re not using much, and one little cell is growing amazing plants, so the worm casts are brilliant for that but only about 10%, I just keep it in balance as far as possible and actually here in this bin we’ve got some of this compost as well as some of our other homemade compost. Oh wow! And apart from being a bit wet it’s looking pretty nice. Looks gorgeous, wow. I see you’ve obviously had to put up the armory like everyone else against pests and you’ve got this here for what carrot fly obviously? Also rabbits actually. I’ve got rabbits here and this is definitely one of their favorite foods so it’s standard Enviromesh and before that I lost the first showing here to slugs. Oh really, it’s reassuring to know that you lose crops to pests like that as well. I see very few, but I do find carrots are the most difficult aren’t they, the seeds are so tiny. Sometimes you have to resow a few times to pick that window of when finally they’ll take off. Absolutely and as you can see it’s mostly successful this time. One of my big problems is leaf miner. My chard and beetroot every year, it’s more cosmetic but it is just relentless. Yeah, I don’t have an answer for that. But I do find here, maybe because it’s a bit bigger garden, it kind of dilutes the pests. Do you think a bit more air flow as well helps, blow them through? Absolutely, and the same with carrot root fly even, actually I think more wind blowing through can be good, so in a small garden it’s more difficult. Mine’s very sheltered so I think that’s the problem. [Music] Charles, I see we’ve got some rust here on the garlic, do you think these will come good? They’re pretty healthy plants otherwise aren’t they. They’ve grown very well yeah, they went in the ground on the 30th September actually and I sowed mustard at the same time which grew up really fast You can see kind of residues of it here can’t you? Yeah that’s it, killed by frosts. And you’ve also got celeriac in there as well, it’s really cramming so much in, this is amazing. Yeah absolutely pack it in. But the rust, I was stripping a bit off here, horrible isn’t it? Yeah. But it’s just depressing the final harvest cause it means there’s less green leaves on the plant. But because they’ve had a long time to grow and they’ve got quite fat stems, so I’ll get a harvest ok. But I’ve got some in the polytunnel which I do deliberately cause it doesn’t get so much rust in there and they’re definitely bigger and stronger and they’ll mature anyway. Its just the sheer moistness of the air out here do you think? It’s something like that actually yeah, constant rain in the spring seems to make it worse. At least we’ll be getting a good crop from them nevertheless. Charles this is such a beautiful area, but you’re telling me this was pasture just, what, three or four months ago? Yeah late January, now it’s 20th May. So basically what we do is actually mow it a bit first that’s just to make the ground easier to level out the compost. I got a two ton lorry drop two tons of green waste compost in the middle there so actually that made it quite quick to spread maybe just over an inch or so, inch and a half and then another lorry came along with two cubic meters of mushroom compost which also is spread on top. Which one’s superior in your opinion and and why the mix? Well I prefer the mushroom compost it’s got a bit more nutrition but green waste compost varies so much and actually the guy who brings mine is pretty good, very little plastic. It’s seived to 10mm so it’s quite fine. Then we put the plastic on top but because even in February in the warm February the weeds were growing through that much compost which is about 3 inches maybe and so already you could see they were just reestablished cause you know we’re going from a really weedy parcel of strong plants to this and so the plastic is just making sure the weeds die. Earlier this week, I have help here, I got a full-time guy and and another helper some days so they rolled back the plastic and what did we find? just like tons of slugs and snails. Oh no! So there was a big harvest of those to get it all cleared up. You’re literally walking through just handpicking them to kind of clear it a bit. Yeah, yeah. This is old plastic, this is four years old and it’s got the planting holes from the previous years already, so we we’ve got another sheet on top to cover the holes in the plastic. And it was between the two plastics, tons of these slugs – anyway they sorted that out and put the single sheet back and we’ve used the same holes, put in these plants five days ago so these these plants are only three and a half weeks old actually the squash and the the corn which is for dry corn in fact. Is it? All right, like so dent corn. So what squash variety is it? This is Crown Prince and Kuri up that end, so early harvest there and later harvest here. I mean I’m no fan of using plastic more than I need to, but this being like a four-year-old sheet I mean you can see it’s got plenty of life left in it yet. Yeah, it’s UV treated so it doesn’t degrade fast. And what will you be doing with the dried corn, grind it up, make your own polenta? Yeah. It;s Painted Mountain so it’s …Oh it’s the pretty kind of glass gem one isn’t it? The kind of colorful one. Yeah. I mean normally I start no dig with cardboard on weeds and compost on top. So accessible to everyone, everyone’s got cardboard. And the cardboard decomposes within about two months, so here just for example four months ago, this was just for a demo, I got this little patch and I put cardboard on and only 2in/5cm compost. We did need to remove two or three dandelions cause they’re so vigorous here and they were growing through. Using a trowel