Where Did No Dig Gardening Come From

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Charles Dowding has been using the no-dig method since the '80s. We discuss what he’s learned during his decades of do dig and what current experiments he’s running on his newly expanded gardening area. EG shop homepage: https://growepic.co/43QVCqW EG book collection page: https://growepic.co/44LNZn8 EG homesteading book: https://growepic.co/43Jayr7 Connect With Charles Dowding: Charles Dowding has made no dig popular with millions of readers and viewers. They love how it’s good for the soil, healthy for plants, and easier plus time-saving for them. His growing methods are applicable to small areas and large ones and are used worldwide. Since 1982 he has created and cropped four no dig market gardens on varied soils from stony to silt, and on two types of clay. Currently, he grows vegetables on 0.35 acres/1300 meters 2 in Somerset, SW England, for local sales of salad leaves and vegetables. He has written 14 books, runs a YouTube channel and Instagram account, has created and sells online gardening courses, writes for gardening magazines, and gives talks plus courses at home and abroad. Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter Pinterest Website Online Course Buy Birdies Garden Beds Use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your first order of Birdies metal raised garden beds, the best metal raised beds in the world. They last 5-10x longer than wooden beds, come in multiple heights and dimensions, and look absolutely amazing. Click here to shop Birdies Garden Beds Buy My Book My book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, is a beginners guide to growing food in small spaces, covering 6 different methods and offering rock-solid fundamental gardening knowledge: Order on Amazon Order a signed copy Follow Epic Gardening YouTube Instagram Pinterest Facebook Facebook Group Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back my friends to the epic gardening podcast we are joined again by Charles
0:17.0	Douding the godfather of no dig I don't know if you even like that name Charles but that's
0:21.2	always in my head what I've referred to you as so at least for this podcast what we'll
0:25.9	call it that but actually what we're talking about today is where did no dig
0:30.1	begin and also in time but also in your story Charles so I don't know if you you know can you
0:36.9	share with us like how did no dig come to be I would love to know more of the history of no dig
0:42.4	before about the 1940s when it's sort of documented but I'm sure people were doing it before that
0:48.8	just they didn't have a name for it and they grew things without disturbing the soil and it all
0:55.1	but most people certainly in my country in the UK traditionally have been cultivating soil
1:00.3	with a four-chorus bait to get ground ready for soil gun planting and then in 1940s there was a
1:06.4	a head gardener a well-known gardener in North West England he did lots of experiments with
1:12.2	with no dig and he wrote it up in a book he was called FC King but that you know I never really
1:18.4	never took off and then I came across when I started out Ruth Stout's book no work gardening
1:24.3	and you know she explained it really nicely I thought so I see the first thing I did was I bought
1:29.0	a load of old hay and my father was a farmer he was horrified by an old hay weed and I split that
1:34.9	on the ground you know as a mulch I could see the viability of mulching to suppress weeds because
1:41.1	what I noticed with most gardeners that I saw there's just too many weeds and it was yeah people
1:46.7	were spending so much time reading and then the weeds just going back you know it was never going
1:51.8	forwards it was always just maintaining status quo if you were lucky so I thought right I'm
1:56.3	going to mulch to smother them and the hay worked but in my climate unlike Ruth Stout's I got a
2:01.9	load of slugs because we're quite damp and she's more dry and can I take up three cold winters
2:07.7	so then I switched from hay to compost and that's pretty much been ever since and that was in 1983
	...

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