See the whole process from sowing to ‘earthing up’ to harvest, by pulling not digging. Potato plants easily root into undisturbed, no dig soil, while developing potatoes need soft, surface material to grow in.
It’s often assumed that potatoes just won’t grow in soil that has not been thoroughly loosened, but this video shows the opposite.
Filmed at Homeacres April to July 2018 by Josh Rogers, in a spring that started cool and wet, then turned hot and dry after 3rd May. South West England zone 8 climate, last frost mid May.
For updates on how the no rotation worked in 2019, see this link https://charlesdowding.co.uk/three-strip-trial-2014-2018/
My garden is no dig and you see how few weeds are growing. We spend most of our time planting and picking, about two hours/week on weeding a quarter acre/1000m2.
For more on the simplicity of no dig, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE6aVGnBDYs.
Read about no dig in our popular book double offer of Diary + No Dig Organic Home & Garden https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/double-pack-no-dig-organic-home-garden-vegetable-garden-diary/
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Videography, edit and the musical content created by Josh Rogers, who was working and learning here this year. He is @i_am_josh_rogers on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVB-piGGROzPd9TQVay7ynQ
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Wonderful as always Charles. Some progressively cover the growing plants, with the idea this will promote additional tubers. Your thoughts?
Wonderful info. Very timely as I am looking to plant potatoes for the first time. Thanks so much.
Hello, I'm David Smith well into retirement in Gloucestershire and I followed this advice on the video, except that I used grass mowings instead of compost, to cover the ground while they were growing. After roughly 11 weeks of growth, by July 4th, I was truly surprised by the size of the potatoes, and how relatively clean they were. I am really pleased by the results. They were a good size also.
Hang on, making a whole is still digging.
I have a section of lawn I want to grow potatoes on. Do I rototill through the grass and top with hummus and compost this fall so it can develop microbes over the winter early spring or ???
I’m watching this video just in time before I sow my potatoes, and your no-nonsense approach to sowing them is perfect. I sowed some in large pots a few months ago, but only got a handful, so hopefully this year we’ll have a better outcome. Thank you Charles for all the wonderful videos that really help new gardeners succeed.
Beautiful garden love that it weed free so we can see better on what your talking I’ve learned a lot thank you.
I have not rotated my potatoes for about 10 yrs. No problems
A master gardener!
This is a brilliant and very helpful video… I will actually come back to watch it over and over again as a reference for time to come. Many Thanks for such a great harvesting experiement with data of prior vs current years.
I only have small raised boarders and I am starting to convert to no dig to try and save the soil. I have only ever earth spuds up. So this coming year is on my to-do list.
What's the latest you have attempted to grow and harvest spuds
What a lovely way to spend Sunday morning, – watching some Charles Dowding videos. Greetings from Norway.
No-dig is the veganism of gardening.
Fantastic! It just might be the camera angle but it appeared that the "quality" of the potatoes from the forked section looked s little better . . They are potatoes and the aesthetics ofvthe tubers might not be all that important but just wondering if you may have noticed anything that might affect how the home gardener vs the market gardener decide to tend the beds ?
https://youtu.be/4twOMara-cQ
Syed Abdul Jabbar Farms
Just coming up to Christmas – I’m very interested in your video of no dig that I watched just now. I’m now 81 & been an organic raw vegetarian since 2015 .. picked up the idea from my nephew’s Beechlawn Organic Farm here in Ballinasloe in west Ireland where I was born & reared. I’ve been growing my own vegetables in my own small organic garden. I love your idea of the No dig.. I grew some potatoes for a few years in a raised bed of 10 inches.. covered them over with grass/weeds pulled from around the garden – the tubers grew through and I dug them later when they stopped growing. But your idea of sowing is more exciting so I’ll be adopting that plan for the coming year.. I like the idea of 1st earlies, then seconds & the main crop ..
Mycelium and microorganisms in my view are the key to plant take up of nutrients – hence growth. We know this as a matter of fact. So disturbing the soil is without doubt going to impact them. That said they love oxygen, so one may need to fork compacted soil initially. I would never in a million years do anything except no dig. I am basically a relentless forager for organic matter. I don't grow vegetables – I just grow compost.
That's digging
Hi Charles, thanks to your expert advice, our potatoes have done very well and ready to harvest, and in fact I dug out a few for our dinner yesterday. The heavy rains have stopped, but we will be getting occasional showers. Do I have to wait for a dry spell of a week or so before digging them all up? And can I then transplant my capsicums and aubergines into the same bed by just adding a layer of fresh compost? From what I’ve read elsewhere, they say only plant lettuces, but I know that you planted leeks. It’s our summer here and will get hotter in February. Thanks in advance.
Excellent video, Mr. Dowding! In your experience, do you happen to know roughly your yield conversion from kg planted to kg harvested? Last year was my first year growing potatoes in no-dig beds that were only about a year establish (combo of wood chip and semi-decomposed compost, so I know that the planting medium wasn't ideally mature), and I converted 9 lbs to 63 lbs for a 1 to 7 ratio. Hoping this year to be closer to 1 lb to 10 lb, but was curious as to what you've experienced. Thanks, and have a great day!
A thought for a potential additional trial is to add a deep mulch of fall leaves over one bed once the potatoes are planted. The additional moisture retention could be a big difference in a hot, dry summer. Plus, it could save the "extra" effort of mounding up as the potatoes push upward over the original compost.
I'm never gonna kill my back again, cheers Charles!
This will be the first year I've grown potatoes and just got my first early seed potatoes and I'm not sure what to do with them between now and sowing. Do you chit your potatoes before sowing?
thank charles – super helpful extended video
No dig? What was that tool you had in your hand? What did that tool do prior to planting the potato?
În ce luna ați scot cartofi ..postat-o???