get out most of the root, but not all of it. And the other thing I’m noticing Charles is down here, that’s an incredibly attractive edge you’ve got here, how do you keep these all so clean like that those edges? Okay well, firstly it does help to keep the grass short, so mowing once a week reduces the vigor of the plant roots trying to come in but yeah they’re always moving aren’t they, so either long handle shears every two weeks say and then maybe every month, using the half moon. So it’s just a question of getting the half moon out and just being meticulous. You can go along almost at walking speed you know just it’s not a deep cut it’s just a sliver. [Music] Wow. Charles I’ve seen this from so many of your own videos, this is really the nub of it all and you’ve got so much in here. Look, oh wow. Well I’m really aware of the importance of space management in propagation and how I think many module trays and cells are too big actually. Cause look at this, this is French beans they were probably sewn about two weeks ago there’s 60 cells in that plug tray. Many people think that’s way too small for a bean seed but yeah obviously not. These are pretty much ready to go in. Yeah they’ve got a great root system haven’t they. Just about two weeks old. Lovely stuff. And they pop out easily this a feature of the tray I designed you know, I want this to be just totally practical I never wash or clean them between uses, use them many times in a year. See that astonishes me, I’ve heard you say this before – I never clean and there’ll be people there with the cleaning fluid, the Jeyes fluid or something washing them out and making sure there’s no disease left on but you’re breaking another rule aren’t you. Yeah, microbes are good they all inter-relate and everything like that and big seeds, so peas, we are doing, we do multisown beetroots, multisown onions in these as well and I overfill them. You can see that see it’s really overflowing, you don’t brush it of? No, it was so funny I was teaching a group last summer and one of them was doing one of the trainings in horiculture, the qualification, and she said oh I’d be failed for filling a tray like that! But I want to get more compost in there. Makes sense doesn’t it. What are these here? What’s here spring onions? Well leeks actually, look very similar, multisown leeks. There’s another great example of multisowing, you’ve got sort of up to what, six seedlings there Yeah, I’ll thin them out a bit. I want four. So it’s about at this stage I’ll take a few out like that and get down to four but on anything between two and four, but that means in there, say on average three, You’ve got 180 leaks. Wow. In that size of an A4. Amazing isn’t it when you put it like that and how many individual plants must we have here do a spit of maths quickly at least what 2,000 maybe, approaching? Yeah at least, at any one time. Almost everything else you see in here goes straight from these module cells into the ground and that makes it really quick cause I’ve also designed a long handles dibber. This is the famous dibber! Yeah I love this. So that makes it really quick to make a little hole. I see you’ve got some vintage plug trays here as well, these guys. Can you show us like some of your oldest ones? They must be like old friends that kind of come out year after year. These ones this one dates back to the 1980s. What! you’re kidding me! Yeah. Look at that! Cause in the ’80s it was pretty standard to use polystyrene and it was a 40 cell and it’s lost bits over the years I still use it. That’s as old as me, almost! Fundamental design that is so good of these is the size of the hole. Yeah, so easy to get them out aren’t they. Yeah but good drainage and people who’ve never done this think how come the potting mix doesn’t all fall out the bottom but once you’ve done it you realize it all sticks together. 1985 guys! Wow! You are continually trialing things, you never get bored of it and I love that. And you’re doing a little comparison here of potting mixes or composts. One’s clearly doing better than the other isn’t it, what’s going on here Charles? This is from the same makers and this is their normal, quite cheaper and what I would call chemical compost – so it’s got chemical fertilizers in. That’s standard practice, so this is the one that’s most widely available . This one is the from the same company, but it’s organic. Yea, look at the difference in those roots as well, it’s so even and you see that one’s clearly struggling for some nutrients already. Exactly well I think it’s a bit the issue with the peat-free thing and you know I think there’s a limit to how far we should go with this because we definitely want to go in that direction but for for many people it’s tying one hand behind the back and if you’ve done all your sowings and plantings this year using this compost you would have lost a month, you you might have even compromised some harvest and not got them all together. I guess if you’re a new gardener, you’d think oh this is a bit rubbish isn’t it, you could be really put off. What sort of temperature does this get to? I suppose it gets really hot you have to let it cool down and then you put your seedlings on or do you kind of push your luck? Maybe the first few days it does off gas a bit – a bit of ammonia gases That’s on 20th of February we filled it and that’s fresh horse manure it’s got this rack on top so actually that stops the seedlings getting too hot. I guess so and I guess you could always raise them up a bit if it was too hot so do you dig get all out at the end of the season and completely refill? Yeah, well in about two weeks, so early June, it’s done its job actually. So it goes