Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: jambop on March 10, 2019, 09:46
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No not the Hank Williams song but the amazing veg growing techniques of Charles Dowding ! I came across his you tube channel quite by chance and to be honest after viewing only a few of his video's I am going to be changing my ways. While I am sure his methods are not totally unique he does explain and simplify things so well you can really see the benefits of his way of doing things. I already had three raised beds in the garden but I had used a mix of soil and manure for the infill . His method is to use just compost as filler over the top of the soil below... even if it has not been previously cultivated. I have now made a new bed which is 3m x 1.5 m and it is filled purely with home made compost over soil and it is 20cm deep so with the soil below I had a decent depth of soil to work and grow in... so here goes. The one thing that is going to be difficult is making enough compost to fill the beds, it takes a lot. I am lucky however as I can get as much strawy farmyard muck as I want or free so I am going to make a lot of compost by rotting this down over the autumn and winter. I would encourage anybody to have a look on you tube for his channel not necessarily to go deep bed no dig but to see how easy he makes veg growing for even those who garden using traditional methods.
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The infamous "no dig" method which involves creating a new 6" raised bed with fresh compost on top of your existing beds each year. ::)
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No-not infamous but famous. I've been a convert for a couple of years now and never regretted it. Not only do you get good vegetables but also less weeds as you're not bringing dormant weed seeds to the surface by digging each year. And if you have a bad back or are getting on a bit and find the digging hard it is ideal. You need a lot of compost/manure in the first year but only an inch or so thereafter. Welcome to the light Jambop!
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Charles Dowding No-Dig Site is fantastic ,found it 5yrs ago and converted to No-Dig .Best thing I have done in my 60yrs of veg gardening .Other people on my allotment site have converted to no-dig after seeing my crops and how weed free my allotment is .
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Yep I’m a recent convert although I didn’t dig too much before although hubby did rotavate every year. I like many used to think you need to double dig etc but on reading CDs books it made perfect sense not to dig & a, bring up the dormant seeds & b, damage the bacterial organisms & fungi going on underneath the soil. I certainly saw a difference last year. I planted the brassicas out in smaller than I usually do & it was like lighting the touch paper, they grew overnight. Ok I didn’t get to harvest much from them as they got infested by white fly & mealy bug but that was nothing to do with the no dig, I feel that was down to epidemic like proportions of white fly & how I had netted them so no predators could get to the plants to eat the bugs.
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No-not infamous but famous. I've been a convert for a couple of years now and never regretted it. Not only do you get good vegetables but also less weeds as you're not bringing dormant weed seeds to the surface by digging each year. And if you have a bad back or are getting on a bit and find the digging hard it is ideal. You need a lot of compost/manure in the first year but only an inch or so thereafter. Welcome to the light Jambop!
As I always say - it's great if you can make enough compost, or get enough for free - otherwise it's an expensive way to garden on an allotment. Obviously much easier for small plots or garden beds.
wrt bad backs, mine can manage short periods of forking beds over, but really cannot manage moving wheelbarrow loads of compost/muck about. Good luck to those who try, and well done those who continue with the method, but it isn't for everyone.
It's like a new religion, with some people forever telling others how good it is, as if there aren't many different ways to grow things ;)
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The infamous "no dig" method which involves creating a new 6" raised bed with fresh compost on top of your existing beds each year. ::)
No you do not need to add that much compost every year an inch or two over the existing is enough. I have to say though I am not going BIO or anything like that! I will still be racking a little growmore into the soil and if need be treating bugs with pesticides... I am not busting my hump to let beasties eat the produce :D
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The infamous "no dig" method which involves creating a new 6" raised bed with fresh compost on top of your existing beds each year. ::)
No you do not need to add that much compost every year an inch or two over the existing is enough. I have to say though I am not going BIO or anything like that! I will still be racking a little growmore into the soil and if need be treating bugs with pesticides... I am not busting my hump to let beasties eat the produce :D
I can’t make enough compost for this system unfortunately, so it’s gentle digging for us.
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I tend to agree with MUM I haven't yet been converted although I do read quite a lot of info on the no dig way and I have to say Charles Dowding's method has been proven to work
but as I said before I'm still stuck in my own ways or gardening and that method seems to work most of the time never mind its all food for thought and when I downsize the allotment it could be no dig for me
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The only digging I do is to excavate the runner bean trench every year to add organic material, and when planting (and harvesting) potatoes. No raised beds here, so I sometimes have to fork over an area I need for growing which got trampled on the previous year.
