I received an invitation to visit Charles Dowding's garden near Shepton Mallet to find out more about 'No Dig' vegetable growing and to learn about his new book ' Charles Dowding's No dig gardening Course 1' I am going to whisper very quietly that I try my hardest not to dig anyway, which actually made the reason to go even more acute as I was fascinated to see what he had to say.
and when I say fascinated, I mean I was prepared and did drive for three hours to get there and back in a day. I have not done a lot of driving in the last five months so this felt like quite a challenge, but I really wanted to go.
The garden is not huge, around a third of an acre, and it is pretty much all turned over to growing vegetables. It is used as a trial garden so some borders are dig and some no dig so that Charles can test his theories. It all looked immaculate and due to the system Charles uses, he does not spend lots of time weeding. Let's just say that 'mulch' is his friend. If you look you can see that the paths are pretty much mulch too. These are not raised beds with wooden sides, though Charles does sometimes use wood to make the template for a border. Charles told us that wooden/hard material sides can act as a haven for slugs and snails and it is better to just heap the border to raise it. This was totally eye-opening for me as I have been watching the wooden edges of my raised beds rot away and have been thinking for some time about replacing them. Now I am inspired to follow Charles's lead and have woodchip/mulch paths between my borders. Watch this space as they say.
Charles has an impressive compost set up, but it is also very simple. He turns one bay into the next just once and it soon provides fine grade compost that he needs.
I really liked that Charles keeps notes on the compost shelter that tell him when a bay is started/turned. I think the words that define Charles' approach are 'simple' and 'practical'. Nothing is complicated or convoluted. That is very much music to my ears!
We talked about mesh a lot. This was a really useful discussion for me as I bought mesh with holes in it so large the butterflies almost could not fly through it because they were laughing at me so much. Lesson learned.
I had serious aubergine envy.
This is the trial area where Charles is seeing if crop rotation is as beneficial as we may think it is. Charles has been growing the same crops here for a few years now and they certainly look healthy enough. I was astonished and impressed and also if I had got a rule-book I would have ripped it up there and then.
We wandered through the poly tunnel...
admired the loofas
and, quite frankly, hung on Charles's every word. Well I did anyway. The word 'inspirational' is over used, so I will just say I left the morning completely inspired.
I also left with a signed copy of Charles's book. I was given the book so I have not paid for it, but I am under no obligation to write about it and my words and opinions are as ever my own.
It is such a good book as it is very much a course. It is the online course Charles runs but in book form. It is packed with information and has a quiz at the end of each section. The quiz is brilliant as if you cannot answer the question you (ok, I) just have to go back over the section to find the answer. This is so much more efficient than just reading it and hoping it sinks in. Of course I am not going to talk you through everything Charles said, you really do have to buy the book.
We were also given a copy of Charles's 2021 Calendar, which is full of wonderful photographs and great tips and prompts when to sow, plant and harvest.