out to a pallet heap back there, finishes fermenting we’ll use it next year in the polytunnel for tomatoes and things. There’s a bit of talk of herbicides that the horses ingest and that killing off things you just have to know the the owners of the horses. Absolutely, I quiz them as much as possible but you still can’t be sure and so what we do out there is actually grow some tomatoes in it like a test run, just to check. That’s a good idea isn’t it. So I’m sure before I spread it in the polytunnel. In here, the tomatoes growing in here, they’ve got some of that horse manure from last year [Music] You’re really cramming things in here Charles you’ve got garlic and then what, cucumbers here and all kind of interplanted. And the garlic went in in October and it just grew slowly between winter salads which is really my main crop here because they they’re more profitable than some summer cucumbers and tomatoes. But we pick the winter salads all all winter long and then they rise to flower during April roughly and then we have got a bit of time to put on the compost. Okay that’s when it goes on. Yeah, here we put it on in early May as compared to November/December outside and then plant everything you see here now, including the marigolds which have been eaten quite a bit by woodlice I reckon. Bit of basil, celery, that was a sort of bit of a catch crop. So celery needs really, really moist soil but you’ve got it undercover here so is that kind of watered, you have to water that especially? I have to water that a lot. Of all the vegetables I grow it’s the one I water the most by far if you want to get good celery. Basically a bog plant isn’t it – that’s the thing. Exactly. And then just a few french beans for early harvest which this year I think might really pay off. And what are these these? Welsh onions? No that’s onions, that I selected my best ones, put them in the ground, that’s for seed. Oh! okay yeah. So that temporary shelving there’s for the leek plants but that will come and they’re beautiful. They are stunning, I do love onion flowers. And because it’s undercover, I’ve got some outside as well but the thing about raising your own seed is often they’re seeding quite late in the summer and it’s quite wet and you can easily lose the quality of the seed. And you’re not just growing one or two plants, so you’ve got about ten there. Yeah – ten I would say is minimum really to get the the cross pollination, a strong gene pool. And home saved seed like you’re saying lasts a bit longer, you know when it’s been harvested It’s fresh. You know it’s fresh, because when seed is sold to you and you think it’s fresh seed but it’s packeted year ending, that’s what they put on the label. Chard is always like the poster boy of the vegetable world isn’t it. These beautiful stems and all of this is because essentially you’re feeding the soil rather than "junk food" if you like of sort of artificial fertilizers, is that kind of a fair statement? I think that’s a spot on comparison actually and I think plants like us they’re healthier for being fed naturally, not with synthetic anything and behind me here, that’s what I call the annual dose of fertility we’re putting on and it’s sometimes called feeding soil, it’s better called feeding soil life. And so there’s some nutrients in the compost but also there’s a lot of organic matter and microbes that are feeding all the organisms> And really this is all your vegetables are getting, this annual top up and and nothing else Yeah, I don’t give any feeds or fertilizer. I do use a bit of seaweed though and and I think that has a place cause trace elements maybe, we don’t know, I never know for sure. Mostly we’re spreading it here in November/December and then the rain is washing through, like this year we’ve had so much rain so all of the compost we put on before the winter has been thoroughly washed and for me that’s one of the big differences between fertilizer and compost that fertilizer will leach away mostly, but compost it doesn’t, it clearly doesn’t, look at this and we don’t put any more on in the summer either cause you know we’re doing second cropping, so like this chard already has some we put it between the plants and then in two weeks time I’ll twist it out because it’s it’s finishing, it’s going to flower and I’ve got the new chard ready to come on, but we’ll put a second planting here it might be French beans or something but no new compost. [Music] I am really keen to encourage anyone, if there’s anyone watching this video who’s never grown a plant in their life have a go and you might have some failures, but don’t let that put you off. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it is so true, every failure is genuinely a lesson isn’t it. We’re growing on a third of an acre here about £35,000 worth of food in a year so you know that that’s a nice number, but I did use to get a lot of questions like people would say, well why bother growing your own, I can just go down the supermarket and buy it so cheaply. There’s a lot of research from nutritionists isn’t there, coming out about the supermarket food doesn’t have the biome, the microbes that we need it’s not only about what it looks like and sometimes it looks better in the supermarket but your own food, that might have a few imperfections. You know I was giving a talk to a group of primary school children once and I said so actually one of the best things you can do is eat a bit of soil and it’s like wow! They all erupted and the teachers were saying oh! I love it. Charles I feel like we’ve all learned so much today you’re very generous with your knowledge and time I have to say So thank you so much. It’s my pleasure. Thank you