Absolutely nothing to be gained by routinely turning over sandy soil like mine - it's the same all the way down!
Not many farmyards here in Sheffield ::) so no ready and plentiful source of manure, just limited supplies of home made compost which is targeted at the growing areas which need it most.
I believe I'm in the 'Dig as little as you can possibly get away with' camp! ;)
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I have only just started and I can understand the compost shortage problem. I am very lucky to have a farm just over the road so I hope to be making shed loads of compost from the strawy farmyard manure I can get in plentiful supply. What I like about this man Dowding is he completely explains and shows everything from sowing to harvest in his video's. He also likes to experient and has busted quite a few gardening myths that many have taken as gospel.
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The infamous "no dig" method which involves creating a new 6" raised bed with fresh compost on top of your existing beds each year. ::)
No you do not need to add that much compost every year an inch or two over the existing is enough.
Humour me. As part of your processes find a part of your plot with real weeds in it, a few nettles, brambles , couch grass and some bind weed. Cover them with an inch or even 2 of compost and leave it 6 weeks :nowink:
I'm familiar with CD's work; you'll notice he can't produce enough compost onsite either and has it delivered by the lorry load. People have been buying in new growbags annually for greenhouse crops for as long as I can remember the only difference with "no dig" is tipping the compost out the bags.
Whatever gardening style suits you is the best for your garden ;)
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The infamous "no dig" method which involves creating a new 6" raised bed with fresh compost on top of your existing beds each year. ::)
No you do not need to add that much compost every year an inch or two over the existing is enough.
Humour me. As part of your processes find a part of your plot with real weeds in it, a few nettles, brambles , couch grass and some bind weed. Cover them with an inch or even 2 of compost and leave it 6 weeks :nowink:
I'm familiar with CD's work; you'll notice he can't produce enough compost onsite either and has it delivered by the lorry load. People have been buying in new growbags annually for greenhouse crops for as long as I can remember the only difference with "no dig" is tipping the compost out the bags.
Whatever gardening style suits you is the best for your garden ;)
Yes I agree whatever style of garden suits you but surely no harm in reporting on your experiences even if it is thought by some to be ‘off the wall’ after all organic gardening was once thought to be very alternative.
As for the very weedy plot, I’ve not had experience of that but as I’m sure you know the advice is to strum it as low as you can, cover with a thick layer of cardboard,wet it well, then add the mulch. Nobody says that perennial weeds won’t grow through, but the advice is to be vigilant, hoe frequently & trowel out the worst offenders.
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You are right snowdrops - nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want. If you like the methods that you have been using for years then go on with it. If you have, dare I say it, a more open mind and are prepared to change either because you might get better crops, or you respond to a change in your health etc., then no-dig is a good alternative.
Lardman is basically right - if it works for you then do it. Mind you - he's wrong about how CD would approach the type of weedy plot he describes. You can't kill brambles under two inches of mulch.
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You are right snowdrops - nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want. If you like the methods that you have been using for years then go on with it. If you have, dare I say it, a more open mind and are prepared to change either because you might get better crops, or you respond to a change in your health etc., then no-dig is a good alternative.
Lardman is basically right - if it works for you then do it. Mind you - he's wrong about how CD would approach the type of weedy plot he describes. You can't kill brambles under two inches of mulch.
I do object to being accused of not having an open mind because I choose not to garden in a particular way.
Of course we should all garden according to our preferences, but please do not stoop to insults.
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"Humour me. As part of your processes find a part of your plot with real weeds in it, a few nettles, brambles , couch grass and some bind weed. Cover them with an inch or even 2 of compost and leave it 6 weeks"
Don't forget to put cardboard down first.
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No-dig has been around for far longer than CD has been alive. Parisian market gardeners in the 19th Century used a no-dig method, adding huge amounts of horse manure to their plots. In this country Albert Guest wrote Gardening Without Digging which was published in 1948, followed by Dalziel O'Brien in his Intensive Gardening of 1956 and James Gunston published Successful Gardening Without Digging in 1960.
This does beg the question 'if no-dig growing is so good, why does anyone dig over their plot nowadays?'
I think L D Hills summed it up best back around 1970 -
“We're not concerned with proving whether any of the authors whose books are bibles for each separate cult of no-digger are 'right' or 'wrong'. Our purpose is to find a blend of old and new methods that will help us garden with least and lightest work”
The only thing I'd add is that different methods are appropriate for different conditions. No one size fits all.
