I never thought this day would come. I woke up in London with a fever, missed a train (or two), but eventually made it 100 miles to Charles Dowding’s EPIC market garden, Homeacres. The sky opened up for about an hour, and Charles shared the deep wisdom behind his garden.
Charles Dowding is the godfather of the modern “no-dig” or “no-till” approach to gardening, where you NEVER till or dig down into your soil and disturb its structure and the soil life. He applies ~2″ of compost, once per year, and…that’s it. From there, he starts transplants for most everything except for a few root crops and pops them into his beds.
The compost is made on-site, as you’ll see in this video, and the market garden produces around 20,000 GBP of produce every single year.
IN THIS VIDEO
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→ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charles_dowding/
→ Website: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/
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Happy New Year, everyone! Here are your timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
0:51 – Dig vs. No Dig Experiment
4:46 – Compost Bins
9:03 – The Market Garden
15:30 – The Polytunnel
19:29 – Making a No Dig Bed
22:26 – The Small Garden
25:50 – A Single Bed Example
28:44 – Seed Starting in the Greenhouse
34:02 – Chatting with Charles
My heros in the garden! I’ve watched this video multiple times and love you both dearly! Thank you for doing this collab!
Well this was just delightful
For a newbie English gardener it was a really nice surprise to stumble upon this video! Thank you!
Love to see my beloved gardeners together. Thank you all! I’ve learned so much and thereby saved so much mistake time waste.
Is dancing on new garden beds official no-dig technique?
What a wonderful garden
Where does this guy live? I am in Connecticut and our summers are hot and humid, and our winters are cold and snowy. I would kill for mild all year round weather.
San Diego and England are great for composting. Being from the desert southwest of the United States, you have to add so much water. I'm jealous of 9 months of hot composting; the times I had success were more like a year and half the items didn't decompose completely. Especially for the home gardener. The people here that have better luck, are doing it on a much larger scale and spraying with water.
Actinomycetes cause that "rain smell" and often grow in compost bins and moist areas where u have rotting organic matter. Often mycelium is white, but it is a huuuuge phyllum.
Old saying on the East Coast US is a peck of dirt before you die. Absolutely love Charles! thanks for this!
No
What a treat! Great video! Well done, thanks, I've learnt heaps
Truly a man in love with nature
The missing head of cauliflower that just grew a nub, is likely to be the result of swede midge, the second (to flea beetle) most destructive pest to brassica crops. The bite/burrowing activity of the female laying her eggs inside causes deformation of plant tissue
Thank you Kevin. Thank you Charles for this tour. I like your idea of No Dig garden. I am a beginner in gardening. Bought the Birdie raised garden bed but it is not in use yet due to the approached winter in Edmonton Alberta, Canada.
I wasted time and energy in the last 6 days by digging the hard rock-liked soil in the back yard before finding your valuable No Dig video. I regret I did not I watch it earlier because the knuckles on my hands started swelling due to excessive use in the past 6 days. Oh well, I guess I learned my lesson in a hard way this time. Thanks again. God bless.
What a great video!!! So eye opening! Thankful it showed up in my feed!
Top show lads.
Both legends.
How about using some lights in the covered spaces during the winter?
You might like to read Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets
It would be great if you would do one of these with Tony from Simplify Gardening
What a lovely human Charles is. So welcoming, genuine and kind. Gardening seems like it comes so naturally for him. This video brings me so much joy.
Simply Great!
Wonderful video and so helpful . What do you do about gophers? I live in the central coast of California…
Thank you for doing these video's. They are jam packed with valuable info. Love your garden Charles.