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Oh dear I seem to have caused a debate disturbance :lol:
The way I see it is this. I have been growing veg and keeping a garden for a long time and have always used the time old methods of digging and tilling the soil. I have now in my retirement moved to rural France and have a , what many would consider at an acre, large garden. I am not cultivating the entire area ... thank god! I am however looking for ways to make my job less demanding. My ground is a really good but heavyish alluvial soil which is shallow at about 20-30 cm deep over a hard clay pan below ... it floods easily in the heavy winter rains and dries rock hard in the summer heat. I have watched several of CD's videos on youtube he is a sensible and no nonsense gardener and his methods are perfect for my particular situation. I am raising my beds which will allow me to plant when the garden would have been flooded and unuseable before. The other vital piece in the jigsaw puzzle is I can get lots of farmyard manure to make the compost required for the method. However just watching his tutorials is enough for me to want to follow his method he shows you from seed to harvest what to expect using his methods and it has simplicity which makes it appealing to me at least. I don't think that CD has ever claimed he invented the method he uses but I suspect he has certainly added one or two innovations along the way.
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If you could get a farmer to run a sub-soiler plough over the patch to break up the clay pan that may well cure the flooding problem. It's basically a knife blade with a cylindrical piece below that cracks open the clay.
Adding compost above will help cure the drying out problem.
My experience of growing on heavy clay has been that that double digging, adding loads of manure and compost and liming resulted in a wonderful soil. A neighbour's no-dig plot was a waterlogged mess. Where we are now with a light but very stony soil is a lot easier with no-dig. Hence my addition of 10 tonnes of compost last year. Heck of a job moving it though.
You (and all of us) need to use whatever ideas and methods are helpful in our situation. I'm not proud, I'll steal any good ideas I can find.
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You (and all of us) need to use whatever ideas and methods are helpful in our situation. I'm not proud, I'll steal any good ideas I can find.
Well if they are good ideas, why not :lol:
I've never double-dug my clay soil, but I do dig, use no-dig in bits, compost for all I am worth and add this as I am digging or as a mulch. I'm pleased to say my soil is now pretty good as well :D
I've just put a post on another thread about real nasty weeds, compost and no-dig, based on my own experience. It didn't work for me then, but has since on cultivated soil, which has then been turned over to permanent plantings like fruit. Just because people aren't shouting about no-dig all the time, doesn't mean they don't know about it or haven't tried it :)
https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=129708.msg1511445#msg1511445
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Let me just say here and now if I ever had to dig my garden soil... I would not be gardening full stop! I use a motor tiller and am not at all ashamed to say so. I am not about destroy my garden in an attempt to stop flooding. I am told by the local farmer that the soil below my garden is exactly the same as is in his fields metre upon metre of yellow clay. He ploughs his fields to a depth of 45cm and adds tonnes of his farmyard muck to them every year and his fields flood just the same as my garden does in act even more dramatically. The reason the soil sets up like concrete is because of the silty soil composition, temperature and sunshine we get down here... you only imagine it we garden on it. In the past people built houses using the stones from the ground and the soil, my own house is built exactly this way walls half a metre thick :) No farmer can grow crops efficiently here without irrigating the ground hugely. I have just invested some of my money in an automated drip irrigation system I will be putting into effect this year this should help my ground and crops in the summer. People think that having the sort of weather we get here makes veg gardening an easy proposition dream on there is always a downside to the upside :)
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I've been using grass clippings as mulch with great results under fruit bushes. Better soil and less weeds. Note: LESS not NO weeds :(
The thing I hate is black plastic sheets. Yep, they may work but when they get shredded and blown everywhere in a storm..
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jambop - I've used a Merry Tiller for years, wonderful bit of kit, but it bounced off the clay pan unless really held down. Double digging is hard work but not as hard as you might think. Still, you do what you can. An acre is a daunting amount of land to work.
I've also grown in Catalonia - gets a bit warm in the summer. Not had the pleasure of a silty soil though but I'll swap you 3 acres of Welsh hillside if you're missing the rain. :)
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John the problem with the soil type I have is that when the moisture level is just right you would think you were gardening on the best soil in the world BUT ... have you ever been making up grout for a tiling job and you add a teaspoonful of water too much and you arrive at a soup ? :lol: That is my soil that is, then the sun comes out and drys it as hard as concrete. My neighbours think I am mad, you see I believe in the hoe and there I am hoeing aways in blazing sunshine because I know those weeds are history in these conditions with the hoe... it has to be done :lol: Anyways I use an MTD heavy 450 pro tiller and it does a good job and I do know that tillers are not the best thing for soil structure ... but when the soil is compact, which it always is in the spring time, the heavy winter rains compacts the soil terribly. One other thing John look up the annual rainfall for where you live and the annual rainfall for Lembeye in Pyrenees Atlantiques I think you will be surprised.
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Perhaps people like Charles Dowdings way is because his videos are more interesting, informative and backed up with sound evidence.
Never seem anything similar about digging.
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Anyways I use an MTD heavy 450 pro tiller and it does a good job and I do know that tillers are not the best thing for soil structure ... but when the soil is compact, which it always is in the spring time, the heavy winter rains compacts the soil terribly. One other thing John look up the annual rainfall for where you live and the annual rainfall for Lembeye in Pyrenees Atlantiques I think you will be surprised.
I don't think tillers do damage the soil structure. Given all you've said about your soil I'd spread my compost over the surface and then run the tiller across to mix it all up. Perhaps you could convince a local farmer to donate a load of manure. If you chipped some wood and mixed it with the manure in a pile it would rot down and hold the nitrogen as it decomposed the wood. Not so much for the nutrition as for the humus improving the soil structure - in particular water retention.
According to The Great Google, Fount of all Knowledge the Midi-Pyrenees gets 825mm of rain against our 1067mm. Surprisingly the Limousin gets over 1,000 mm too. We've obviously been lucky when we visited friends there.
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Perhaps people like Charles Dowdings way is because his videos are more interesting, informative and backed up with sound evidence.
Never seem anything similar about digging.
The trouble is so many Youtube viewers haven't the ability to evaluate the information presented and apply it to their individual situation. Did you know the earth is flat and climate change a myth? It must be true, it's on Youtube :)
I must admit that I don't like video generally for information - far too much time taken to say very little. Text, if properly written, is far more information dense.
I suppose a video about digging wouldn't be so exciting .. although a cursory search will give you quite a few results if you're finding a spade a bit confusing.
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According to The Great Google, Fount of all Knowledge the Midi-Pyrenees gets 825mm of rain against our 1067mm. Surprisingly the Limousin gets over 1,000 mm too. We've obviously been lucky when we visited friends there.
I am in Pyrenees Atlantiques which has an average annual rainfall of about 1052mm which is believe it or not fairly evenly distributed month on month although in the winter between Nov and March we do get a bit more. The thing down here is when it rains... it rains! I have never seen rain as heavy as we get here when it arrives and this is the thing it does not rain frequently but when it does the garden is trashed and the soil heavily compacted just by the weight of the water hitting the surface and of course a lot of it just runs off.
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Go for it. It is always worth a try and see if it works for you. :)
I do my no-dig without raised beds. I could not be bothered with the expense (or the look). My garden is a kind of like a furrow and ridge: compost on the beds and lower paths between. (FYI, I asked him about this and he agreed the raised beds were not required. You can see some pics on his site without raised beds). This is my third season, and it really seems to work a treat on my heavy clay soil. But then, I have 6 compost bins constantly on the go, providing the required material.
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Is your land flat? Thinking you might find some ideas in permaculture swales to better control the water. We're on a slope here and have planted a triple band of willows at the top of a field to help absorb excess water that flows down onto us.
Quite ironic really, 200 metres above the sea and we near get flooded when there's a cloudburst. A sheet of water just sweeps down the hill.
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I too started with raised beds, and then took on another half a plot 10 x 10 m which has been set up without raised beds.
It’s good you can walk on it without all the soil sticking to your boots.
My only issue was there is a great big red ants nest in the middle of it to get rid of.
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Is your land flat? Thinking you might find some ideas in permaculture swales to better control the water. We're on a slope here and have planted a triple band of willows at the top of a field to help absorb excess water that flows down onto us.
Quite ironic really, 200 metres above the sea and we near get flooded when there's a cloudburst. A sheet of water just sweeps down the hill.
My veg garden is on a gentle slope and is at the bottom of the entire garden, so it is natural that there would be a drain to that spot. We like everybody else have a pond in our garden this gives the water somewhere to go, it is not ornamental but a centuries old way of shedding the water and also being able to use it for irrigation nearly every garden will have one ... but this of course soon fills up in a really wet spell . I have also laid a field drain across the top of my veg plot... but it still floods in heavy rain >:( I think more than anything else this is due to the soil type and lack of soil depth. One thing I did want to say John is that that yellow clay subsoil is pretty fertile. I always plant my leeks very deep and they usually root down into the subsoil... get lovely leeks even with next to no watering!
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Leeks are actually a good plant for clay. Their roots go into it and those left behind when harvested provide fuel for the soil ecology.